He needs to either die or retire as Batman and get a normal life. Just continuing to be Batman till he's a grisly old man and never having a wife or children or any normalcy... that would just be too pathetic of an ending.I disagree with this. I want this to be a finale, I just don't think you need to do that by killing the hero/having him quit. Its boring.
And I don't know where the whole "This is a curse" thing came from. He isn't Spider-Man, this wasn't something thrust upon him. He chose to become Batman, he chose to kill Harvy Dent and I think he will choose to remain as Batman.
How active he would need to be is the question. Obviously, it appears Gotham has been peaceful and Bruce Wayne wont have needed to put on the cowl for a while at the start of this film but he needed to and appears to do it grudgingly. So, again, having him quit at the end just doesn't work because he had already quit at the start of the film!
Nolan knows you don't have characters not grow/change over the course of the story. If Bruce starts off being "retired" then he isn't going to go back to being "retired" at the end of the film because that means nothing changed!
If Bane beats Batman to the near point of death, then having Batman die at the end will seem anticlimatic. I think a "death" ending is more likely than a "retirement" ending because it COULD work, but it is still a copout.

We have to blame the B89-B&R era for that.
It's no wonder they always go back to orgin stories.
