What Really Happens In Arkham Knight’s True Ending

0
2441

It is not easy to reach the third and the final ending of the latest Batman game, however, if you reach there then the scene that will unfold once you finish the Arkham Knight game is yet not clear. There are lots of debates going on about its true meaning.

Once you overcome challenges like Scarecrow, the army of the Arkham Knight and various puzzles created by the Riddler, you will reach a point where they sequence that plays out is at best an ambiguous finale to everything that you saw before reaching there.




Warning: This article contains major revelations related to Batman:  Arkham Knight including the complete ending.

The final section of Arkham Knightgame will see the Batman’s secret identity being revealed to the world following which the vigilante instructs Alfred to apply Knightfall Protocol.

This scene (reproduced here via the RabidRetrospectGames YouTube channel) depicts the ending after the players complete the entire gameplay. This Knightfall sequence is the third ending of the Arkham Knight.

Extremely Harsh, is it?

First, of the three endings finishes with the Joker illusion getting locked away in Bruce Wayne’s head followed by a battle with Deathstroke who has taken over the Arkham Knight’s army’s command. Once you complete that, you will see Bruce Wayne return to Wayne Manor, and then an explosion takes place destroying the Manor. This brings to the screen a scene which begins with Jim Gordon.




We need to remember that the Arkham Knight is a video game and its source is a superhero comic character. Therefore, we can’t trust anything that we see during the gameplay. This is further confounded by the fact that there is a lot of illusion element in the game which gives breeding space to the fan theories. All over the world, the players of this game are debating about the various interpretations of the completion scene. Most of the discussions bring forward the following leading theories:

Bruce Wayne didn’t die and reinvented himself as a new version of Batman

Batman is known for his no-killing rule. Therefore, this double suicide that we seem to have witnessed with the destruction of Wayne Manor doesn’t have much likelihood. Batman has many times fooled his enemies by faking his death. Thus, there is no reason why he won’t have done it once more.

This theory is further substantiated by some of the things that are said upon completion of various side quests of the game. For example, let’s have a look at what happens when the Penguin quest ended.




We hear similar things when Batman bids adieu to the Catwoman after defeating the Riddler.

A lot of people believe that the fear toxin used by Scarecrow might have become a new weapon that Batman is now using in his war against the criminals. In the past also he has used things created by the villains for his own purposes. We saw examples of that in the earlier games wherein he merged Mr. Freeze with the technology of the Electrocutioner that was used for cryo-grenades and high power assaults.

 Jim Gordon Is Using Fear Gas On Gotham’s Criminals

In case the Batman is not the one who is using the fear toxin of the Scarecrow then there is a chance that any of his allies might have done that. We saw in the cutscene above that Jim Gordon takes over as the mayor of Gotham at the completion of the game and that makes us wonder the way Batman used fear as a tool to keep the Gotham criminals under control.




Gordon mentioned that Bruce Wayne and Batman as having been murdered and dead that means he had no contact with them after the explosion.

Bruce Wayne Is Dead, and Someone Else Is Batman Now

Another possible scenario is that Bruce Wayne died and someone else took over as the Batman. This is also not unprecedented, and we have seen earlier in The Dark Knight’s history that once the incumbent gets seriously hurt or dies, he is replaced by someone else.

The comic books once showed Nightwing aka Dick Grayson take over as Batman when it appeared as if the real Batman had died. In the Azrael sidequest of Arkham Knightgameplay also refers to the storyline of Knightfall comics which featured a nastier version of Batman taking over.  However, the fact that Batman has been battling his internal self-affected by a Joker illusion that is bent on killing him, we find it out of place for Batman killing himself along with Alfred.




They have deliberately kept the Knightfall ending hazy and left a hint that even in the eventuality of Bruce Wayne’s death, the Batman legacy will continue. The game toys with the prospect of a new person taking over the Batman’s role after the death or disappearance of Bruce.

The creators of Arkham Knight, Rocksteady have already stated that the game marks the end of a trilogy and they haven’t made any announcement about an upcoming game. While this will be silly to believe that this is the penultimate Batman game, it might be possible that a future Batman game might have a fresh start and it may not link to the closing sequence of this game.

Leave a reply

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.