The Batman star Barry Keoghan has everything mapped out and ready to go for when he receives the call to return as The Joker for The Batman 2. Speaking with The New York Times, Keoghan revealed that he has already conceived of a backstory for his version of the Clown Prince of Crime, which he hopes will be something “fresh and unique” for audiences.

While this latest iteration of the iconic DC supervillain only appeared for a few moments in The Batman, a deleted scene gives us a pretty detailed look at Keoghan’s Joker. Tragically scarred, the Joker of The Batman universe already looks quite different to anything that has come before, with Keoghan hoping to continue these differences if and when he is asked to reprise the role for the sequel.

“It was intimidating, But if you stay true to yourself, that in itself is new. I know that sounds pretty lame, but I’m a big believer that if I’m myself, whatever I do is going to be completely fresh and unique. I already have a backstory that I’ve created in case it [The Batman 2] does happen — a totally fresh way of playing him.”

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Keoghan has revealed how intimidated he felt when taking on the role of the Joker. Particularly when being compared to The Dark Knight star and Oscar winner Heath Ledger. “It’s very intimidating [playing the Joker]. Heath Ledger was the best for me,” he said. “So you have a lot of people to draw from and that. But again, you bring your version to it. That’s what I do with any character I play, is no one has seen my version of it.” Certainly, giving his Joker a backstory would already differentiate his version from Ledger’s famously enigmatic take.

The Batman Director Matt Reeves Has Already Revealed Details About the Joker

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While we are unaware of what Barry Keoghan’s backstory is, The Batman director Matt Reeves has previously revealed details of his thinking behind this version of the Joker. Details that could provide some clues as to what Keoghan has in mind.

“He can never stop smiling. And it made Mike [Marino] and I think about — I was talking about The Elephant Man because I love David Lynch. And I was like, ‘Well, maybe there’s something here where it’s not something where he fell in a vat of chemicals or it’s not the [Christopher] Nolan thing where he has these scars and we don’t know where they came from,” Reeves said of the Joker before making reference to the 1928 silent film, The Man Who Laughs. “What if this is something that he’s been touched by from birth and that he has a congenital disease that refuses to let him stop smiling? And he’s had this very dark reaction to it, and he’s had to spend a life of people looking at him in a certain way and he knows how to get into your head.’”

Sadly, we may be waiting a while before delving back into Gotham City for The Batman 2, with a recent report stating that the DC sequel “will not hit theaters until 2025 at the earliest.”