Batman: Arkham Shadow Has a Burning Choice to Make Regarding Arkhamverse Canon

Highlights

• Batman: Arkham Shadow offers hope for prequel Arkham games, filling a gap in the Arkhamverse legacy.
• The Meta Quest 3-exclusive game hints at a possible new prequel chapter with Easter eggs tying it to the Arkhamverse lore.
• Camouflaj and WB must clarify Shadow’s role in the series.

Knowing that Batman: Arkham Shadow is indeed another entry into Batman’s most prolific and seminal video game adaptation gives it a lot of responsibility to shoulder. Anyone who’s witnessed the controversial events of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is aware of Batman’s death in the canon, suggesting no further present-day games could be made with the character as their lead unless other multiverse shenanigans are wrought. Batman: Arkham Shadow, on the other hand, is a Bat Signal in the night sky that gives hope to the Arkhamverse community for a continuation of the series in prequel installments.

Batman: Arkham Origins has been the black sheep of the Arkhamverse family for so long and, as a result, it never seemed plausible to believe that additional prequel games would ever follow it. Even a remaster or remake of Origins has seemingly been evaded over the decade that it’s been released, which appeared to be a death sentence for Origins or anything in that period long before Arkham Asylum takes place. Now that Batman: Arkham Shadow has been announced and defies that logic, it must confidently and explicitly address whether more Arkham games will follow it.

Batman: Arkham Shadow
can either tell a concentrated story that intentionally refuses to lay a foundation for future endeavors and sequel teases or it can lean fully into such teases if there are indeed subsequent games in the works.

Batman: Arkham Shadow Could Be a Lone Arkhamverse Chapter

The former approach would be necessary if there aren’t any plans to continue the Arkhamverse, at least not in this prequel era setting between Origins and Asylum where Shadow resides. It may seem paradoxical to assume there won’t be any more Arkham games following Shadow if Shadow itself is an Arkham game, but since it’s exclusive to Meta Quest 3 there’s nothing to suggest that Shadow is any sort of precursor for current-gen PS5, PC, or Xbox Series X Arkham games in the near future, let alone games on next-gen platforms.

If anything, this could be a sign that the only hope for the Arkhamverse continuing is in niche or peripheral projects that won’t have as wide of an audience or appeal. The Arkham brand would certainly sell regardless of how Suicide Squad has seemed to tarnish it and it’d be smart to plaster that on any Batman game WB can afford to, even if it makes no effort to really stew in the Arkhamverse or make plans to establish it further.

Batman: Arkham Shadow Could Be the Start of a New Prequel Chapter

That said, the mere existence of another Arkham-subtitled game, VR or not, suggests the latter approach. The greatest evidence that this Meta Quest 3 game serves as an enduring piece of the Arkhamverse canon is the excessive Easter eggs featured in Shadow’s cinematic trailer.

If Shadow wasn’t trying to tell a story that could take root in the Arkhamverse continuity, and that future games could extrapolate from with its lore as a foundation, it probably wouldn’t be as mindful of layering Easter eggs that cement its place in the Arkhamverse timeline. From there, a future Arkham game could behave like a direct sequel and begin a new trilogy of prequel games like the Arkhamverse community has desired since Origins.

That possible direction won’t be clear, though, unless Camouflaj and WB make it clear. It can’t beat around the bush and tease players only to have the Arkhamverse go silent again for almost a decade. Fortunately, it doesn’t seem like Rocksteady needs to be an intrinsic and involved part of the actual Arkham series anymore—not if it’s chosen to embrace its Suicide Squad, anyway—and it would be exciting to see another developer adopt the cape and cowl with whatever path is paved by Shadow.