Con O’Neill has become a fan favorite for his work on Our Flag Means Death but before we met Izzy Hands (literally a few days before), we met Chief Mackenzie Bock in The Batman. O’Neill joined the world of Gotham in the Matt Reeves film and now fans want to know if we’ll see Bock in The Penguin when it hits Max.
Chief Mackenzie Bock is the chief of detectives and is famously at the funeral that Bruce Wayne attends in The Batman. But with many characters in Reeves’ world, we don’t know when we’ll see them again as he expands the story with spinoff shows and the upcoming sequel to The Batman that is set to be released in 2025. According to O’Neill though, we will get more of Bock in Gotham, and he’s excited to continue in that world.
ComicBook.com‘s Jamie Jirak asked O’Neill about Bock and whether we’ll see him again in the expansion of Reeves’ world. He said that we will see the character soon … ish. “You’ll see Bock in one form or another,” O’Neill teased. “Soon-ish,” he added. “That’s all I’m allowed to say, really.”
O’Neill went on to talk about his love of Batman with ComicBook, saying, “But yeah, listen, do you know what? I loved The Batman. I’m a Batman guy, always have been. Batman, Spider-Man, they were my things when I was growing up. I thought Matt wrote a beautiful script to a great movie, and I thought Rob smashed it out of the f*cking park. So I would absolutely be delighted to go back and do some more. I’m really proud of the movie, and I think they’ve really landed on something special with this version of Batman.”
We love to see nerds thrive
Con O’Neill mentioning both Batman and Spider-Man weirdly does mean a lot to me as someone who loved both those comics growing up. If it wasn’t stories about Peter Parker struggling with what it meant to be a hero in the midst of his own life and personal downfalls, it was Bruce Wayne dealing with the duality of his persona of a playboy vs. the life of the Dark Knight.
What I loved so much about Reeves’ take on Gotham was that it understood what was so appealing about Batman as a character. He’s a detective first and foremost and one that often pokes at the police for being less than stellar at their jobs. The one who trusts him is Gordon (played in the Reeves-verse by Jeffrey Wright), and it’s a meaty storyline to unpack.
For an actor like O’Neill, it makes sense why he would not only want to return to Bock as a character but also be someone who goes out of look for work in stories that he enjoys, like he did with Izzy Hands in Our Flag Means Death. Getting to see him back as Bock though? That’s going to be a different vibe for fans of his piracy and that will be fun to watch.
(featured image: Warner Bros.)
