Did Batman Die At The End Of The Dark Knight Rises?

As part of our series on mind-blowing movie fan theories, we’re changing the way you watch some of Hollywood’s most famous films. This week: ‘The Dark Knight Rises’.

The theory (SPOILERS AHEAD!)

There are some who believe that the final scenes of 'The Dark Knight Rises’, in which Alfred spies Bruce Wayne alive and well despite his apparent death, are a mere figment of his grieving imagination. The scene (see below), which sees Bruce enjoying the company of Selina Kyle in a crowded Italian cafe, is a fantasy, born from the mind of Wayne’s most trusted confidant, who is tortured by the idea that he let his surrogate son down.

It kind of makes sense, right? Could it be that the ending of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy is not as straightforward as it seems? It’s certainly one of the more sensible 'Dark Knight’ fan theories we’ve heard. Let’s examine the evidence…

The evidence:

- We are led to believe that Bruce Wayne/Batman dies when his uber-cool flying contraption 'The Bat’ is piloted out over the ocean, where we see it explode along with Bane’s atomic bomb. We see that MASSIVE explosion.

We do not see even the slightest hint that Batman escapes the blast, and we are given no indication by Christopher Nolan’s editing that Bruce Wayne had any time or any opportunity to duck out from The Bat. The fact that Lucius Fox later discovers the auto-pilot on the craft was fixed is irrelevant: if Batman had really escaped from that atomic explosion, he’d have been seen or he’d have mutated about three extra legs due to the radiation of the blast.

- It is only through Alfred’s eyes through which we see Bruce Wayne, unmutated and very much not dead, but it has to be said that Bruce’s faithful butler is perhaps not the most reliable witness. Earlier in the film, we hear Alfred tell Bruce he worried about him when he left Gotham for seven years, before he became Batman: “Every year, I took a holiday. I went to Florence, there’s this cafe, on the banks of the Arno. Every fine evening, I’d sit there and order a Fernet Branca. I had this fantasy, that I would look across the tables and I’d see you there… You wouldn’t say anything to me, nor me to you. But we’d both know that you’d made it, that you were happy.”

- That’s a little bit too on the nose, right? We see that Alfred is torn apart with grief at Bruce’s apparent death (see below), and that he blames himself. Isn’t it a little too convenient that Alfred happens across his beloved master in what we can only assume is the first holiday he’s taken since Wayne’s death? Isn’t it more likely that Alfred is projecting the image of Bruce to put his own mind at rest? Especially now he’s out of a job?

- If Bruce Wayne really did fake his own death, then he did a pretty terrible job of blending into his surroundings. Before you even consider the fact that both Batman and Bruce Wayne 'die’ at the same time and no one bats an eyelid, you have Wayne – a famous, popular, international playboy and businessman, who was on the covers of numerous magazines – chowing down on pasta in the middle of a very crowded cafe. All it would take would be one American tourist to spot him eating calamari with Catwoman and the jig would be up.

- Isn’t Batman supposed to be a detective? Your cover is rubbish, dude.
You’ve probably already come to this conclusion if you’ve seen any of his movies, but Christopher Nolan likes an ambiguous ending. Nothing ignites discussion and fan theory like a blockbuster finale that has shades of grey. Remember 'Inception’, and the spinning top?

In fact, the presence of Michael Caine in both movies, and the concept of the lead star (DiCaprio/Bale) either being in a state of reality or fantasy, might be what has convinced some fans that Batman really is dead and Alfred is losing his marbles.

The verdict:

Well, there’s really no way to tell definitively, because Christopher Nolan likes his books open, not closed. However, he drops some pretty heavy hints that what you see is what you get. Lucius Fox discovering the auto-pilot worked doesn’t really work as a red herring, especially when it’s followed immediately by Alfred’s discovery of Bruce in Italy. Another point of contention that punctures this theory is that Selina, Bruce’s dining partner, is wearing Bruce’s mother’s pearls – and the story of the necklace is not really one that Alfred would have been privy to, so why would it appear in his fantasy?

The fact is, it’s a nice theory, but a theory it must remain – just one possible ending of a movie which ends on a comma and not a full stop. After all, with John Blake presumably filling Bruce Wayne’s considerable shoes in the movie’s final scene, does Batman really die? He’s just a symbol after all, so maybe whether Bruce is alive or not doesn’t matter – his legend lives on. That’s the cop-out answer, anyway…

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Image credits: Warner Bros./Rex Features