Clayface Used The Perfect Batman Hero Replacement To Set Up The Dark Knight’s Debut

Published Oct 28, 2026, 12:15 PM EDT

Zoë Miskelly is an editor and second in command for Screen Rant's Movies team, having covered the entertainment industry for almost 10 years now. Zoë's love of superheroes and all things Marvel & DC started out in childhood, and has blossomed into a career getting to talk about some of the biggest and best movies and shows of all time, having previously focused on comics while working at WhatCulture.

Warning: This article contains major spoilers for Clayface.

Clayface's Batman replacement works well for the DC Universe movie's own story while also setting things up to make the Dark Knight's debut even more fitting for the wider franchise. The body-horror-focused scare-fest of Clayface is likely to be a long way from the tone we get with the DCU's first Batman movie - at least in as far as Clayface being an R-rated film. However, this doesn't stop Matt Hagen's descent from public star to tormented monster when it comes to the film also setting up a whole lot of building blocks for other Gotham-based DCU follow-ups.

Much of this is through establishing the city and many of its major locations and factions, building connective tissue that further films and shows can capitalize on with little effort. With that said, one of the most interesting ways in which Clayface sets the stage for Gotham's later updates and the full on-screen arrival of the Dark Knight - following Creature Commandos' Batman tease - is by having another character serve as a stand-in of sorts for the brooding vigilante.

Gotham has plenty of heroes and antiheroes to call on without featuring the Caped Crusader at all, but Clayface highlights a lot of the issues that the city and its citizens face that it seems only Batman is properly equipped to deal with. This helps to justify Batman's place in Gotham and DC's wider mythos, and serves to be a stellar explanation as to why Batman needs to exist in the version of Gotham we see in the DCU timeline, since Clayface shows what happens to a more everyday person hoping to dole out justice instead.

John Borrelli Being Clayface's Batman Stand-In Sets Up The DCU's Dark Knight In Several Ways

Clayface largely hinges around characters who are all flawed in their own way. Between Matt Hagen's increasing instability and bloodthirst, and the already subpar morals of the mobsters he interacts with in the story, the DCU movie has relatively few figures you'd consider a hero in the classical sense, which is fitting for a supervillain origin story film.

With the Dark Knight entirely absent from the story, it ends up being between well-intentioned scientist Dr. Caitlyn Corr and her fiance John Borrelli - one of Gotham's seemingly very few non-corrupt police officers - to try and manage things. While Caitlyn's story focuses on her trying to help Matt, and feeling too guilty to stop his experimental treatment when it becomes clear this would now kill him, John gets the detective plotline that would usually go to Batman in this kind of story.

Though much of Borrelli's mystery-solving goes on off-screen, we do see him interrogating Markos Szabo after Clayface carries out his first murders, as they're all tied to Szabo. John also makes a point of talking to both Caitlyn and Matt himself regarding his concerns about Hagen, attempting to balance out stopping the increasing string of deaths with not devastating his fiance, who has formed an emotional attachment to Matt, and cares for his wellbeing.

With John being Clayface's central heroic detective figure, his viewpoint shows us a lot about Gotham and how both the police and mob work, as well as how the latter has corrupted the former. We also get a prime example of why being a non-corrupt cop in Gotham seems to be somewhat rare, as Borrelli's reward for all this is him being killed off-screen by Clayface in the final act of the movie, with a regular human having stood no chance against someone with the DCU Clayface's powers.

Clayface's Ending Shows Why The DCU's Gotham Needs Batman

Clayface's ending kicks off with Dr. Caitlyn Corr returning to her and John's home, only to find him there waiting to give her permission to leave him and go be with Matt Hagen, following the pair's argument about the nature of her patient-doctor relationship with the actor. When Caitlyn expresses confusion about all this, "John" reveals himself to be Clayface, and shows Corr the now-dead body of her partner.

Borrelli was a trained officer who clearly took his work seriously, but there doesn't seem to have been much even a gun could have done against Hagen given the point of his transformation he was at, wherein he's shown to heal from deep, damaging knife wounds with total ease in seconds, thanks to the genetic mutations that have taken place in his body over the course of the film.

This alone is prime justification for the DCU's Batman operating in Gotham without the movie ever even showing him, as someone of the Dark Knight's fighting caliber is needed to be able to physically handle figures like Clayface and Gotham's other powerful villainous denizens.

Perhaps even more importantly, Clayface shows that Gotham also needs the Caped Crusader because of how the city's underbelly has gained a stranglehold on the legal system. A world wherein Szabo wasn't able to bribe and strong-arm his way into winning the legal battle against Matt Hagen after he cut the actor's face to shreds is arguably a world wherein Clayface doesn't exist - and since the GCPD is also being paid off by organized crime, Batman's place in Gotham is doubly crucial here, making the DCU's impending unveiling of the character all the more important.