MOVIE NEWS – Matt Reeves is finally filming The Batman: Part II, but the rumor around Sebastian Stan’s role has taken a sharp turn: according to new reports, he may not be playing Harvey Dent, but Victor Zsasz, one of Gotham’s most brutal serial killers.
The Batman: Part II is finally in production at DC Studios, with Matt Reeves bringing Robert Pattinson’s Batman back to the grim, rain-soaked, crime-poisoned Gotham that gave the first film so much of its force. Story details remain tightly guarded, but it already seems clear that Pattinson’s Bruce Wayne will have no shortage of enemies when he returns for his second Elseworlds adventure. At the start of production, Reeves confirmed several major names in the cast, including Sebastian Stan, best known to many viewers for playing Bucky Barnes, the Winter Soldier, across 15 years of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
After Stan’s casting surfaced, the internet quickly locked onto one theory: he was expected to play a new version of Harvey Dent, the man who eventually becomes Two-Face. Reeves never officially confirmed that, though. Instead, he shared a gif of Stan from another film, looking disheveled and hollow-eyed, which only poured more fuel onto the speculation. Now, according to a new report from Jeff Sneider, the picture may have changed completely: Stan is reportedly not playing Harvey Dent at all, but Victor Zsasz.
The Real Harvey Dent May Be Another MCU Actor
According to Sneider, Harvey Dent will instead be played by Brian Tyree Henry. That would be an especially interesting turn, since Henry also has Marvel experience, having played Phastos in Eternals, and could now move into a very different kind of DC role. The last major big-screen version of Harvey Dent was Aaron Eckhart’s performance in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, where the character’s collapse became one of the film’s strongest dramatic engines. If Henry really is playing Dent, Reeves could build him first as an ally to Bruce Wayne before pushing him toward the later Two-Face mythology.
Victor Zsasz is a very different kind of threat. In DC Comics, he is known as a sadomasochistic, psychopathic serial killer who carves a tally mark into his own body for every victim he murders. The character was previously played by Anthony Carrigan in Gotham, by Tim Booth in Batman Begins, and later by Chris Messina in Birds of Prey. Zsasz is especially disturbing because he does not merely kill. He arranges his victims’ bodies in lifelike poses, while operating from a nihilistic belief that life is only a meaningless cycle of pain and that he is saving his victims from having to endure it.
If these reports turn out to be accurate, Reeves’ sequel could pressure Pattinson’s Batman from several directions at once. Zsasz alone would be enough to put Gotham back on high alert after the Riddler, since another serial killer would suggest the city was not cleansed by the end of the first film, only pushed further into rot. Harvey Dent’s arrival, meanwhile, could bring political and moral tension into the story: a charismatic district attorney trying to save Gotham may eventually be broken by the same city he wants to protect. The Batman: Part II is currently filming and is scheduled to open in theaters on October 1, 2027.
Source: MovieWeb
