Lanterns Trailer: DCU Batman & Gotham Details — Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:00] This Lantern's new mid-season trailer confirms how Jordan Woods reprinted and ties this whole series even more deeply into the world's greatest detective and Gotham City. But when will we see this DCU Batman?

[00:12] Welcome back to the Neuron Stars, I'm Eric Loss and let's look at some details in this new mid-season trailer for DC Studios Lantern and everything we are learning more about the DCU Batman. And my new favorite piece of DC gear I'm going to start wearing all the time is our This Grodd Needs a Brew shirt,

[00:26] inspired by the upcoming Gorilla Grodd series that we have on our merch store, nerdride.shop. We love it when the NR Nation out there wears our gear, out the world, post selfies, and tag us like Barefoot Lutz, rocking our crypto shirt, along with your whole fam, repping some other nerdride designs.

[00:41] Sweet! The Lanterns Vincita trailer for the final three episodes, released Thursday morning, shows how Jordan and John Stewart sit in this diner booth sometime after 2016. I didn't take the fall.

[00:58] You didn't take the fall. You fell. And people got killed. I don't want to kill her. I'm not a devil.

[01:10] This tells us that how Jordan went to prison for some amount of time after the Battle of Rushville. That law enforcement decided someone needed to be held responsible for that mass casualty event. As I pointed out in my Who Killed Hal video, this murder mystery really is like Who Shot Mr. Burns on The Simpsons,

[01:25] in that everyone in the town is a suspect, and maybe we should start to look at the kid. We specifically do see what looks like a high school football star making a play in this trailer. I'm pretty sure that is Noah Macon. But an inconsistency that I cannot help but notice here in the diner booth,

[01:38] Hal Jordan in the booth in these shots does not have a broken nose, but when they shot this scene, he definitely did. So they might have scrubbed something out of the trailer here. I wonder if this diner scene was right before Hal's murder, or apparent murder, in 2026.

[01:51] I also assume that Sheriff Carey was wrong when she assumed that whoever broke Hal's nose also shot him, which might explain this reaction in the mid-season trailer. Right.

[02:04] The reason all of this is so confusing to even try to analyze is this insane new shot here. Hal's dead. Not the guy you hate. Howdy. Yeah, that is Hal Jordan lying on the floor there wearing medical scrubs just like Jon Stewart did in Episode 5,

[02:19] and a patch of skin is missing from his inner arm, exactly like the patch of skin that was removed from Jon Stewart's arm when Manhunter Zoe used a piece of his skin in Episode 5 to reprint his entire body. And this Hal clone, if we're going to call him that,

[02:33] is lying on the floor of the Apex Inc. slaughterhouse room that they were in in Episode 4, a slaughterhouse filled with Manhunter technology to humanely store slaughter and process meat. I think this answers our clone-de-how mystery.

[02:45] But rather than it being a physical hologram scraped off of his ring, it seems like someone is continuing to use Manhunter medical respawning technology to 3D print an entire new body for Howl. I mean, hey, maybe that's what they do with cows.

[02:57] To reduce the carbon footprint and to avoid having to kill any more cows, Apex Inc. has just been cloning and reprinting the same cow for meat production. I mean, I just think Jon Stewart being a vegan is going to come back in some way. Either way, I just feel safe in saying now that there are multiple Howl Jordans

[03:11] and the one who is dead on the bleachers could just be one of these physical duplicates. The question now is, who did this? Who is this other person walking into the slaughterhouse room wearing these boots? Could it be another Hal Jordan? Could it be Will Macon Jr. or Noah Macon when he's older?

[03:25] We'll see. Maybe Hal Jordan gets reprinted after his death in 2026. Or maybe this was in 2016 after he was severely wounded in the motel. But I think HBO is showing this because, A, they just want to keep the hope alive that there is more to whether or not Hal Jordan is forever dead in the VCU,

[03:40] and B, they just want all of us to keep twisting our brains with theories. This mid-season trailer also shows the stuff that I think will be in episode 7, Hal Jordan's flashback episode, including him saluting at his father's funeral, and this moment where I think that is his father chatting with him after a baseball game.

[03:54] Can't hold on to it forever, so... There are also some more shots of Jon Stewart paddling this boat out to this cyberpunk energy refinery station island, but while past trailer shots showed Jon alone in that boat, now we see with him is this hologram or whatever Hal this is.

[04:09] There seems to be a lot of shots of Jon Stewart in this location talking to Sinestro and Sinestro saying this I say it Not to drive you away And this You going to be the most powerful force in the universe What's going on here?

[04:21] Is Sinestro in exile in this location after the prison we saw him in before could not hold him? I mean, anytime you send a Napoleon to an Elba, he's going to come back. But here it's interesting how Jon Stewart shouts, what are you doing here? To Sinestro. And my theory is that there's going to be some villainous plot to invoke Parallax.

[04:36] But episode 6 will also show John Stewart activating this Lantern signal in Rushville to summon Guy Gardner. And to me, it's just another huge reminder that a Batman does exist in this universe. We are seeing a DC detective show and detective comics got their name because Batman is the world's greatest detective.

[04:52] More and more, this show looks like it's going to end by setting up the Gotham City of the Clayface film that we will see just two weeks after the Lantern season finale. I think we're going to have a lot more insight on when we will finally see a DCU Batman film and an actual release date after Matt Reeves and Robert Pattinson's alternate universe,

[05:07] The Batman Part II, coming February 2028. So now I'm just going to connect all of these dots. Before Lanterns and before Clayface, hear what was already established about the DCU Gotham. Jim's Gun and Beer Saffron has so far maintained it is a separate universe from the Gotham City,

[05:22] from the Matt Reeves, the Batman, and the upcoming The Batman Part II, and from the HBO Penguin series. We first saw this Gotham City in animated form in the Creature Commando series, the flashback episode where Dr. Bosporus was arrested by Batman,

[05:34] so far our only official sighting of the DC new Batman. Trades go to indicate that that animated depiction of Batman could have a design change by the time we see him in live action, but specifically that is not meant to be Robert Pattinson. And based on the timeline of Dr. Pini's arrest,

[05:46] this Batman must have been active for at least the past 10 years in Gotham City. The 2025 Superman movie established that Gotham City was within driving distance of Metropolis. Metropolis is in the state of Delaware. Gotham City is in southern New Jersey.

[05:59] The 2025 Peacemaker Season 2, which is DCU canon according to James Gunn, established the DC villain of White Rabbit, Jaina Hudson, as existing in this continuity, rejected from Maxwell Lord's Justice Gang. The Chris Smith of the Peacemaker series hates the Batman of this universe and often talks shit about him.

[06:15] While most of that shit-talking happened in Season 1, I assume the same sentiments exist in Season 2 and beyond. Peacemaker Season 2 also established that Leota Adebayo and her partner Kia both lived in Gotham City. Now, in this first season of Lanterns, we have learned a lot more about Gotham City in this continuity.

[06:31] Sheriff Carrie Kane of Rushville was actually a runaway from Gotham City, the daughter of a father who was involved with an organized crime family, a father who snitched, leading to the crime boss of that family to put a hit out on the whole family.

[06:43] We know her name was Carrie Kane in Gotham because Hal Jordan said that he looked her up back in Lanterns Episode 4, and he found public records of Carrie Kane in Gotham City in the past to prove that she wasn't a Manhunter. And yes, Carrie's last name is Kane, which, as of episode 5, suggests that she might be connected to the Kane family,

[06:59] maybe even a relative of Batman Bruce Wayne himself. Bruce Wayne's mother, Martha's maiden name was Kane. Martha's brother, Jacob Kane, married Gabby, and they had twin daughters, Beth Kane and Kate Kane. Kate Kane is Batwoman.

[07:11] Carrie also called someone on the phone and got from City saying, Tell Barbara I said hey. So it sounds like she was in contact with someone connected to Barbara Gordon. Barbara Gordon being the daughter of Police Commissioner Tim Gordon. and yes, Barbara Gordon is Batgirl.

[07:23] So from this, and reporting that the DCU Batman movie, The Brave and the Bold, either is or was at some point going to be a team-up between Batman and Damian Wayne Robbins, suggests that the Batman we see in the DCU is part of a whole Bat family,

[07:36] or has characters exist in this world who will one day be part of that Bat family. Lantern further confirms Gotham City's South Jersey geography. Carrie Kane changed her license plate to a Delaware plate while fleeing Gotham, suggesting that she passed through Metropolis and her way out west to Nebraska.

[07:51] This Batman in Gotham City has a bad signal, we can assume. That would obviously be a must-have anyway. But in Lanterns Episode 6, we see that in the year 2026 in the DCU, Green Lantern Guy Gardner sets up a lantern signal in cities like Rushville, Nebraska,

[08:05] suggesting that he probably ripped it off from the DC News Batman. Also, obviously crime families exist in this Gotham City. We don't know yet which crime family was threatening Carrie Kane and her father, but we have to assume it was either the Falconis, the Maronis, the Bertinellis,

[08:18] maybe the Sionises, or just someone else. including possibly Killer Croc. Killer Croc might exist in the DC of Gotham City. Figures and subtitles for Lanterns Episode 5 identified the goon as Croc Coat which might have just been a nod to like a crocodile skin coat or it could be a name for all the goons in a Killer Croc gang

[08:35] Maybe Carrie Kane thought if she could escape the Gotham City sewer network, she could escape the reach of Killer Croc. Black Mask exists in the DCU Gotham City. Lanterns Episode 3 showed an ad for Janus Cosmetics, the company of Roman Sionis, a.k.a. Black Mask.

[08:48] We also know that Gotham City exists on a DC Universe map, along with other fictional DCU locations, like Metropolis, Coast City, the home city that was made to look like L.A. in Lantern, Midway City, that's where it seems like the Stewart family lived,

[09:01] places like Central City, Bloodhaven, Star City, Jarhampore, Bravia, and Corto Malpese. This Gotham City also exists in a history that had a President Barack Obama in it and a President George W. Bush in it beforehand.

[09:14] And Harry Potter movies, Pope Benedict XVI, and the 1996 movie set it off in Nebraska Cornhusker football. But from the precedence, we can assume that there's also a Washington, D.C. in this universe. We don't know yet for sure if there's a New York City or Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, and other cities,

[09:28] but James Gunn has indicated that there is room for both fictional and real-world cities in this universe. I don't know why, but the month of September always feels like a major transition for me. Like, I haven't been in high school since high school, but because I spent so many of my formative years treating September like the start of some big new adventure,

[09:44] it's just hard to flip that switch off. And it's not just the residual inertia of going back to school. A lot of the patterns I developed before I had the right context or self-awareness to appreciate them still linger. Something my therapist has reminded me of that's really helpful is that now I can apply adult context and agency to some of those feelings.

[10:01] So yeah, it's September, and if I'm feeling geared up for a big new adventure, why not just lean into it? Maybe you feel the same way, maybe you've been thinking about therapy yourself, and maybe now is the time to embark on that adventure. BetterHelp, the sponsor of today's video, makes starting therapy easy.

[10:15] You take a short quiz, then get matched with a licensed therapist quickly. You can communicate however you feel comfortable, phone, video, or text. If your therapist isn't a good fit for you, you can switch at any time with no additional cost. Over 6 million people to date have gotten help through BetterHelp, earning a 4.8 out of 5 rating on the App Store.

[10:31] Click the link in the description or go to betterhelp.com slash new rockstar to get 10% off your first month of therapy. Signing up using our link helps support our channel and lets us keep making videos like this and the next one and all the others.

[10:43] Let's get back to it. Perhaps most interesting is our interview with Lantern's writer, Vanessa Bain Kelly, confirmed that these writers, along with Tom King and James Gunn and Peter Shavring, said they all had a lot of conversations of what is and what isn't DCU canon.

[10:55] And she confirmed that similar to the 2008 I Am Iron Man moment that Marvel Studios has been treating as their Year Zero moment that firmly established the fictional historical timeline of the MCU as being separate from our universe, that the DCU has a similar lynched-in historical event that has yet to be revealed.

[11:10] Has there been conversations for the DCU about when that moment was? Absolutely. There were definitely conversations about that. Even, you know, as you were talking about what does this look like for the upcoming Superman.

[11:24] I feel like this Lynchpin moment is going to be sometime during or after 2016. And hear me out. I think James Gunn might have a twisted enough sense of humor here to make the DCU's historical nexus moment the same nexus that many of us think put us on our darkest timelines.

[11:40] The death of Harambe in May 2016, which online conspiracy theorists have said could have impacted things when it comes to winning the World Series in the 2016 election. I know, I know, this is very, very stupid. But when asked about recurring references to Super Smart 8 that James Gunn keeps putting in the DCU, Gunn noted that DC Comics history is just weirdly stacked with Smart 8.

[12:00] And I just have to believe that the greenlining of the People vs. Gorilla Grodd, starring Jimmy Olsen of the Daily Planet, following the trial of the black villain Gorilla Grodd, played by Jimmy Patro, in a natural gorilla suit,

[12:12] is just going to include some jokey reference to Harambe in 2016. And maybe we're going to find out that he's still alive in the DCU, making the DCU a kind of alternate Planet of the Apes timeline from there forward. I know this is a very dumb theory, but I challenge you in the comments to come up with a better one.

[12:27] Lanterns will end two weeks before Clayface hits theaters, and that will be the first time we really see the full DCU Gotham City in live action. From the trailers for Clayface, we can already determine even more details about the DCU Gotham City.

[12:39] Matt Hagen will be a popular actor who has split his time between Gotham City and Coast City We actually see a Hollywood trade article about Coast City in the most recent Clayface trailer We know that the DCU Gotham has a narrows seen from a shot of a fairy in the Clayface trailer Other trailer

[12:53] shots have shown a few different angles of this Gotham's amusement mile. There is actually some set photos of the Gotham City subway map from the movie Clayface that gives a fuller layout of the city and all the familiar locations you'd expect to see in any version of Gotham. Wayne Manor,

[13:06] A bit odd for a bad house to be on the subway map. Kane Memorial Bridge and Kane Estate may be the same Kane that Carrie Kane should be part of the family branch of. Arkham Asylum, Ace Chemical, Iceberg Lounge, suggesting this DCU has its own penguin,

[13:21] Wayne Industries and Wayne Tower, Gotham Gazette offices, and Blackgate Penitentiary. Now, Gotham City in the DCU probably does not have a Court of Owls in it, at least not yet. Why not? Well, I'm pretty sure that the Court of Owls is going to factor in, at least in part, in the Batman Part II.

[13:37] Photos of Matt Reeves' set for the Batman Part II include a protester's sign reading, Court of Owls. And in production for Matt Reeves' film, it's apparently shooting in London's Freemasons Hall, the interiors of which are an insane, eye-flying, cut-looking congregation room

[13:51] that has to be a meeting location for a group like the Court of Owls. And let's not forget the finale of the Payward series laid on the evidence of the Court of Owls in this Reeves verse pretty thick, showing the shapes of owls lying in the back of a courtroom.

[14:04] So assuming that the court of owls seems to be playing such a big role in the Batman part two, I just don't think James Gunn's plans for the DCU Gotham City and his Batmans will do the same thing in this Gotham. They're just not a major Rose Gallery villain group

[14:16] that has to be in every version of Gotham City. They're just more specific than that, and I think James Gunn will want to distinguish his Gotham as just being focused on different villains and different threats. So at this point, the soonest we're going to see a DCU Batman movie will be 2029.

[14:28] I think we might see sightings of Batman before that in other DCU projects, but his own movie? Not until 2029. Why? Well, because Matt Reeves' The Batman Part II was pushed to February 18th, 2028,

[14:40] and James Gunn has firmly said that he does not want to release more than one Batman movie per year. So based on this, I'm going to end with a bold prediction. I'm betting that DC Studios sets the release of the DCU Batman movie on June 22nd, 2029,

[14:54] and they're just going to call it Batman. Why that title and why that date? Well, that would be the exact 40-year anniversary of the release of the 1989 Tim Burton Batman film, the movie whose success proved that superhero cinema was really here to stay.

[15:09] I know that's the distant future, but I'm telling you, someone at DC Studios and Warner Brothers has that base circled on their calendar. Believe me. So there you go. That's 20 new details we've learned about the DCU Gotham City and Batman. Comment down below with what you're most looking forward to about them.

[15:23] And a special thanks to one of our In Our Underground subscribers, Ricardo Martinez for supporting us at the executive producer level. Get all of our exclusive bonus content by clicking the link in the description below or going to inourunderground.supercast.com. That includes our Monday Nailbag podcast, exclusive only to people who support us here.

[15:37] Here's a sample from the most recent episode. I think unpredictability and out-of-left-field curveballs and overvaluing that has led to so many final seasons being dogshit. Yeah. And I think because Benioff and Weiss really wanted to be unpredictable

[15:52] in that final season of Game of Thrones, and because the Stranger Things writers wanted to be unpredictable in that final season, and I think Kripke wanted to be unpredictable in the final season of The Boys, it's led to too many examples of if you had just done a straight adaptation

[16:08] of what we all kind of wanted and expected, it would have been better than what we got. Like, don't worry about the final act of any story. It should kind of just affirm your expectations of what you wanted in a slightly surprising way.

[16:21] Yeah. Don't throw the, don't kill off random characters just to be shocking. You can get the full episode by going to nrondeground.supercast.com or clicking the link in the description. Big thanks to Studio Tech Brian Cameron, New Rock Stars Editor Scott Schultz, Stephen Herd,

[16:33] and Abby Brio, and all of our supporting editors for their work on this video. Follow me and E.A. Box and hit that subscribe button. Thanks for watching and I'll see you next time. Bye.

[16:51] Thank you.