Warning: The following contains SPOILERS for Batman: The Long Halloween, Part 2 and the graphic novel Batman: The Long Halloween.
Content Warning: This article contains descriptions of violence against women in a fictional film setting.
Batman: The Long Halloween, Part 2 fixes a major plot hole from the original graphic novel regarding the identity of the serial killer Holiday. Batman: The Long Halloween is considered one of the greatest Batman stories of all time and has inspired plot elements that were later introduced into the Gotham television series and The Dark Knight. Despite this, some readers have complained its final plot twist makes little sense; a problem the recent animated film adaptations have tried to correct.
The central mystery of The Long Halloween involved a serial killer dubbed Holiday, who targeted members of the Falcone crime family on major holidays. There were two major twists in the final chapters, with the first being that Alberto Falcone, the eldest son of Gotham City's godfather Carmine Falcone, had faked his death and gone on to murder his father's main rival, Sal Maroni. Alberto confessed to all of the Holiday murders, but the final moments of the book revealed the second twist; that the first three Holiday murders had been committed by Gilda Dent, the wife of District Attorney Harvey Dent, and he had continued her killing spree before becoming Two-Face.
Many mystery fans have criticized DC's Batman: The Long Halloween for not giving the reader a chance to solve the murders on their own, as the twin revelations Alberto Falcone was still alive and Gilda Dent was a killer were not foreshadowed at all. The idea Gilda could have committed the first three murders seemed particularly impossible, given that she was hospitalized and apparently bed-ridden for most of November and December following the bombing of the Dent home by Carmine's men on Halloween Night. It seemed unlikely, despite her claims to the contrary, that Gilda could have snuck out of her hospital room on Thanksgiving evening while her husband was asleep, shoot several mobsters to death and return undetected while still requiring treatment that kept her in the hospital an additional month. The Long Halloween film adaptation fixed this, by having Harvey be the one who was hospitalized, so it made sense when she was exposed as Holiday.
Long Halloween, Part 2 made another change that improved Gilda's motivations. In the comic, Gilda had no reason for starting her killing spree beyond hoping her husband might focus on starting a family if he no longer had to work nights building a case against Carmine Falcone. The film introduces a new subplot, in which Gilda was revealed as the college sweetheart of Carmine's son, Alberto, whom she married in secret while attending Oxford. Falcone did not approve of and had their marriage annulled after forcing a pregnant Gilda to have an abortion. This led Gilda to marry Harvey, who she felt was the man most capable of bringing down the Falcone empire.
Fans of the original graphic novel may not agree that the changes made by Batman: The Long Halloween, Part 2 improved upon the story, even if the new version gives the audience a better chance of unraveling the mystery on their own. Some might argue the change in Gilda's motivations, while making her more proactive as a villain, only shifts the reasons for her murders from one sexist cliché to another. In any case, the film does address the major plot hole posed by a bed-ridden woman somehow killing a group of hardened mobsters while they're in the middle of Thanksgiving dinner.