Blah blah, blah, and blah.
I feel like the only person on the planet who doesn’t think that Selina Kyle “gets the guy” in The Dark Knight Rises, as Gloria Steinhem puts it (also, hi, Christian Bale’s stepmother, how ironic).
Do we see her and Bruce together at the end? Yes. Are they together as an item? Who knows? Bruce is giving Alfred a glimpse of what he’s long desired. Selina doesn’t notice the interaction or at least doesn’t acknowledge it.
I don’t think that Bruce can so easily give up being Batman; nor can Selina so easily give up her life of crime. She was devoted to making her own way on her own terms. She’s taken life deliberately. We know this is soundly at odds with how Batman conducts himself, in what Bruce Wayne believes.
Bruce still pines for Rachel, still harbors anger. Perhaps the anger has been satiated, even abated. It still remains. More as a motive toward justice, a righteous justice, not the pretty or the nice or even the good sort, but justice all the same.
Selina isn’t on the side of the angels. She’s on her side. She’s like the rest of us. Bruce is more altruistic. He still donned the cape and the cowl based on his suffering and need, though his worldview included protecting others from the same pain he endured.
They may be together in that moment, but I don’t see them together in the long run. I think their relationship is starker than that. They will run into each other on occasion, whether by coincidence directed by chance or engineered by their own hand, but they are not happily ever after.
Nor do I think John Blake is a direct inheritor of the mantle of Batman. I think he’s more the protector of it. He will have to grow into the position. There’s much training for him to do beyond what he learned on the streets and in the Academy. It doesn’t mean that he can’t avail himself of Wayne Enterprises’ technology to lend help wherever possible; I simply don’t see him so readily or immediately donning the suit. Not for some time.
I also think that while Batman’s mention to Gordon was acknowledgement, it was validation on Gordon’s part, not surprise at learning who Batman really is. I feel that Gordon has suspected it for some time. Gordon is no fool and this is information that he would not want to know, for virtue of respecting the man and how he’s helped Gotham and Gordon personally.
I may be reading too much into those final sequences, but that’s my interpretation of what Nolan’s shown us.
