The following contains spoilers for Batman: Unburied, currently streaming on Spotify.
One of the most intriguing aspects of Matt Reeves' The Batman is how it brought the Dark Knight back to his detective roots. Many fans didn't feel Michael Keaton, Christian Bale and Ben Affleck fully brought this aspect of the character out, but Robert Pattinson's Bat did just that. He immersed himself in a brutal cat-and-mouse game with The Riddler, trying to save the soul of Gotham.
Luckily, while parts of the city were blown up and flooded, the Caped Crusader ended up saving the day and imprisoning the villain, learning more about heroism. While a sequel is some ways down the line, those craving a follow-up to Reeves' film will love Spotify's Batman: Unburied podcast.
Unburied has so many elements from The Batman movie, starting with the detective vibe. In this case, Winston Duke's Bat isn't chasing clues from Riddler, but a cannibalistic tyrant known as The Harvester. It's a bloody puzzle, filled with death and cryptic clues into the Wayne legacy, just like what Reeves took inspiration from -- David Fincher's Seven.
In addition to hunting someone who could easily feel like a subverted Riddler, Duke's Bat has a fractured psyche, being fed an illusionary world where his parents are alive. It's exactly how the movie's Bat would feel after being tormented by their deaths for years. Both stories play into Bruce's emotions, the dreams he never got to live in terms of family, and how his grief and trauma can be weaponized. Reeves' Catwoman realized this, and in the podcast, so does Barbara Gordon.
It's a clever strategy by the Unburied podcast, piggybacking on fans who love an "emo Bruce Wayne," a story of a shattered Wayne legacy and seeing him squirming due to villains in the shadows who play him like a puppet. This creates a vulnerable vigilante, making him a human hero in a broken Gotham -- something Riddler achieved with his terrorist plan on the big screen.
This funnels into how Bruce needs help from the darkest spots in his most desperate hour. The Batman had him seeking out Joker in a Hannibal Lecter-like relationship, hoping to get into the mind of the enemy. Unburied followed suit in the wake of the seventh and eighth chapters, painting a picture of mayhem at Arkham with the Bat finding unlikely aid in the form of Poison Ivy. It reiterates how he'll do anything to get answers, with Duke's Dark Knight crossing the line the same way Pattinson's did.
It's why Alfred got worried in The Batman, and why the podcast's Bruce is treading lightly. It ends up being a natural fit as a spiritual sequel, with a tentative Bat knowing these villains are snakes and pretenders who'll bite him at the first moment of convenience. That said, Duke's Bat has to go into the belly of the beast for answers, hoping he can still cling to the light he found when he broke out of his trance. It's akin to Pattinson's Batman not wanting to regress again but knowing that dancing with these devils is the only way to solve the mystery at hand.
The first eight episodes of Batman: Unburied are now available to stream on Spotify.