‘The Batman’: Is There a Post-Credits Scene? – CNET [CNET]

Long-awaited DC superhero epic The Batman hit theaters on Friday, pitting Robert Pattinson’s Dark Knight detective against the Riddler (Paul Dano). Writer-director Matt Reeves‘ movie sees the supervillain murdering his way through Gotham City’s elites and exposing its corrupt underbelly. It also has a post-credits Easter egg for people who stick around.

Batman isn’t alone in his campaign; he teams up with Selina Kyle (aka Catwoman, played by Zoë Kravitz) to investigate the city’s traditional criminals, while GCPD Lieutenant James Gordon (Jeffrey Wright) is a vital ally in the hunt for Riddler.

We have a full ending explainer if you want to dive into those spoilers, but you might be curious about what happens after the credits roll. Minor spoilers follow.

Riddler bids you farewell

We don’t get any kind of post-credits scene setting up a sequel, but there is one last reference to the Riddler’s deadly campaign — perhaps hinting that it’ll continue in the future. We see a typed “?” followed by “GOOD BYE” (bye Riddler, it’s been so much fun), and www.rataalada.com flashes up on the screen briefly. 

During the movie, the villain’s puzzles send Batman and Gordon on a hunt for an unidentified informant known as El Rata Alada — Spanish for The Winged Rat — that was instrumental in taking down former Gotham crime kingpin Sal Maroni. It sounds like a reference to a bat, but it’s revealed that Riddler is hunting for a snitch whose name is derived from a bird.

If you go to that URL, it brings you to a viral marketing website where you can chat with the villain and answer a series of riddles. They’ve changed a few times, but here’s the Friday, March 4, set:

• I am first a fraud or a trick. Or perhaps a blend of the two. That’s up to your misinterpretation.
• What was new, is new again. Rebirth. Restoration. Reformation. 
• Fear he who hides behind one.

The answers are below, but we’re gonna put them behind a SPOILER warning in case you’ve done today’s Wordle, Worldle and Squabble and want to try your luck against a supervillain. We’ll also dive into some plot details that you should avoid if you haven’t seen the movie.

The answers are Confusion, Renewal and Mask.

Getting them right lets you download a password-protected zip file named “What_Am_I.” The password is “Promise,” and entering it lets you watch a video called “Thomas_Wayne_Lies.”

It’s a short TV promo for the mayoral campaign of Bruce’s late father, Thomas, who’s among the people Riddler blames for Gotham being a cesspool. The video, which is available on YouTube if you don’t want to play games with a supervillain, has “Hush!” and “The Truth about Gotham” scrawled over the footage, along with Schubert’s Ave Maria and some creepy breathing from the Riddler.

What does it mean?

During one of Riddler’s broadcasts in the movie, he reveals that Bruce’s late mother, Martha, was a member of the Arkham family. Her parents died in a murder-suicide, and the trauma of that resulted in Martha being institutionalized several times in her youth.

She found stability when she married Thomas and had Bruce, but Thomas’ mayoral campaign resulted in reporter Edward Elliot digging into the family’s past. 

This threatened to reveal Martha’s struggles with mental illness to the world, and Thomas sought the aid of extremely greasy Gotham mobster Carmine Falcone (John Turturro). Elliot ended up dead, and it’s unclear what happened — Falcone claims Thomas had him kill Elliot. Bruce’s butler, Alfred Pennyworth (Andy Serkis), says Thomas only asked Falcone to scare Elliot off the story, but Falcone killed the reporter.

Thomas intended to confess everything to the police, but he and Martha were killed shortly afterward — their murder remains unsolved in this continuity. The Gotham Renewal charity fund Thomas established was then snatched up by the city’s corrupt elites. 

This meant Gotham’s poor never got the help they needed, and super-smart orphan Edward Nashton had to grow up in squalor. Seeing Bruce getting showered with sympathy after his parents’ deaths enraged Edward, who reckoned having the Wayne family’s riches made the loss easier to endure than it had for other orphans. Edward grew up to be the Riddler, intent on taking revenge on the city’s elites.

What’s with the ‘Hush’?

That word may be a reference to a villain from the comics, where it’s tied to the name “Elliot.” In the 2011 story Gates of Gotham, Edward Elliot was one of the people responsible for the construction of Gotham City in the 1800s (along with Bruce’s ancestor Alan Wayne and Penguin’s ancestor Theodore Cobblepot). 

He’s also the ancestor of Thomas Elliot, a childhood friend of Bruce whose jealousy led him to become the supervillain Hush and launch a campaign against Batman in a blockbuster 2002 story arc.

Previous riddles

This site has existed for a while and the riddles have cycled multiple times, but here’s the set from the days leading up the movie’s release.

• From birth to death. From boy to man. All things change but this is one thing he will always be. 
• The end is in the middle, twice. Test your mind and try not to get baffled by me. 
• A man worth billions, in a manor of speaking.

The answers to these are Son, Puzzle and Wayne. Getting them right led to a series of pictures, including a shot of the Wayne family in happier times.

It’s likely the Riddler (or the movie’s marketing team) will add more puzzles in the coming months, perhaps when The Batman hits HBO Max.

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