The movie may be over, but the Riddler wants to keep playing.
Jonathan Ollie/DC
The long-awaited DC superhero film Batman hits theaters Friday, pitting Robert Pattinson’s The Dark Knight detective against the Riddler (Paul Dano). In writer-director Matt Reeves’ film, a supervillain weaves his way through Gotham City’s elite and exposes its corrupt underbelly. He also has a post-credits easter egg for people who stay around.
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Batman is not 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 the Riddler.
We have a full ending explanation if you want to dive into those spoilers, but you might be interested in what happens after the credits. Minor spoilers follow.
Riddler says goodbye to you
We don’t have any post-credits scene setting up a sequel, but there is a final reference to the Riddler’s deadly campaign – possibly hinting that it will continue in the future. We see printed “?” followed by “GOODBYE” (Bye Riddler, that was so much fun) and www.rataalada.com briefly appears on the screen.
Who wouldn’t want to spend more time with the Riddler? He is so charming.
Warner Bros/DC comics
During the film, the villain’s puzzles send Batman and Gordon on the hunt for an unidentified informant known as El Rata Alada (Spanish for “Winged Rat”) who was instrumental in the capture of former Gotham crime boss Sal Maroni. Sounds like a reference to a bat, but the Riddler is revealed to be hunting the Snitch, whose name comes from the bird.
If you go to this URL, it will take 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 set for Friday, March 4th:
- I am the first scammer or trick. Or perhaps a mixture of the two. It depends on your misinterpretation.
- What was new is new again. Renaissance. Restoration. Reformation.
- Be afraid of the one who hides behind one.
The answers are below, but we’ll put them behind SPOILER a warning just in case you beat 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.
Answers: Confusion, Update and Mask.
Executing them correctly allows you to download a password-protected zip file named “What_Am_I”. The password is “Promise” and by entering it you will be able to watch a video called “Thomas_Wayne_Lies”.
This is a short television advertisement for the campaign of the mayor of Bruce’s late father, Thomas, who is among the people the Riddler accuses of making Gotham a cesspool. In the video, which is available on YouTube, if you do not want to play games with the supervillain, there is the phrase “Hush!” and “The Truth About Gotham” scribbled over the footage, along with Schubert’s “Ave Maria” and some creepy breath from the Riddler.
What does it mean?
During one of the Riddler’s broadcasts in the film, 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 it led to Martha being institutionalized several times during her youth.
She found stability when she married Thomas and had Bruce, but Thomas’ campaign for mayor led reporter Edward Elliot to dig into the family’s past.
This threatened to expose Martha’s struggles with mental illness to the world, and Thomas turned to extremely sebaceous Gotham mobster Carmine Falcone (John Turturro) for help. Elliot was dead, and it’s unclear what happened – Falcone claims that Thomas forced him to kill Elliot. Bruce’s butler, Alfred Pennyworth (Andy Serkis), says that Thomas only asked Falcone to scare Elliot away from the story, but Falcone killed the reporter.
Carmine Falcone is the rot in the heart of Gotham City.
Jonathan Ollie/DC
Thomas intended to confess everything to the police, but soon after, he and Martha were killed – their murder remains unsolved in this sequence. The Gotham Renewal charity founded by Thomas was then taken over by the city’s corrupt elite.
This meant that the poor of Gotham never got the help they needed, and the super-intelligent orphan Edward Nashton had to grow up in poverty. Seeing Bruce being showered with sympathy after his parents’ death angered Edward, who felt that the wealth of the Wayne family made it easier to bear the loss than other orphans. Edward grew up to become the Riddler, intent on exacting revenge on the city’s elite.
Hush is one of the most iconic modern Batman stories.
DC comics
What about “Hush”?
The word may be a reference to a comic book villain where it is associated with the name “Elliot”. In the 2011 short story “Gotham Gates”, Edward Elliot was one of the people responsible for building Gotham City in the 1800s (along with Bruce’s ancestor Alan Wayne and Penguin’s ancestor Theodore Cobblepot).
He is also the ancestor of Thomas Elliot, Bruce’s childhood friend, whose jealousy led him to become the supervillain Hashem and start a campaign against Batman in the 2002 blockbuster story arc.
Previous riddles
This site has been around for a while and the puzzles have been repeated a few times, but here’s the set a few days before the movie’s release.
- From birth to death. From boy to man. Everything changes, but this is what it will remain forever.
- End in the middle, twice. Check your mind and try not to confuse me.
- A man worth billions speaking in the manor.
Answers to them: Son, Puzzle and Wayne. Their correct identification led to a series of photographs, including one of the Wayne family in happier times.
It’s likely that the Riddler (or the film’s marketing team) will add more puzzles in the coming months, possibly when The Batman hits HBO Max.
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