The cancelation of Batgirl and the rumored cutting of an Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom cameo seems to have suggested that Michael Keaton’s return as Batman in the DCU may be over before it really starts. While there were reportedly plans for Keaton to get his own new legacy Batman movie following appearances in The Flash and other projects, when the old DCU began to fall apart, many of these plans fell by the wayside. Now however, James Gunn and Peter Safran have given a glimmer of hope that Keaton could have a future as Batman on screen after all.

While revealing the huge slate of upcoming DC projects, which includes a brand new iteration of Batman, the joint heads of DC Studios gave fans just a small hint that the return of Michael Keaton’s Batman in a larger capacity may still be on the cards, just not as an immediate priority. In response to Keaton’s future, Safran and Gunn said:

SAFRAN – “There’s always possibilities. We are a multiverse still.”
GUNN – “But the main thing that we’re focusing on right now is creating the universe that people put their feet into. And then out of that, if we want to have Multiverse Tales, which I actually know one of the things we’re working on does have a Multiverse Tale, is we’ll have that in there.”

Related: What the Cancellation of Batgirl Means for Michael Keaton’s Return as Batman

Is Michael Keaton’s Batman Return a Good Thing For The DC Franchise, or Just a Gimmick?

The choice of who plays Batman on screen has been a subject every bit as likely to cause an argument about who plays James Bond, or the Doctor in Doctor Who. With Michael Keaton being the first to play the Caped Crusader on the big screen, many fans hold him in a special place among those who have donned the cowl.

The question is can Keaton’s Batman fit into the current DCU, or is he best left in the past? While it does seem that his appearance in The Flash will now not lead to a long-term role in the interconnected DCU, he may be back in his own standalone project further down the line. How all that turns out will largely depend on how successful the initial plans of Gunn and Safran are in their execution, and whether fans will stick with the new DC regime long enough to see it happen.

For now, Keaton will certainly be a big part of The Flash and that will be enough for fans to start with. As the movie is now known to reset the entire DC Universe, and potentially set up other universes that could be revisited in their own stories later, the final movies of the old DCU plan suddenly have a little more importance than they originally appeared to. With much of Gunn and Safran’s slate not hitting cinemas until 2025, this year’s movies will be the last major DC projects fans get for a little while. Maybe there is nothing else to do than embrace them as the end of an era, and prepare for what comes next.