There are plenty of violent casualties throughout Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, but who, exactly, are the five people that Two-Face supposedly kills within the film? Following up the aforementioned director’s smash-hit Batman origin story that was released three years prior, the 2008 DC superhero flick sees Christian Bale return as Gotham’s billionaire vigilante. He and a handful of other faces remain the same in their roles for the second Nolan-overseen entry, but other infamous characters make their debut within the project. Of course, Heath Ledger’s legendary portrayal of the Joker is one of those memorable roles; another is Harvey Dent (aka Two-Face), played by Aaron Eckhart.
The Joker is The Dark Knight’s main villain, picking up the metaphorical baton for wreaking havoc on Gotham after Batman’s previous triumph over R’as al Ghul. As Alfred astutely points out in an early moment of foreshadowing within the piece, “Some men just want to watch the world burn.” The Joker embodies this difficult-to-psychologically-map criminal profile, amplifying the city’s palpable desperation, rage-riddled tension, and tendency toward violence. Two-Face, on the other hand, is driven by very different motives when he crosses over into villain territory. In the wake of losing the love of his life, Rachel, as well as half of his face to excruciatingly painful disfigurement, the city’s former “beacon of hope” and District Attorney is out for blood.
After Batman kills him to save Commissioner Gordon’s (Gary Oldman) family in The Dark Knight’s ending, the former two characters famously discuss why the good Harvey Dent did as DA needs to win out in the public eye, with Gotham never knowing that he was responsible for the five deaths he racked up. Batman takes the initial fall to preserve a semblance of hope within the city, despite, as Gordon himself points out during the brief discussion, killing five people—with two of them having been police officers. But Two-Face’s alleged body count doesn’t seem to make sense. As many fans have noticed over the years, the numbers don’t seem to add up. The hero-turned-villain goes on a rather short vengeance rampage after the Joker’s sadistic tricks kill Rachel and take half of his heavily symbolic face, and he didn’t do too much damage before his death.
Among the extensive online chatter about this, one fan (via Movies & TV Stack Exchange) provided what seems to be a solid list of Two-Face’s five believed Dark Knight casualties. They assert that the two law enforcement victims are Michael Wuertz (who the villain previously shot in a bar) and Anna Ramirez. Both minor characters had parts – whether unknowingly or not – in setting Two-Face and Rachel up to possibly die, and the latter was forced to coax Gordon’s family out into the open by the aforementioned criminal toward the movie’s end. In addition, they posit that the others Gordon is referring to are Two-Face himself, mobster Sal Maroni—who “(presumably) dies in the car crash Harvey causes“—as well as Maroni’s driver.
This Dark Knight fan theory seems to be the most sensible answer to the questions many viewers have had in response to Gordon’s confusing line. Granted, there are still a lot of assumptions being made. By this logic, Two-Face himself is being counted as a casualty of his own nihilistic vengeance quest, Maroni and his driver are being assumed dead after the villain caused their car crash, which isn’t confirmed on-screen, and the audience has to assume that Gordon’s character believes Ramirez is dead after her run-in with Two-Face—though she’s actually shown to have been spared. But, in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, a great deal is left up to assumption. After all, even with each installment clocking in at around two and a half hours, there’s a great deal of DC storytelling thoughtfully embedded within each entry.
Key Release Dates
The Batman
Release Date:2022-03-04
