Batwoman has been giving us a fuller portrait of the Arrowverse’s Batman mythos as it goes along, with each episode offering new details that help fill in what we know about Earth-1’s Gotham City and its history. The pilot episode, for example, revealed that Kate Kane’s origins were directly related to a battle between Batman and the Joker. The Clown Prince of Crime got another mention in the latest episode, too, which even went so far as to confirm his real identity.
“I’ll Be Judge, I’ll Be Jury” saw Kate investigating the death of celebrated Assistant District Attorney Angus Stanton. The news report which first revealed the murder to our heroine briefly covered some of Stanton’s standout work cleaning up the city’s streets. In particular, the reporter recollected how he went after “some of the city’s most notorious criminals, such as Jack Napier, otherwise known as The Joker.”
So, there you go, the Arrowverse’s Joker officially has a real name and it’s Jack Napier. Batman fans will be familiar with the name, too, as it’s what Jack Nicholson’s version in Tim Burton’s 1989 movie goes by before he falls into a vat of acid and becomes a supervillain. Typically, the Joker’s real name is not known, but when a Batman story wants to give him one, then it’s nearly always Jack Napier. Unless we’re talking about Joker, of course, where he’s christened Arthur Fleck.
This connection between the Arrowverse and the universe of 1989’s Batman could be a deliberate tease though for an even bigger one to come in “Crisis on Infinite Earths.” Robert Wuhl will be reprising his role as Alexander Knox from the film in the crossover, while a prop newspaper will also feature, revealing that Michael Keaton’s Bruce Wayne is engaged to Michelle Pfeiffer’s Selina Kyle. So, both worlds clearly take place in the same multiverse and presumably, then, we can dub the Burtonverse Earth-89.