Warning: Spoilers ahead for Knight Terrors: The Joker #2
The Joker is currently wrapped in a major mystery in the DC Universe. The Joker’s reputation is undeniable: everyone in the DCU knows who the Joker is, which is why it’s so confusing that no one knows who the real Joker is, especially as there have been two running around. But the publisher might have just spoiled the mystery with one surprising reveal.
The DC Universe has been plunged into a collective nightmare thanks to the Knight Terrors event: each hero and villain are forced to live out their worst fears by the villain Insomnia. Insomnia believes that the Nightmare Stone is trapped in one of their dreams, so as he jumps from nightmare to nightmare, everyone else has to face their worst fears. In Knight Terrors: The Joker #2 by Matthew Rosenberg, Stefano Raffaele, Romulo Fajardo Jr., and Tom Napolitano, Joker’s nightmare is the death of Batman and how boring life would be after the fact. But this nightmare reveals a lot more than just what Joker fears; it possibly solves the mystery of just who the real Joker is.
The Joker Awakes From A Nightmare
The Joker has been traveling the world, messing with other criminal organizations and generally being a pain everywhere except Gotham. After The Joker series concluded this adventure, Joker has been featured in The Joker: The Man Who Stopped Laughing, where the villain executes a man by shooting him in the back of the head and then dumping his body. But it turns out that not only did this man live, but, when he pulled the bag off his face, he looked exactly like the Joker. Since then, figuring out who the “real” Joker is has been at the heart of the upcoming conflict between the two clowns. But sharp-eyed readers might notice that DC seems to have already spoiled which one is “real.”
When Joker wakes up from his greatest fear in Knight Terrors: The Joker #2, he’s surrounded by Solomon Grundy, the Ventriloquist, and a few others. This is the exact same crew that the wounded Joker assembled in The Joker: The Man Who Stopped Laughing. The other Joker — whom everyone assumes is the real Clown Prince — only just got back to Gotham from Los Angeles and was surrounded by heavy hitters like Clayface and KGBeast. The fact that Joker’s Knight Terrors tie-in is written by Rosenberg, the same writer for The Man Who Stopped Laughing, means there’s no chance that this is a coincidence or a mistake. There’s no reason DC would decide to delve into the wounded Joker’s nightmare if he was actually an impostor.
The Real Joker Is Revealed
This Joker mystery has been going on for nearly a year now, and the explosive conclusion has yet to be seen. But despite this, it seems DC revealed its hand too early and proved without a doubt which Joker is the real one by showing which Joker’s nightmare is actually worth exploring.
Check out Knight Terrors: The Joker #2, available now from DC Comics!
