Matt Reeves brooding noir take on The Batman felt like a gift to DC fans hoping for mayhem-stirring villains that could actually threaten Bruce Wayne’s chokehold on Gotham’s criminal underworld. A superhero flick is only as good as its villain, after all, and Reeves gave us plenty of them — from Colin Farrell’s comically small-time gangster to John Turturro’s sharply-dressed mob boss to Paul Dano’s deranged-yet-brilliant Riddler. Still, the baddie everyone seemed to be talking about when the credits rolled was a guy who only commanded a few seconds of screen time, a character uncredited and unnamed until well after the film’s wide release.

And why? Because he was played by Barry Keoghan.

Pulling focus is something Keoghan has perfected on screen, despite a surprisingly short IMDb credits page. He does it with ease, whether he’s playing an innocent, wide-eyed English bloke hoping to help the cause on Christopher Nolan’s wartime epic, Dunkirk, or as an aloof, mind-melding immortal in Marvel’s Eternals. But Keoghan’s most magnetic turns have been his darker ones — violent thugs, Shakespearean scavengers, pasta-slopping teenagers hell-bent on revenge, and, yes, the clown prince of crime in Reeves’ latest comic book masterpiece.

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Image via Marvel Studios

If you were to craft a timeline of Keoghan’s villainous evolution onscreen, the starting point would likely be his small-yet-controversial role on the Irish mobster series, Love/Hate. Fearless and possessing unbridled energy in one of his first major roles, Keoghan’s Wayne quickly became infamous. (Murdering an innocent kitten on TV has consequences.) A baby-faced assassin who lacked any semblance of a moral compass, Wayne’s idea of a good time seemed to be terrorizing audiences by indulging in his most sociopathic urges. Keoghan lasted just one season, but it’s a testament to his acting prowess that his character earned the show its largest number of complaints.

RELATED: From 'The Green Knight' to 'Eternals': Best Barry Keoghan Films, Ranked

Perhaps the cat-killing is something director Yorgos Lanthimos appreciated because it was his Greek mythos-inspired The Killing of a Sacred Deer that gave Keoghan the freedom to act out one of the most sinister revenge stories we’ve seen on screen. As Martin, Keoghan gives the kind of dead-eyed, emotionless line readings you’d expect from a Lanthimos thriller, but the director’s signature narrative style only makes his character’s indifferent quest for vengeance that much more bone-chilling. Martin strikes up a friendship with Colin Farrell’s Steven, a cardiovascular surgeon married to Nicole Kidman’s Anna. Theirs is a kind of sterile domestic bliss, one Martin intrudes on in increasingly uncomfortable ways. Eventually, the reason for his persistence in pursuing Steven comes to light — a botched surgery that ended in his own father’s untimely death was the direct result of Steven’s secret struggle with alcoholism. He seeks to even the scales so to speak, which is when Steven’s children, first his young son then his teenage daughter, succumb to a mysterious illness that causes paralysis, a loss of appetite, bleeding from the eyes, and, eventually, death. Steven can put an end to his family’s suffering by picking which child lives and which dies.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer

It’s an unsettling, darkly-comedic Sophie’s Choice, but it’s Keoghan’s almost child-like mannerisms and deadpan performance that churns your insides, sparking a suffocating sense of dread that doesn’t let up until the credits roll. He’s apathetic about his fatal proposition, detached from the chaos he’s sowing in the lives of these complete strangers. In the film’s most haunting scene, Keoghan sits across from Kidman’s Anna. She’s come to beg for her children’s lives, to literally kiss his feet in exchange for mercy. Martin has none, a fact that becomes painfully evident as he shovels cold spaghetti in his mouth, wearing only a pair of boxers. It’s obscene, the amount of pasta this kid eats as he dispassionately tells Anna that her family’s impending demise is more a cosmic balancing act than any personal vendetta.

“I don’t know if what’s happening is fair,” he admits. “But it’s the only thing I can think of that’s close to justice.”

“Justice.” It’s that vague understanding of the word that propels Martin to destroy Steven’s entire existence, but it’s the teen’s pragmatic approach to getting it that’s both horrific and yet, oddly, sympathetic. It’s almost as if Keoghan is challenging the audience to answer, “Then what would you suggest?” How does a fatherless child make sense of a needless death? How does he reckon with the truth that, for the privileged few, consequences rarely exist? How does he find his own comeuppance in a world where his adversary ranks significantly higher on the social food chain? It’s an uncomfortable question but, then again, Keoghan seems to have an affinity for making moviegoers uncomfortable. He does it time and again, playing a vicious criminal tempting his mate to cross proverbial lines in Calm With Horses and an out-of-his-league art thief in American Animals.

In David Lowery's eerie fantasy retelling of an Arthurian legend, The Green Knight, Keoghan inhabits just a few scenes, and yet, his presence lingers with Dev Patel’s doomed knight for far longer. Cosplaying as some kind of deranged Lost Boy, the Scavenger picks Gawain’s bones clean, robbing him of his belongings, his dignity, and his quest with a boyish sense of glee that straddles the fine line between comedy and horror. He’s the last person you’d want to meet on a solo trek to fulfill your destiny, wreaking havoc on the film’s narrative momentum while reminding audiences of the inherent savagery of the time period and the unhinged violence that lurks around every corner.

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Image via A24 Films

Keoghan has gotten so good at playing the bad guy that, even when he’s not the villain of our stories, we expect him to be. It’s what happened with his role in Marvel’s Eternals. As Druig, Keoghan was distant, tortured, and frustrated with his prescribed role as humanity’s immortal watchdog.

His reasons for eschewing his responsibilities and retreating to a life of solitude become clear (and eventually one fans empathize with) as the film progresses. But, if you were to judge the film solely on its trailer, Keoghan is who you’d peg as the antagonist. Is that because he wears the hell out of a black motor jacket and sports the kind of cheeky, self-satisfied smirk that causes Richard Madden to want to punch him on sight? Maybe, but we’d also like to think it's because he’s earned that formidable on-screen reputation. And it's something he trades on with his interpretation of The Joker in Reeves’ Batman flick.

Keoghan might not get the chance to fully flesh out his version of the character on screen, but then again, we don’t need him to. The Joker’s been done to exhaustion, and it’s doubtful anyone can top Heath Ledger’s turn as the chaos-loving anarchist. All Keoghan really needed to do was give us a glimpse of just how evil the cadre of criminals Robert Pattinson’s cowl costumed vigilante can be. A demented laugh, a nonsensical riddle, and a threat of the fight to come — that’s what’s asked of Keoghan, and he delivers in his trademarked style. (Is it trademarked yet? It should be.) He’s menacing and vengeful and a bit broken, but he still wants to sow discord and pandemonium in others, so he encourages Dano’s Riddler to tap into that same darkness — before the screen fades to black.

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Image via TIFF

Keoghan is an actor who’s been deliberate when it comes to his filmography. It’s clear from his work on prestige dramas like HBO’s Chernobyl to indie character studies like Mammal and Light Thereafter that he doesn’t want to be boxed in the way so many other talents of his generation often are. Still, while we’d never want to contribute to typecasting him as a bad guy (on-screen) we’d also like to celebrate the kind of scheming, nefarious qualities he brings to some of his most iconic roles. There’s unbridled energy and recklessness to him that feeds some of his most exciting turns as the villain in our stories – and yet, he’s often able to mask those turns by convincing us to root for the outcasts, criminals, and comic book baddies he plays … right before he pulls the rug out from under us.

In a short amount of time, Barry Keoghan has mastered the art of the slow-burn villain. The Batmans and Bruce Waynes of the world should be scared.