What Happened To The Joker After The Dark Knight?

Among the new characters Bruce Wayne-Batman encounters in “The Dark Knight Rises” are cat burglar Selina Kyle, AKA Catwoman (Anne Hathway), and the back-breaking strongman Bane (Tom Hardy), who serves as the film’s chief nemesis. “The Dark Knight Rises” also includes callbacks to two “Batman Begins” bad guys — Dr. Jonathan Crane-Scarecrow (Cillian Murphy) and Ra’s ah Ghul (Liam Neeson) — and introduces the latter villain’s daughter, Talia al Ghul (Marion Cotillard), to the fold. Essentially, every major villain that appeared in “The Dark Knight” trilogy appears in the film, with the exception of Heath Ledger’s Joker.

But while Nolan purposefully omitted the Joker in the movie, the official novelization of “The Dark Knight Rises” did, however, include a brief mention of the character and where he possibly is. Displaying a scan of a passage from the novelization, MTV (via Comics Alliance ), the story explains that Blackgate Prison, located on a small island in Gotham Harbor, was now the location of the city’s maximum-security penitentiary — and its inmates were transferred there from Arkham Asylum. “The worst of the worst were sent here, except for the Joker, who, rumor had it, was locked away as Arkham’s sole remaining inmate,” the passage in the novelization read. “Or perhaps he had escaped. Nobody was really sure. Not even Selina.”

In the film, of course, one of Bane’s biggest actions was the liberation of all of Blackgate’s inmates — including Selina — with no indication whatsoever that the Joker was ever among them or that he was left behind at Arkham. So, barring the discovery of some old script notes from “The Dark Knight” or excised material from “The Dark Knight Rises” that gives fans further clues about his location, the exact whereabouts of the Joker after “The Dark Knight” will only exist in the ether.