Arrow Confirms Bruce Wayne Exists In The Arrowverse
But what about Batman?
Arrow has made its biggest DC namedrop yet, with Oliver Queen confirming the existence of Bruce Wayne.
In a clip for this week's episode, Tribute, Mayor Queen is facing up to accusations that he is actually the Green Arrow, after photographic evidence surfaces to suggest as much. To make his defence, he name-checks another famous billionaire playboy, saying: "Photos can be doctored. They could've put Bruce Wayne's head on that body. Has Bruce Wayne left Gotham to hang out in Star City recently? No." You can check out the full clip below:
It's not the first time the Arrowverse shows have made references alluding to the character, as we've heard mentions of Gotham before, Rip Hunter said he'd seen "Dark Knights fall", the name 'Oracle' is taken, and the newspaper from the future on The Flash has a headline naming Wayne Tech. This is the first direct confirmation that Bruce Wayne specifically exists in this world though, and more specifically on Earth-1. And while it doesn't state he's Batman, there is an allusion in Oliver's words that he could be out there fighting crime as well.
It doesn't, however, mean we should expect the character to turn up anytime soon. While The CW shows do have two Justice League heroes, with Flash a main character and Superman having appeared on Supergirl, they have also had characters withheld by the higher-ups at Warners and DC.
We've heard references to Hal Jordan and Atlantis previously as well without payoff, and presumably this is just another (admittedly rather cool) Easter egg. Batman does exit on TV, but Gotham is in a different universe - and more pertinently, on a completely different network - so it's difficult to see it ever happening. For their part, Gotham's Twitter account had a response as to the whereabouts of Bruce: