Eckhart on Two-Face: The Doornail Always Rises Twice?

Andy Hunsaker, Fancast Movies

Not too long ago, The Dark Knight star Aaron Eckhart well and truly established that Harvey Dent was “dead as a doornail. He ain’t coming back, baby.” He’d heard it from Christopher Nolan himself, and Eckhart also says that the original plan was to keep bringing Heath Ledger’s Joker back as Batman’s archnemesis.

There’s a moment in Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman where Jack Nicholson as the Joker calls out to a corrupted cop with “Hey, Eckhart! Think about the future!” before blowing him away. Sounds like Eckhart is certainly thinking about the future now, because he’s no longer quite so definite about whether or not Dent bought the farm after his free-fall drop. He may just be in a “serious coma” and wondering whether or not to pull the plug on him. This would help alleviate the concerns that Dent’s death makes Batman a killer, which goes against everything Batman is about. It could also mean that the new brainstorming about a third Nolan Batman film has yielded results that could have changed the state of Dent. Then there’s the possibility that Eckhart just wants in, and is having fun spreading false rumors in the hopes that they pick up steam. Or perhaps just helping spread disinformation to throw rumormongers off the scent of the real story. Either way, it bears watching.