Batman: The Long Halloween Part Two (2021)

Gotham’s mob era dies, the freak era begins, and Harvey Dent has the worst career change imaginable.

Let’s start by showing y’all the trailers shall we?

Non-Spoiler Plot Overview

So Batman: The Long Halloween Part Two picks up after the first movie and this is where everything starts falling apart. Part One was the setup. It was the slow-burn mystery, the mob drama, Batman trying to figure out who Holiday is, Harvey Dent trying to clean up Gotham legally, and Jim Gordon trying to keep the whole city from collapsing like a wet cardboard box.

Part Two is where Gotham basically says, “Oh, you thought Part One was bad? Cute.”

The Holiday killer is still out there, the Falcone crime family is still losing control, Batman is still trying to solve the case, and Harvey Dent is getting closer and closer to becoming the thing we all know he’s going to become. That’s the tragedy of Harvey Dent. You go into these stories already knowing the ending, but a good version makes you care anyway.

And I think this movie does that.

This movie is darker, more chaotic, and more comic-booky than Part One. Part One was more mob crime mystery. Part Two starts bringing in more of Batman’s rogues gallery, and you can really feel Gotham changing from a city controlled by mob bosses into the full-on freak show Batman is known for dealing with.

And honestly, that’s one of the best things about this story. It’s not just about a killer. It’s about Gotham changing forever.

Character Rundown

Batman / Bruce Wayne (Jensen Ackles) is still solid here. I actually like that this version of Batman isn’t perfect. He’s trying, but he’s behind. He’s investigating, but Holiday keeps slipping through. He’s fighting criminals, but Gotham keeps producing worse ones. This is not Batman at his most untouchable. This is Batman still learning that Gotham is not just a city with crime. Gotham is a machine that eats people and spits out monsters.

Jensen Ackles works well as Batman. Again, it’s still funny to me that he went from voicing Red Hood to voicing Batman. Dean Winchester really said, “I’ve been the angry son, now I am the emotionally unavailable father.” Good for him.

Harvey Dent (Josh Duhamel) is really the heart of this movie. This is the movie where his entire life goes straight into the trash compactor. He starts as this man trying to use the law to bring justice to Gotham, but the law keeps failing him. The mob is too powerful, the system is too corrupt, and Gotham keeps proving that doing things the “right way” doesn’t mean anything when the whole city is rotten.

And that’s what makes his fall work. Harvey doesn’t just become Two-Face because his face gets damaged. He becomes Two-Face because Gotham has been damaging him the whole time.

Jim Gordon (Billy Burke) is still the tired moral center of the story. He’s watching everything fall apart and trying to hold onto some kind of justice. He trusts Batman, he works with Harvey, but you can feel that this partnership is not built to last forever. Gordon wants law and order. Batman works outside the law. Harvey starts inside the law and then breaks completely. So Gordon is basically stuck watching two men he trusted go in opposite directions while Gotham laughs in the background like the evil dump it is.

Catwoman / Selina Kyle (Naya Rivera) gets more interesting here too. She’s not just a flirty side character. She has a deeper connection to the Falcone storyline, and you can tell she knows more than she says. I liked her in Part One, but Part Two gives her more emotional weight. She still has that Catwoman mystery, but there’s more underneath it.

Carmine Falcone (Titus Welliver) remains a strong mob boss character. He feels like the last big symbol of old Gotham crime. The problem for him is that Gotham is changing, and he doesn’t fully realize how much. He’s used to money, intimidation, and mob power being enough. But now he’s dealing with Holiday, Batman, and the rise of costumed lunatics. Basically, the man built an empire, and Gotham decided to replace him with people in costumes who theme their crimes around holidays, riddles, plants, fear gas, and clown nonsense. Honestly, Gotham’s job market is insane.

The rogues gallery showing up more in this movie is also fun. Joker (Troy Baker), Poison Ivy, Scarecrow, Mad Hatter, and others appear, and while some are more important than others, I like what they represent. They represent the next era of Gotham. The mob is dying, and the supervillains are moving in. That’s the scary thing. Gotham isn’t getting better. It’s evolving into something worse.

Pacing / Episode Flow

Part Two moves faster than Part One. Part One was the slow mystery setup. Part Two is where the movie starts paying things off. There’s more action, more villains, more reveals, and more emotional destruction.

I do think this one has more going on than Part One, and depending on how you feel about that, that can either be a strength or a slight issue. Part One is more focused and restrained. Part Two is more chaotic because the story itself is becoming chaotic. Harvey is breaking. The mob is collapsing. The villains are showing up more. The Holiday mystery is reaching its final stretch.

So yeah, Part Two has a lot on its plate.

But for the most part, I think it handles it well. It feels like the escalation makes sense. It doesn’t feel like the movie randomly decided to become bigger. It feels like Gotham is naturally getting worse, which is kind of Gotham’s whole personality.

Pros

The biggest strength of this movie is Harvey Dent. His downfall is the emotional center, and it works because the movie spends enough time showing him as a man under pressure before he becomes Two-Face.

That is important because Two-Face only works if Harvey Dent matters first. If Harvey is just some guy who gets acid thrown on him and then becomes evil, who cares? But when Harvey is someone trying to do good, someone who actually believes the system can work, then his fall becomes tragic.

This movie gets that.

I also really like how this movie shows Gotham changing. The mob era is falling apart, and the supervillain era is rising. That’s a cool idea, and it makes the story feel bigger than just the Holiday case. You’re watching Gotham become the Gotham Batman is cursed to deal with forever.

The atmosphere is still strong too. The animation style works really well for this story. It has that comic-book noir vibe. It feels dark, moody, and dramatic, but not in a boring way. It fits Batman. It fits Gotham. It fits the whole tragic crime mystery tone.

The voice acting is good again. Jensen Ackles continues to work as Batman, Josh Duhamel gives Harvey enough frustration and sadness to make his arc land, and Naya Rivera gives Catwoman a nice mix of mystery and emotion.

I also like that this movie does not make Batman look like he completely wins. Because he doesn’t. Not really. He solves pieces of the mystery, he fights villains, he survives the chaos, but he still loses Harvey. He still watches Gotham slide into something worse. That makes the ending hit harder because it’s not a clean victory.

Cons

My biggest issue is that some of the villains feel a little underused. I get why they’re here, and I like what they represent, but some of them feel more like flavor than fully developed characters. They’re there to show Gotham’s future, which works thematically, but if you were expecting every villain to get a big moment, you might be disappointed.

The mystery reveal also might not work for everyone. It’s not the cleanest, simplest answer. It’s messy and layered, and I understand why some people might find that less satisfying. Some people want a mystery to end with one big obvious “it was this person” reveal, but this story is more complicated than that.

Also, because Part Two is trying to wrap up the Holiday killer mystery, Harvey’s transformation, the Falcone story, Catwoman’s connection, and the rise of the rogues gallery, it can feel packed. I don’t think it ruins the movie, but you can feel the movie juggling a lot.

Final Thoughts

Batman: The Long Halloween Part Two is a really strong conclusion to this two-part story.

Part One was the mystery setup. Part Two is the emotional collapse. This is where Gotham stops pretending it can be fixed by normal means. The mob loses control, Harvey Dent breaks, and Batman starts realizing that the city he’s trying to save is becoming something far more dangerous than he understood.

That’s what makes this movie work for me.

It’s not just a murder mystery. It’s a tragedy about a city changing for the worse. Harvey Dent wanted to be Gotham’s white knight before that phrase became forever tied to The Dark Knight. He wanted to fight crime legally. He wanted to do things the right way. And Gotham punished him for it because Gotham is basically allergic to hope.

By the end, Batman is still standing, but it doesn’t feel like a victory. It feels like he survived another disaster and now has to deal with the consequences.

And honestly, that’s very Batman.

Rating

I’d give Batman: The Long Halloween Part Two a 9/10.

I think it’s stronger than Part One because it has more payoff, more emotional weight, and Harvey Dent’s downfall really lands. It’s not perfect, and some villains could have been used more, but overall this is a really strong Batman movie and a great conclusion to the story.

Spoiler Warning

Alright y’all, spoilers ahead. If you haven’t seen Batman: The Long Halloween Part Two, stop here because I’m going to talk about Harvey Dent becoming Two-Face, the Holiday killer reveals, the ending, and everything this movie has been building toward.

You’ve been warned.

Spoilers

So Part Two really kicks the story into the next phase by showing how much worse Gotham has gotten. Holiday is still killing, the Falcone family is still being targeted, and Batman still doesn’t have the full picture.

And then there’s Harvey.

Harvey Dent is the real tragedy here. He’s been trying to take down the mob legally, but everything around him keeps proving that the system is broken. Gotham’s criminals have money, power, influence, and people willing to do their dirty work. Harvey is trying to fight them through the court system, but the court system is not built to survive Gotham.

Then the acid attack happens.

And yeah, this is where Harvey Dent fully becomes Two-Face. The physical damage is horrifying, but the real damage was already there. The acid just brings it all to the surface. His face is split, but his mind and morality were already cracking under the pressure.

That’s what I like about this version. It doesn’t make Two-Face feel like he came out of nowhere. Harvey was already angry, already frustrated, already losing faith. The attack doesn’t create the darkness. It releases it.

Once he becomes Two-Face, the coin takes over as his way of making decisions. That’s such a simple gimmick, but when done right, it’s actually tragic. Because Harvey used to believe in the law. He used to believe in choices and justice and doing what was right. Now he gives everything up to chance.

That is sad.

The Holiday killer reveal is messy, but intentionally messy. Alberto Falcone is involved, and his fake death plays into the larger conspiracy. But the movie also keeps the idea that Holiday became bigger than just one person. There are layers to it, and Harvey’s involvement makes it even more complicated.

And that’s where I understand if some people get frustrated. The mystery isn’t as clean as “one killer, one motive, one reveal.” It’s more tangled than that. But honestly, I think that fits Gotham. Nothing in Gotham is simple. Even the murder mystery has emotional baggage, mob politics, family drama, and someone flipping a coin because therapy apparently does not exist in this city.

The Falcone material also lands pretty well. Carmine Falcone is the old power of Gotham. He’s the mob boss who thought he could control everything. But by the end, he’s losing control because the city is changing. Batman isn’t just fighting gangsters anymore. He’s entering the age of supervillains.

That’s why the rogues gallery showing up matters. Joker, Scarecrow, Poison Ivy, Mad Hatter, and the others represent the next version of Gotham crime. The mob was bad, but at least the mob had rules. These villains? Not so much. They’re theatrical, unstable, dangerous, and way harder to predict.

So when the story ends, it feels like Gotham has crossed a line. The old criminals are fading, and the freaks are taking over.

And Batman is stuck with that.

The ending is strong because Batman doesn’t really get a clean win. Harvey is gone. Two-Face is born. The Holiday case leaves behind damage that can’t just be fixed. Falcone’s empire is crumbling, but something worse is rising in its place.

That’s what makes this movie good. It understands that Batman stories don’t always end with everything fixed. Sometimes Batman stops one disaster, only to realize it opened the door for ten more.

By the end, Part Two feels like the moment Gotham becomes the Gotham we know. The mob world is dying, the costumed villains are rising, and Batman is realizing his mission is going to be much harder than he thought.

And honestly?

That’s a pretty great ending for a Long Halloween adaptation.

Here’s why were talking about this movie today, its because the newest Batman game titled Lego Batman Legacy Of The Dark Knight releases this month on the 22nd, heres the trailer.