A Major Character Will Reportedly Be Bisexual In The Batman
Time to fire up the old DC rumor mill once again.
Those gossip hounds at We Got This Covered are citing their ever-mysterious anonymous sources in reporting that a major character in writer-director Matt Reeves' upcoming The Batman will be depicted as bisexual. That character: Selina Kyle/Catwoman, who will be played by Zoë Kravitz.
It's worth noting that, although this rumor is hot off the press, production on The Batman has been in a holding pattern for quite some time due to the coronavirus outbreak. It's still unknown at what point shooting will resume, so what we're saying here is that if WGTC's sources are giving us accurate information, they didn't get it from the film's set.
If indeed the plan is to depict Catwoman as bisexual, though, it would be yet another in a recent series of small victories for diversity in superhero films. While LGBTQ characters are still pretty few and far between in the genre, 2017's Thor: Ragnarok gave us Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), who has been confirmed by Marvel head honcho Kevin Feige to be bisexual. It's been speculated that the character's sexuality just might come into play in a significant way in the upcoming Thor: Love and Thunder, as Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) will be returning to claim the mantle of the Mighty Thor — and possibly to become involved in a super-powered love triangle.
Feige has also confirmed that the character of Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry) in the upcoming Eternals will be a happily married gay man with a family, and that the flick will feature the Marvel Cinematic Universe's first onscreen same-sex kiss (via IndieWire). While Marvel has continued to try to make inroads toward representation, however, the rival DC Extended Universe hasn't really tried to keep up — until now, if the rumor is to be believed.
Is there precedent for Selina Kyle being bisexual in the comics?
It's important to note that, if the rumor is true, then it's not like Reeves simply drew straws in order to determine which character to make LGBTQ. While Catwoman hasn't always been depicted as bisexual in the comics (she was, after all, created in the 1940s, when such a thing would have been positively scandalous), she has been in recent years, and her sexuality has been canon for about five years.
Even for several years before that, it had been strongly implied that Kyle was attracted to both sexes, but it was confirmed in 2015 by writer Genevieve Valentine, who was scripting the solo Catwoman series at the time. A then-recent storyline had seen Kyle pass on her costume and mantle to successor Eiko Hasigawa, and by way of explaining a panel which showed the two women kissing, Valentine made Kyle's sexuality official in a blog post.
"When I was first plotting out what I expected to be a six-issue arc, there were a few emotional beats I considered indispensable ... And one was establishing Selina as canon bisexual," she wrote. "She's flirted around it — often quite literally — for years now; for me, this wasn't a revelation so much as a confirmation."
Of course, Catwoman has also been depicted early and often as having various degrees of romantic interest in the Bat, himself, and in the years since Valentine's run was published, her sexuality has not been a primary focus of any of her storylines. The fact remains, however, that, in the pages of DC comics, Kyle is indeed bisexual, so porting that aspect of her characterization over to the screen wouldn't be much of a stretch.
Could there be any truth to the rumor about Selina Kyle in The Batman?
Having said that, it's always best to consider the source of rumors such as these — and, in this case, it's not a super-reliable one. WGTC has been known to sling inaccurate info quite often in the past, and as we previously mentioned, there's no active production from which any of the site's alleged sources could be picking up hot tips at the moment.
It's also worth noting that, ordinarily, the more veracity there is to a rumor concerning a major Hollywood film, the more media outlets will jump on it. In this case, the number of other outlets that have picked up this rumor is exactly zero. Considering Kyle's now-canon sexuality in the comics, it's just as likely that one of those mysterious sources pulled this rumor out of their rear end as it is that the info was actually reported by someone with knowledge of the production.
Of course, you know what they say about broken clocks and how often they're right; the notion that Kravitz's Catwoman would be depicted as bisexual in The Batman makes perfect sense to us, so it could very well end up happening even if this particular rumor is bunk. For now, though, we'll just have to wait for more character and plot details until the flick's shoot ramps up again. You can bet that we'll be keeping our finger on the pulse of the production, and we'll let you know the moment there's news to report.