WhileBatman: Arkham Shadow’s Carmine Falcone and Lyle Bolton are phenomenal representations of precisely how corrupt the prison institution system is in Gotham City, Blackgate inmates and TYGER guards are chiefly made up of the same unfathomably muscle-bound goons that are ubiquitous and adored in the Arkhamverse. That’s all well and good, though, as it allowsBatman: Arkham Shadow’s third enemy faction, the Rats, to thrive and contest how endless mobs of henchmen are meant to be interpreted.
With Harvey Dent subdued in the game’s final moments and Irving “Matches” Malone vanishing out of existence, and no more Rat King—essentiallyBatman: Arkham Shadow’s far more theatrical and verbose take onThe Animated Series’ Big Bad Harv—it seems as if the Rats will disperse into Gotham’s gutters without a leader. Still,if a futureArkhamgame behaves like a direct sequel toBatman: Arkham Shadow, the Rats have a wealth of untapped potential that shouldn’t be left underdeveloped.
Batman: Arkham Shadow’s Rats Deserve Another Entry to Fester in
The Rats are arguably the only enemy faction in the Arkhamverse that’s been portrayed as at least somewhat empathetic—not countingArkham Asylum guards mind-controlled by Poison Ivy’s pheromones, much less the Dollotrons who are mere victims of involuntary surgery at the hands of Professor Pyg.
Not all Rats are well-meaning, of course, but their goals are intended from a place of being downtrodden and perceived as lesser in society—a perception Bruce himself grapples with inBatman: Arkham Shadowas he assumes the guise of a criminal to infiltrate Blackgate and locate the Rat King.Arkhamgame lackeys have toiled beneath super-criminals for far less, seeking purely to leech the power they possess or exploit Gotham’s perpetual state of chaos for personal greed. Rather, despite some of them being as hilarious as previous henchmen in the franchise, the Rats deliberately pinpoint Gotham’s marginalized and poor communities and it’s difficult to color them wholesale with the same broad paint strokes as a result.
The Rats put into perspective precisely how morally or ethically malleable other characters and groups are—most of all theGCPD as Police Commissioner Jim Gordon and District Attorney Harvey Dentdesperately hunt the Rat King, and another story with them as an enemy faction could continue to illustrate and explore these fascinating grey areas. This is punctuated early on inBatman: Arkham Shadowvia Officer Pettit nearly gunning down a Rat in a fit of blind rage as well as Dick Grayson of all characters being a Rat (notably, the latter of which hasn’t been outright confirmed yet).
Dick Grayson’s Cryptic Debut as a Rat is Brilliant in Batman: Arkham Shadow
Batman: Arkham Shadow’s projector room Rat, whom game director Ryan Payton is remaining purposefully tight-lipped about for now, will reportedly be receiving a more satisfying closure within additional content brought to the game at some point in early 2025. That said, this Rat, who wears a Haly’s Circus jacket, wields fractured chair legs as improvisational wooden batons, and is a skilled enough fighter to be able to evade some of Batman’s strikes, being anyone other than Dick Grayson would be surprising.
It’ll be enticing to see how this throughline is more explicitly continued inBatman: Arkham Shadow, but all the context clues and brickwork the narrative has already laid out, including Bruce Wayne following up on him through Dr. Leslie Thompkins, could be enough of a precursor to Dick becoming a ward of Bruce andsoon taking up the mantle of Robin. The fact that he’d begin his story as a Rat, however, is profound as it shows that he fell into the Rats’ plight while becoming close to Boone Carver’s Shrike as a fellow Youth Crisis Center resident and will inevitably repeat that process of belonging when adopting Batman’s plight.
Batman: Arkham Shadow Only Teases How Great the Ratcatcher Could Be
If the Rats never return in afutureArkhamgameit wouldn’t be odd. The Rats are devotees in need of a king to guide their efforts and actions, after all, as seen with their willing servitude in Blackgate when they knock out Bolton and rescue Malone from the gas chamber. Indeed, the Rats could be reprised and simply hold onto the belief that Malone is in hiding, but a new and more tangible king would be more fulfilling.
If anyone was able to adopt the Rats as his own with absolutely no question as to his authority or authenticity in the matter, it’sOtis Flannegan’s Ratcatcher. Otis plays a relatively small role inBatman: Arkham Shadowcompared to how prominent he was in pre-release marketing materials and that’s a shame.
It makes sense that the Ratcatcher would be happy to serve a Rat King and yet Otis’ unnatural control over real rodents was only talked about and never depicted. Likewise, Otis is a neutral NPC throughout the game from whom Batman fails to extract any useful information since he’s as misguided as the rest of the Rats, even if the Rats’ plight is sympathetic in nature.
It would be interesting to see Otis possibly become an actual antagonist in a sequel, ‘catching’ Rats as the Rat King did and wielding them as his militant army alongside literal rats. Either way, portraying the Ratcatcher inBatman: Arkham Shadowwith as little screen time as he has will be disappointing in the long run if he isn’t brought back for at least one more bout, regardless of if he’s nowhere to be seen later on during the events ofRocksteady’sArkhamtrilogy.
