This could be the stupidest twist ever in Batman continuity. It has no reason for existing either in the context of the story or even its own marketing. When the Knight was first revealed during the initial announcement via Game Informer, Rocksteady’s Dax Ginn flat out said that he’d be completely new, so I’m not sure what world Rocksteady is in where “someone we haven’t used yet” is a well-known Batman character….
“…We are excited to announce that we worked with DC Comics to create a completely new character… Arkham Knight. We’ll talk about him in the upcoming months.”
Of course, even before it was revealed to be a blatant lie people were smart enough to figure out the the Arkham Knight was Jason. There’s only so many people who hate Batman enough to dress like a military version of him and have the ability to physically go toe to toe with him and not walk away with eight broken bones. Once the Joker hallucinations head toward to the topic of Jason, there’s little to no doubt that he and the Knight are one and the same. In fact, it’s a bit of a mystery how it took Batman and Alfred so long to figure it out themselves, especially when Jason himself wasn’t being all that subtle near the end.
It also doesn’t help that Jason’s transition from Arkham Knight to Red Hood is pretty instant, and sloppy at that. Once he unmasks himself to Batman, he just tosses off the LED display and changes his helmet and suit colors to red. Batman tries to help return him to “normal”, then he just disappears and shows up at the end for about 10 seconds to shoot Scarecrow and disappear, presumably to do his own thing in the Red Hood DLC. Don’t get me wrong, I like the Red Hood as a character and what he represents; there’s already a strong case for why hedeserved a game of his own. But when we’re told that the bad guy we’ll be facing is a “completely new character”, one expects someone that’s never been seen before that could be integrated into the comics later on like Harley Quinn was, not a stop gap to a character assuming an identity they’ve had for the past decade.
Hiding the Arkham Knight’s identity has the problem where the writers think that doing so was a lot more of a clever move than it actually was. Now, one can see why they’d go this route; just saying “oh hey, here’s Jason Todd and he wants to kill Batman!” would’ve thrown non-comics fans for a massive loop. Problem with that is that shrouding his identity in mystery robs the story of any potential emotional weight of seeing Batman confront someone who he just couldn’t help. The boss fight between them doesn’t feel like a tragic reunion so much as it just feels like two dudes hashing out their problems from a week ago. But for all his talk about wanting to kill Batman, the Arkham Knight only shows up during certain moments, and not long enough to leave a real impression beyond “man, this dude is annoying”. He’s trying to be the Winter Soldier, but he’s more like a very talkative and arrogant gnat. Superheroes are supposed to have secret identities, but sometimes it’s best to just take off the mask and show us who they are right from the outset.
How did you feel about the Arkham Knight’s secret identity? Let us know in the comments below.
