Robin has always been an integral part of the Batman mythos since first appearing in 1940, but he’s never been a requirement. There are a number of all-time great Dark Knight stories that don’t even feature the Boy Wonder at all, and he’s been a notable absentee from the big screen since Chris O’Donnell last played the character in Batman & Robin.
There were a couple of hints towards Dick Grayson in the two decades since, although Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s John Blake revealing that his legal forename was Robin in The Dark Knight Rises before visiting the Batcave drew more than a few eye-rolls. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, meanwhile, looked to have established that the Joker had murdered Batman’s trusted sidekick before the events of the movie, meaning that we’d likely never see him suited and booted for action.
That was just one of the many visual clues in the film that were never mentioned again, but with the Snyder Cut of Justice League finally paying off the Flash’s unexplained cameo in Batman v Superman, Zack Snyder has now confirmed that his plan was always to incorporate the death of Robin into the dynamic between Ben Affleck’s Caped Crusader and Jared Leto’s Joker.
“I’d always wanted to explore the death of Robin. And if there ever was going to be a next movie, which, of course, there probably won’t be, I wanted to do a thing where in flashbacks we learn how Robin died, how Joker killed him and burned down Wayne Manor, and that whole thing that happened between he and Bruce.”
Typical for the early years of the DCEU, all of the pieces were laid out well in advance, but the franchise changed direction before they could be picked up. The story behind the burnt out shell of Wayne Manor and the defaced Robin costume wound up getting sidelined when both Affleck and Leto disappeared from their respective roles for several years, but perhaps the inevitable success of the Snyder Cut could see Warner Bros. finally bring the backstory teased in Batman v Superman to life.