It’s long since become a piece of Hollywood legend that Billy Dee Williams only agreed to play Harvey Dent in Tim Burton’s Batman because he wanted to sink his teeth into the role of Two-Face in a future sequel. That was initially the plan, with the Gotham City District Attorney set to venture towards the dark side following an accident that left him permanently disfigured, but it wasn’t to be.
Williams only signed a one-picture deal, and was left out of Batman Returns entirely after Burton decided that he wanted to differentiate his sequel as much as possible from the first installment, which is why only a handful of principal characters from the opener were brought back.
If that wasn’t enough of a kick in the teeth, once Joel Schumacher took over behind the camera for Batman Forever, he dropped Williams in favor of Tommy Lee Jones. Star Wars‘ Lando Calrissian has voiced his disappointment on countless occasions in the decades since, but he wasn’t paid off to give up the role as had been widely rumored.
That being said, the new Batman ’89 comic book run from DC that takes place in the same universe as Burton’s duology has finally given the people what they want and turned Williams’ Dent into his nefarious alter ego, which you can see below.
The first issue arrives on August 10th, ironically at the same time Michael Keaton is suiting back up as the Dark Knight for the first time in 30 years as part of multiversal DCEU blockbuster The Flash, with Batman ’89 taking place directly after the events of Returns, and Michelle Pfeiffer’s icon version of Catwoman has also been confirmed for an appearance.