Let's just get this out the way: THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS. If you don't want "The Dark Knight Rises" ruined for you, stop reading and click somewhere else. Seriously, we're not responsible for anything that happens beyond this point.
Okay, as you know, the plot of "The Dark Knight Rises" continues to be closely guarded: Despite three trailers, a prologue, a zillion TV spots and more — what the actual story will be is still pretty vague. But ever since the project was announced, rumors have been flying around fast and furious, and one of the earliest indicated that Catwoman would fight along Batman (true), that Talia al-Ghul would team up with him as well and the League Of Shadows would be featured. And it seems the latter two plot points could very well be true as well.
ComicBookMovie got their hands on the "The Dark Knight Rises: The Secret Files Scrapbook" that hit bookstores this week, and besides the handful of new images within, a few more clues about the movie can be found among the pages. In the book it's revealed that Tom Hardy's Bane is actually kicked out of the League Of Shadows for his "extreme behaviour," and that "he appears to be building an army of followers in the dark tunnels underneath Gotham in order to create his own League of Shadows." Ever since the first trailer, we had been hypothesizing that his crew of baddies would be more League Of Shadows than a random assortment of criminals, and perhaps this is the case.
Whatculture! makes a pretty good guess that if Miranda Tate is not a villain (as Marion Cotillard has insisted), perhaps this means that Talia al-Ghul/Miranda is in Gotham to help stop Bane instead. Remember, she's one of the leaders of the League Of Shadows, and may be trying to contain a rogue element. And this would also make it pretty clear that Catwoman was either also part of the League Of Shadows and/or has had an encounter with Bane, as she warns Joseph Gordon-Levitt's John Blake in the trailer: “You should be as afraid of him as I am.”
Of course, this could all just be more info that Nolan and co. are allowing us to know before the movie hits, but that said, it wouldn't be the first time plot details accidentally got out via a tie-in of some kind (and it should be noted that the general outline for "Inception" leaked pretty much a full year before the movie came out). So we'll see just how much of this is in the movie, but running at a healthy 2 hours and 45 minutes, there is a lot of story to tell, and we presume we're still barely scratching the surface.
Tickets go on sale on Monday, and we'll get all the answers when "The Dark Knight Rises" opens on July 20th.