The Dark Knight Rises: will Blake be the new Batman?

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Given that we've been watching trailers and preview footage for The Dark Knight Rises since at least December, you'd think Christopher Nolan would have run out of new material by now. Not so: with under a fortnight left until we find out what's in store for Batman and Bruce Wayne, fresh footage is still turning up on the internet. This week alone we've seen a new TV spot, and the preview footage shown during the MTV Movie awards a while back also found its way on to the web.

The former gives us a closer look at an encounter between Wayne and his old buddy Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), now firmly entrenched as the saga's equivalent of Q. The latter segues through a number of flashpoints from the film, most of which we've seen before, with the footage bookended by a chat between Anne Hathaway's sly and slinky Catwoman and Joseph Gordon-Levitt's youthful police officer, John Blake.

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Also released this week is a new viral in the form of Blake's Gotham PD performance review, which suggests a scrupulously honest and ethical police officer with excellent physical attributes who is nevertheless a bit of a loner. Does that remind you of anyone?

Conspiracy theorists have been keen to posit the idea that Blake might take over Batman's cowl at the end of The Dark Knight Rises (some even thought he might be playing Robin). Up until now, it has seemed to be a pretty preposterous notion, largely because this is Nolan we are talking about and the British film-maker has never seemed remotely interested in making life easier for Warner Bros by offering a convenient route into future Batman films. Nevertheless, as the movie's release approaches, we seem to be seeing more and more of Blake, and I've begun to ask myself why.

For a start, unless Nolan simply wanted to shoehorn Gordon-Levitt into the movie after noting his excellent work in Inception (and why not?) the character seems completely superfluous to requirements. If he is little more than a junior Commissioner Gordon, why not give his lines to Gary Oldman, especially when the latter was one of the standout performers of the previous two films? The director must have a very good reason for creating a role that doesn't stem from the comic books.

Secondly, and you'll have heard this one before, the film is titled The Dark Knight Rises. This may, of course, refer to the return of Batman after eight years in retirement to face down the threat of villain Bane. But might it also hint at the arrival of a new caped crusader? We know that in the comic books, Bane breaks Batman's back, and there is precedent in a separate series for someone other than Wayne taking on the role of Gotham's saviour. In 2008's Batman RIP, former Robin Dick Grayson briefly wore the cowl after his one-time mentor appeared to have been killed.

It would be a bold and audacious decision for Nolan to kill off Wayne, but while installing Gordon-Levitt as the Dark Knight might be criticised as a commercially driven move, it would actually make a certain sort of sense. At some point in the future, Warner Bros is inevitably going to make another Batman movie, apparently without Nolan and almost certainly without Christian Bale. Making it about another Batman, with a new actor in the role and a fresh narrative arc to follow, actually has a real sense of neatness to it. Nolan's trilogy could be smartly tied up without audiences being required to sit through yet another big screen Batman origins story – the third in less than three decades. We've already seen how badly Warner Bros has struggled to follow the original Superman series of films without effectively remaking 1978's Superman. Might Nolan, who is involved in next year's Man of Steel in a "godfather" role, have pondered giving another film-maker an easy way to continue the series after all?

It's all speculation, of course, but not necessarily of the idle variety. Consider the way The Dark Knight Rises was described at the MTV Movie awards last month. "Mankind needs heroes," said Oldman while introducing preview footage. "But sometimes the legend of the hero is even more important than the hero himself." Gordon-Levitt added: "Even though that legend will resonate forever, this summer the story comes to an end …" Am I the only one who's tempted to read what appear to be rather murky proclamations as indications that Nolan's film might just be about Batman's death and subsequent resurrection?

Here's the film's official synopsis, also released this week …

"It has been eight years since Batman vanished into the night, turning, in that instant, from hero to fugitive. Assuming the blame for the death of DA Harvey Dent, the Dark Knight sacrificed everything for what he and Commissioner Gordon both hoped was the greater good. For a time the lie worked, as criminal activity in Gotham City was crushed under the weight of the anti-crime Dent Act. But everything will change with the arrival of a cunning cat burglar with a mysterious agenda. Far more dangerous, however, is the emergence of Bane, a masked terrorist whose ruthless plans for Gotham drive Bruce out of his self-imposed exile. But even if he dons the cape and cowl again, Batman may be no match for Bane."

Join the dots. It might just be another example of Nolan's fondness for smoke and mirrors. Then again, that Gordon-Levitt character – he's looking quite beefy these days, isn't he?