haha...nice to see some spirited discussion in here already!
Hells yeah. And it's never too early to start finding hypothetical dead horses to beat on.
I would bet my life that Ramirez will not be back in the next one! She is only a minor character, and at worst will end up being charged by Gordon and the others for corruption. At best, she would fade away and lie low from all this stuff so as not to implicate herself. Either way, no one would believe anything she says regarding Dent. She has no credibility, and really has little information to go on.
Nolan will move on from these characters, like he moved on from Flass in Begins. He will introduce new characters for the third chapter.
I'm not hell-bent on including Helen Ramirez in the next movie. It just seems to me that Batman can't really be redeemed as long as he and Gordon perpetuate the cover-up surrounding Harvey Dent.
If the Wertz murder is pinned on Batman that makes him a cop killer. There's no way to live down that perception, no matter how many microwave emitters he stops, psychopaths he captures, (or riddles he solves?). The cops could tolerate a vigilante as a necessary evil, like they do in the great
Gotham Central comic series. (The "official policy" that Gordon told Dent about in
TDK is in line with this idea, too). But I can't imagine any situation where the GCPD would ever be alright with letting somebody who killed one of their own operate in the city.
As for Ramirez, I just think she's is a character who (apparently) survived
TDK and knows (at least some of) the the truth about Harvey, but isn't in on the coverup. She might serve some story purpose in revealing the truth.
What's all this Riddler talk though? Has there been some credible rumors that he will be a character in the next one, or just still speculation?
I think it's all speculation. Michael Caine and Gary Oldman might have said they think that's the route Nolan will take, but there's certainly nothing definite. I think Caine also brought up the Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Johnny Depp rumor, too.
I'm not that crazy about the Riddler idea, personally.