Marvel and DC have a long history of switching actors back and forth. Taika Waititi borrowed Christopher Nolan’s Batman, Christian Bale, to play the villain in Thor: Love and Thunder. Zack Snyder took his Batman, Ben Affleck, from Marvel’s Daredevil movie. When Ryan Reynolds is playing Deadpool, he never misses an opportunity to bash his previous superhero role as DC’s Green Lantern. Marvel and DC have even started poaching actors from themselves; Luke Cage’s Mahershala Ali is (supposedly) returning as Blade, and James Gunn’s DC Universe has recast Aquaman’s Jason Momoa in his dream role as Lobo.
Matt Reeves has finally finished writing The Batman: Part II, and he’s currently in production on the sequel. Reeves is bringing back all the fan-favorites from Part I — Colin Farrell as the Penguin, Jeffrey Wright as Jim Gordon, and, of course, Robert Pattinson as the Bat himself — but he’s also lined up some exciting new supporting players (and he nabbed a couple of them from the Marvel Cinematic Universe).
The incomparable Brian Tyree Henry has joined the cast in an undisclosed role (maybe Harvey Bullock). Charles Dance, better known as Tywin Lannister, is set to play Harvey Dent’s abusive alcoholic father, and ex-Avenger Scarlett Johansson has been tapped to play Harvey’s wife, Gilda Dent. Sebastian Stan has also been cast in The Batman: Part II.
Stan is still a major part of the MCU — Bucky is a politician in the current timeline, and the elder statesman of the New Avengers — but he’s dipping his toe into the DC universe to play the villain in Reeves’ The Batman sequel. We don’t know exactly who he’s playing (there are plenty of rumors flying around), but we do know it’s a baddie, so this Marvel hero has lived long enough to see himself become a DC villain.
Who Is Sebastian Stan Playing In The Batman: Part II?
As of yet, it hasn’t been fully confirmed who Stan is playing in The Batman: Part II. It’s always been assumed that Stan is playing Harvey Dent, because he looks the part and Harvey’s wife and dad have both been cast alongside him. But TheInSneider, one of the rumor mill’s most prominent propagators, is now claiming that Stan is actually playing serial killer Victor Zsasz.
Zsasz would be more in line with Reeves’ claim that the sequel’s villain has never been done properly in a movie, because Two-Face has been done over and over and over again in the live-action movies. We know Stan is playing the villain, and the actor has spoken cryptically about playing multiple different roles within his role. That could refer to Two-Face’s split personality, but it could also refer to Zsasz’s disturbed psychosis. Maybe he’s neither of those villains, and he’s actually playing Hush.
Whoever he’s playing, Stan is an interesting choice to play the villain in The Batman: Part II. He’s one of the best actors in the MCU; he’s always brought so much depth and nuance to Bucky, and really sold the psychological turmoil of his brainwashing, unbrainwashing, and living with the guilt of actions he couldn’t control. Over the past decade-and-a-bit of MCU storytelling, Bucky has fought tooth and nail to leave behind his dark past as the Winter Soldier and be recognized as a hero putting good into the world. Now, Stan is going right back into full-blown villainy for a classic bad-guy turn.
Outside the MCU, Stan has shown off impressive range and versatility over the past few years. Perhaps his most notable non-Marvel performance was his Oscar-nominated turn as a young, up-and-coming Donald Trump in The Apprentice. If he can give such a convincing performance as a real-life supervillain, then a supervillain from the pages of a comic book will be a piece of cake in The Batman: Part II.