Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Batman
The inclusion of an additional scene towards the end of Matt Reeves' The Batman would fix the broken Bruce Wayne and Alfred Pennyworth dynamic present in the film. The gritty, noir rethinking of the Batman franchise makes many bold choices in its nearly 3-hour runtime and has received praise for its performances, script, and direction. Arguably one of its boldest and most unexpected choices, The Batman's relatively inexperienced Bruce has a strained, difficult relationship with Alfred, highlighting Bruce's feelings of isolation in Gotham.
The Batman introduces a relatively young Bruce Wayne who is still figuring out how to best wear the cowl of Gotham's defender. Alfred is aware of his nocturnal activities and disapproves of them, showing a paternal concern for Bruce during their interactions. Bruce is mostly standoffish, awkward, and cold to the man who has raised him since the untimely death of his mother and father. When the Riddler attempts revenge on the Wayne family and Alfred is caught in an explosion meant for Bruce, the young vigilante realizes Alfred's meaning to him and comes to understand that his greatest fear is losing someone he cares about. They share a brief moment of understanding and commiseration for their relationship.
In their first interaction in the film, Bruce tells Alfred that he's not his father and Alfred responds that he's well aware of that fact. That there is never a moment where Bruce acknowledges that Alfred has taken over the role of his father and done so in a meaningful way weakens the theme of fatherhood found in The Batman and leaves a dangling thread where their relationship is concerned. The film approaches this in the last scene the two share when Bruce visits Alfred in the hospital and Alfred apologizes for not being the man he feels Bruce needed him to be, telling him he wasn't much of a father. Though Alfred may be right in this assertion, he was all Bruce had and Bruce seems to recognize the importance of Alfred in his life.
The theme of fathers and fatherhood permeates Reeves' The Batman. This theme plays out in Selina Kyle's (Zoe Kravitz) relationship with Falcone, the Riddler's (Paul Dano) status as a neglected orphan, Thomas Wayne's paternal care for Gotham as shown by Renewal, and Bruce's own lack of a solid father figure from the time of his father's death. After their scene in the hospital, Bruce and Alfred are never shown together again in The Batman. While this leaves somewhere for their relationship to develop in future installments, it leaves this film feeling incomplete where the two are concerned and where the theme of fatherhood is being explored. Bruce's relationship with his only father figure is left hanging and the audience is left to wonder how the two will be with one another going forward. The film doesn't even get rid of all doubts that one of its most important characters—and one of the only people who know Bruce Wayne is Batman—will survive his injuries.
A short scene could have solved these issues and tied up this dangling thread. If Bruce and Alfred had been given a single moment like their first scene together where Bruce was simply less standoffish to Alfred and the two shared a warm moment, it would have gone miles to show Bruce's growth and the singular positive portrayal of a father in the film. Something along these lines would have served the theming of the film more completely than the incarnation of the film that currently exists and helped Alfred to feel more like the important character he is clearly meant to be in The Batman.