I Can’t Believe How Two-Face’s Redemption Just Gave His Silver Dollar a Genius New Purpose

Warning: Spoilers for Detective Comics #1087!

Two-Face is a complicated character. While he was first known Harvey Dent, Gotham’s handsome District Attorney, those days have long passed. For years, Two-Face has been a classic Batman villain with an obsession with silver dollars and duplicity, which serve as analogies for good versus evil. But it looks like Two-Face finally picked one side over the other in the most satisfying way possible.

As the Orghams lay claim to Gotham, Gael Tenclaw, Batman’s perfect mythological foil, has revealed his true lycanthropic self as a wolf-man. While the battle for Gotham rages in Detective Comics #1087 by Ram V, Christian Duce, and Stefano Raffaele, every member of the Bat-Family is needed to keep the peace. Even the villains, it seems.

In a twist that took me by surprise, Two-Face comes onto the scene, firing a silver bullet at Tenclaw, and gives Batman a chance to escape. Siding with Batman reveals to me that he still has his Harvey Dent side, albeit with a flair for his dark side’s love of irony — and silver.

Two-Face’s Love of Silver Finally Comes in Handy

Two-Face Shoots Silver Bullets at Tenclaw the Werewolf

Two-Face isn’t a supervillain with threatening powers. He’s a gangster with guns and a single silver dollar. This coin is different, however, because it has no tails. Both sides are heads, but one side — the dark side — is scratched out, like his own face. The love of duality and the chance of a coin-flip is so integral to Two-Face’s character that before doing any heroic (or heinous), he takes a chance by flipping his iconic coin. If the coin comes up good-side-up, he’ll be good. If not, he starts firing. For me, this random coin-flipping has always set him apart as one of my favorite villains.

Two-Face’s silver dollar isn’t just a mental tool now, because that same silver has been smelted into bullets used to shoot Gael Tenclaw, who had his sights set on Two-Face. Human as he is, Two-Face doesn’t have an inherent weakness like Tenclaw, and that’s just how he will win: historically, the only thing that can kill werewolves is silver, and Two-Face has silver in abundance. This twist is surprisingly satisfying for a Two-Face fan like me, who cheered while watching him declining to flip a two-sided coin in favor of the six-sided wheel of his revolvers.

Two-Face Still Holds to a Code of Ethics

Two-Face Promised Batman Not to Kill

For me, the line of chance separating his heroic side from his villainous side makes Two-Face a tragic villain. His mind is bifurcated, and so Dent isn’t in the same camp as villains like the Joker, who love hurting people just to hurt people. Two-Face is bound by his own code of ethics, even if those ethics are a coin-toss. In this absurd way, I think he’s closer to the Dark Knight and his own oath than many others in Gotham, and he has been long overdue for redemption.

But now, Two-Face has promised Batman not to kill, cementing the likeness of the two even further in my eyes. As Two-Face the Werewolf Slayer redeems himself from all the vile acts he’s committed as his crueler half, he does so in the most satisfying way, bringing back his obsession with silver dollars and using this obsession as a physical weapon. There is only one thing better than a redemption arc, and in Two-Face‘s case, it’s when it is earned.

Detective Comics #1087 is available now from DC Comics!