The following story contains spoilers for The Batman.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe didn’t invent the post-credits scene—we can look back to 1966’s The Silencers for that—but it did largely popularize what we expect from major movies in our biggest film franchises. The MCU has made a formula for the mid- and post-credits scene—often teasing what’s to come, introducing new characters that will be fleshed out or elaborated upon later, or both—that other films have tried to mirror. And they haven’t been super successful. Maybe that’s why The Batman goes in a slightly different direction.
Part of why the MCU’s credits stingers are so beloved is that they strike the right balance of filling in blanks and getting audiences excited. Seeing Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury for the first time after the credits of 2008’s Iron Man was a true game changer. When 2012’s The Amazing Spider-Man showed The Lizard (Rhys Ifans) meeting a stranger in a jail cell during its credits scene…the same intrigue didn’t quite hit.
The Batman is significantly different from the other movies we mentioned. Closer to a David Fincher-style dark crime thriller than a high-flying superhero flick, it would be kind of bizarre for the movie to end with some sort of colorful tease.
Warner Bros.
Director Matt Reeves wanted fans to feel like this was a full story. He didn’t want to include any sort of credits scene to specifically tease at a future that he himself wasn’t entirely sure of. “I never wanted it to feel like we were saying this is chapter one, because I always feel like we don’t know if it’s chapter one, this is just this story,” he told The Washington Post. “I wanted this experience to be a complete experience and so there was never any intention to do [a post-credits scene] because that wasn’t what the movie was intended to do. It was … here’s this story about Batman in this year two [on the crime-fighting job] going through this experience.”
However, Reeves did stick a couple things for us to grasp onto for the future. Obviously, we got a very juicy scene right near the end with an “Unseen Arkham Prisoner” in a cell next to Paul Dano’s Riddler, played by Barry Keoghan. Our implication, obviously, is that this friendly prisoner is the latest version of The Joker. We don’t know if/when we’ll see him again, but he’s been officially established in this world.
And then, after the credits, there’s not a full scene. But Reeves did tell the Post that the screen that flashes after the credits is “something that the audience is meant to see.”
Is there a post-credit scene in The Batman?
There’s not a post-credits scene at the end of The Batman. However, there is a post-credits message, using the same screen where we see Batman and The Riddler communicating throughout the film.
The screen, with its black and green look, flashes a question mark on-screen. before the words “GOOD BYE?” flash on screen. Then, quickly, a website flashes on the screen. If you missed the site, we wouldn’t blame you—it really only flashed for about a second. But the web address is: www.rataalada.com.
Warner Bros.
Obviously, a key piece of The Batman found the Dark Knight and Jim Gordon trying to solve the Riddler’s many riddles. One of them found our heroes hoping to understand the identity of someone being referred to as “El Rata Alada,” Spanish for “The Winged Rat,” involved in Sal Maroni’s imprisonment before the events of the film. While Gordon and Batman suspect initially that the clue could refer to Penguin (Colin Farrell) or Batman himself, eventually they realize that the rat being referenced is crime boss Carmine Falcone (John Turturro).
Clearly, the people behind The Batman (and the marketing team at Warner Bros.) figured this would be the right URL for a movie tie-in site.
What is on the rataalada website at the end of The Batman?
When you visit www.rataalada.com, the screen appears exactly the same as the one from The Batman, black and green text with messages entering back and forth. The site is updated frequently, and in the first days after the movie’s release had a series of riddles. According to CNet, these were the riddles on the site on Friday, March 4, the movie’s opening day:
- 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 answer to these were Confusion, Renewal, and Mask, and entering them correctly unlocked a password-protected video of Thomas Wayne’s mayoral campaign. Of course, one of the movie’s key twists is that before he was murdered, Thomas Wayne was involved with the murder of a journalist who was going to expose private secrets about Martha Wayne’s mental health. Alfred claimed that Thomas simply told Carmine Falcone to keep the reporter quiet, but Falcone claimed that Thomas contracted him to have the reporter killed. Just like the Riddler, Bruce, and the people of Gotham, we’ll probably never know the truth for sure.
As of today (March 7, 2022), the site has a new image when you click through, labeled “Its_Not_Over_Yet.jpg”. Take a look at the image below:
Warner Bros.
Don’t ask me, but some online sleuths have already managed to figure out the cipher in the image. Apparently, it reads: “You think I’m finished but perhaps you don’t know the full truth. Every ending is a new beginning. Something is coming.”
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The Batman just had the second-biggest box office opening weekend of the pandemic era—following only the behemoth of Spider-Man: No Way Home—so if the Riddler is telling us “something is coming,” well, that’s certainly not far-fetched in the long run. We’ll all be making a return to Gotham City sooner rather than later.
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