Plot summary: Decades from now Terry ‘Batman’ McGinnis demands answers from Amanda Waller after making a life-altering discovery.

The End of the DCAU?

As mentioned last episode, the producers weren’t sure if they’d get a third season of JLU so this episode’s title is very literal, intending to serve as a sendoff to the entire DCAU. Thus the heavy Batman focus, in particular the final shot that literally mirrors the very first shot in ‘On Leather Wings‘, ending how they started. Of course the network ended up giving them a third season after all, so it feels a bit random to do this story in the middle of the series, but hey!

I should also acknowledge that I did originally review this episode for The Reel World as a way to finish off my coverage of Batman Beyond. At the time I hadn’t seen much JLU and the review was more focused on the Batman side of things, so rather than re-publishing with some minor edits as I did with BTAS etc, I’m writing a brand new review of the episode as part of JLU.

Notes and Trivia

Episode: 26 (S2.E13)

Original Air Date: July 23^rd, 2005

Directed: Dan Riba (13)

Written: Bruce Timm (2) (story) and Dwayne McDuffie (14) (story & teleplay)

Animation: DongWoo Animation Co., LTD. (4)

Music: Kristopher Carter (10) & Lolita Ritmanis (9)

Terry ends up looking a lot like Bruce’s civilian disguised from ‘Starcrossed‘.

It’s confirmed that Joker ‘liberated’ the version of The Royal Flush Gang from ‘Wild Cards‘ from Cadmus, and at the same time acquired the technology used to overtake Tim Drake’s body in Return of the Joker. Holy continuity, Batman!

Terry makes an off-hand reference to “The Near Apocalypse of 09”, last mentioned in ‘Out of the Past‘ as a final confrontation between Bruce and Ra’s al Ghul.

Ace’s new Royal Flush Gang are all designed for puns based on their names. Ten looks like Bo Derek from… Ten, Jack is a samurai like… Samurai Jack, Queen is a drag… queen and King… looks like Marvel’s MODOK. You can be generous and call that a Jack ‘King’ Kirby reference if you want.

One could make the assumption Bruce named Ace (the Bat-Hound) after Ace of the Royal Flush Gang due to the events of this episode.

Dwayne McDuffie has posited that Bruce figured out Terry was his son during their partnership and simply never brought it up. Sighhhhhh. Fuck off.

Recap

65 years from now, Terry McGinnis breaks into the heavily fortified home of an elderly Amanda Waller, who was expecting him, offering him tea… and hitting on him. Fun!

Before coming to Waller, Terry had mentally plotted out an enormous argument with Bruce Wayne, breaking up with Dana, and quitting The Justice League Unlimited.

Terry informs Waller that following a recent organ compatibility test he discovered he is Bruce’s biological son(!!!!!), demanding answers from her as he no longer trusts his mentor.

After Terry speaks poorly of Bruce, Waller relays a touching story about the former Batman risking his life to comfort Ace of the Royal Flush Gang in the final moments before her death.

She explains Bruce had no knowledge of Terry’s parentage, and instead she had used harvested DNA to ensure the world always had a Batman, overriding the ‘genetic material’ of Warren McGinnis.

More than that, she hired Andrea ‘Phantasm‘ Beaumont to murder Terry’s parents to replicate Bruce’s past… but Andrea got cold feet.

Terry cites his father’s death as proof of the ‘Curse’ of Batman, but Waller advocates for free will and cites their differences, encouraging him to live a life filled with more love than Bruce did.

Planning to propose to Dana, Terry shares a nice moment with Bruce before being dispatched to help Superman with a case.

Best Performance

There can only really be three contenders here.

Will Friedle sounded much less natural in his reprisal of Terry in ‘Time Warped‘ but is back on form here, which makes sense as it’s a far more elaborate role driven entirely by emotional material. He may not be the world’s greatest actor, but he’s undoubtedly doing more Real Acting than he was ever asked to do before, and I’m glad he got to go out on a high.

CCH Pounder is always really good as Waller, perfectly embodying the character in my mind. This episode gives her by far her most dialogue and she rises to the challenge, softening her performance a great deal to reflect Waller’s age and new role as a quasi ‘good guy’.

But all hail Kevin Conroy. Many times throughout Beyond I expressed admiration for him modifying his voice to sound believably older than Batman in his prime, and here we have an even older Bruce so Kevin has to go even further with it to match. Not only that, he delivers it in two different modes, Terry’s imagined version – the character at his most vile – and the more pleasant but still crotchety real version at the end. It was probably a great deal of fun to play with essentially a good vs evil dichotomy, spitting venom at Terry in the fake argument, while sliding into a more Alfred-like role later, nagging his son to eat before he leaves. The ‘Prime Bruce’ version from the middle of the episode is almost incidental by comparison, but he is good there too of course.

Terry is Bruce’s What?!?

I feel like I need to address this giant plot element separately to the episode itself because of the ramifications it has on Batman Beyond, and in particular my writing about the series.

This episode started out life as a second Batman Beyond movie featuring Selina Kyle creating a series of Bruce Wayne clones and orphaning them when they reached the proper age, intending to create a swathe of Batmen who would be willing to kill. Terry would be revealed as one such clone. Knowing they’d discussed this concept years earlier adds new context to throwaway lines in ‘Disappearing Inque‘ (Inque asks if the man in Terry’s ear is his father), ‘Inqueling‘ (Terry and Dana talk about Bruce being a father figure to him) and ‘The Call‘ (Superman mutters that Terry has more in common with Bruce than he thinks.)

I find this creative decision to be profoundly offensive, completely antithetical to how Terry’s character was written and presented throughout the series.

From the moment it was announced a new person would be taking on the identity of Batman, fans have negatively compared Terry to Bruce, saying he’s not as good as his predecessor and that he’s not the real Batman. He’s not smart enough, he’s not a detective, he’s not as expertly trained, the fancy suit does all the work for him while Bruce tells him exactly what to do. Blah blah blah. That’s all cute and all, but SO many episodes disputed all of that, whether it be Terry literally fighting the costume when it’s possessed by a rogue AI, the various occasions he and Bruce were completely out of contact, the mysteries he solved alone, the out-of-costume fights he won or basically the entirety of Return of the Joker, which is functionally his ‘final exam’. He IS Batman no matter how you feel about him.

More than that, this whole thing feels like we’ve gotten into Miles Morales vs Peter Parker territory, where a large part of the point of the new characters was to say anybody can be a hero if they’re willing to step up to the plate. Bruce is not inherently special. He’s certainly extremely driven and being Batman isn’t something that comes easily, but Terry absolutely rises to the challenge and walks his own path. He rejects Bruce’s assertions that there’s only one way to be Batman, maintaining some degree of social life, and generally doing his best to be a Golden Retriever Boy, remaining far more lighthearted than his moody mentor.

By revealing Terry is Bruce’s biological son you completely undercut ALL of that with some cowardly eugenics. ‘Terry still hasn’t earned anything, he’s just got Bruce’s Chosen One DNA.’ COOOOOL!!! I don’t really care about Waller’s argument for determinism given she says everything good about him came from Bruce.

It’s such a shame that from basically the moment Beyond went off the air Terry’s reputation has been tarnished left and right. Whether it’s this, or having him replaced by Tim Drake in Future’s End (it was revealed this version of the character has resurfaced in the current Justice League comic the day before I wrote this review, which is kind of funny), the proposal to make Damian Wayne the lead of an ‘Arkham Beyond’ video game or the litany of comics that discarded various aspects of the Beyond mythos, it seems there’s just no love for the original version of this character and his rich, fleshed out world. Justice for Terry!

Episode Ranking

The cold open is pretty solid, but it seems they couldn’t decide which way they wanted to go with it. On the one hand they outright tell you it’s 65 years from now and there are some subtle signs that it’s the world of Beyond, but they also keep Terry in shadow up until Waller says his name, despite the fact he looks nothing like his previous design so could have been anyone. Seeing him easily bypass the various guards and security protocols in his street clothes was also kind of a trip for me, and I think they were trying to demonstrate he’s much better at all of this than he was as a teenager, displaying a level of proficiency more reminiscent of Bruce.

Bruce Timm and Dwayne McDuffie intended for the black and white scenes to be Terry’s imagination running wild. That encompasses his shouting matches with Bruce, his breakup with Dana, and quitting the Justice League Unlimited. I get what they were going for there, but it’s kind of a shame to be deprived of the bright colours of the big hero vs villain brawl, particularly Green Lantern.

A lot of the real meat of the episode is the huge argument between Bruce and Terry, with the former assuming the role of full ‘Batman at his worst’ villain, while the latter lays some heavy accusations at his mentor’s feet. Learning this was an entirely imagined conversation lets them have it both ways, as the DCAU incarnation of Bruce would never be as callous as he comes across here, telling Terry he and everyone else that ever assisted him simply weren’t tough enough and that he has no interest in being his father. It also smacks of one of those ‘ideal’ conversations we have with ourselves in the shower, rehearsing for an interaction we’re going to have soon or trying to rewrite one we already had so we can ‘win’, with Terry getting to look cool and walk away from a pathetic Bruce scrambling for his pills. Again, the Terry we know would simply never be that cold. I’m pleasantly surprised they were allowed to devote so much time in what might have been the series finale to an extended conversation in black and white between two characters that aren’t really in this show.

Marrying that up with Waller’s candid ‘shooting the breeze’ hosting of Terry is a nice idea, moving from the pills on Bruce’s floor to the ones on Amanda’s tray, refusing to show the slightest bit of intimidation towards Batman. Again, surprisingly good slice of life stuff from a writer who I have generally believed to be better at big ideas than actual moment to moment scripting.

Even when they’re injecting some of ‘the normal show’ into the middle of the episode with a team of Leaguers taking on a wacky new version of The Royal Flush Gang, it’s just a brief intro before getting to one of the greatest moments of DCAU Batman as he sits quietly with Ace and holds her hand as she dies. He had agreed to break his one rule due to how dangerous her powers were becoming, walking in with a weapon intended to kill her, but instead simply sat next to her on a swing set and offered comfort in her finals moments. It’s a screenshot you see circulated a great deal, and for good reason, underlining (potentially for the last time) why their version of Bruce is so beloved compared to the Miller/Snyderfication of the character.

Separate from the overall creative decision of ‘Terry is Bruce’s son’, the delivery of that reveal is a little iffy. Using kooky Cadmus nanotech to swap out Warren McGinnis’ sperm with Bruce’s – and moments after they did a ‘Bruce was jizzing all over Gotham!’ joke – is just… bizarre. They did it to absolve Bruce of having any direct involvement in ‘Project Batman Beyond’ (cute to incorporate the name of the show) and to not taint the relationship of Terry’s parents, I guess. Bringing Andrea Beaumont into everything was an unusual choice even if it is fun to see her, and I found the proposed copycat murder scenario by far the most interesting part of this whole bombshell, but they move past it really quickly. This is by far the biggest argument for nurture over nature put forth, as Waller’s literal attempt to do so isn’t written very well and she ends up taking the side of DNA over environment. They could have absolutely hit this harder in my opinion.

The ending is lovely. First, Terry and Bruce ‘making up’ (they didn’t actually fall out, but ya know), confirming that Bruce has now basically become Alfred, making Terry soup and actually worrying more about his wellbeing, albeit in his own grumpy way. There’s also the subtle confirmation Terry’s detective skills have advanced to the point Superman invites him to consult on cases without any need for a ‘man in the chair’, and honestly just the general reminder Clark is still alive and kicking is cute. Second, the homage to ‘On Leather Wings‘ is truly delightful. The Beyond riff on the BTAS score, the shot-matching with Terry’s shadow moving in the opposite direction to Man-Bat’s, and even having Kevin Conroy voice a cop that gets spooked by him flying past just as he did in the very first episode of the DCAU… perfect.

Overall it’s a very difficult episode for me to rate. I’ve tried to remove ‘The Decision’ from the equation, though I wonder if I even should. It may be a personal beef, but this is MY site and objectivity isn’t a real thing with art. I don’t just disagree with the reveal Terry is Bruce’s son, I think they went about it in a way that’s weird at best and bad at worst. I respect them devoting so much time to in depth conversations driven by character, and we have a number of definitive moments for several of the characters and a tremendous ending. It’s certainly a compelling episode with excellent performances and music, and I will always have a soft spot for Batman Beyond so getting to dip into that one last time was nice.

Double Date
For the Man Who Has Everything
Clash
Task Force X
Question Authority
Fearful Symmetry
Panic in the Sky
The Return
The Once and Future Thing, Part 1: Weird Western Tales
Epilogue (NEW ENTRY)
Flashpoint
The Ties That Bind
The Cat and the Canary
The Greatest Story Never Told
Divided We Fall
The Balance
Dark Heart
Initiation
This Little Piggy
Kids’ Stuff
The Once and Future Thing, Part 2: Time Warped
Doomsday Sanction
Wake the Dead
Ultimatum
Hawk and Dove
Hunter’s Moon

Rogues Roundup

Amanda Waller (CCH Pounder) (seventh appearance)

What a great character. You get the entire package in this one episode, showcasing both her deplorable depths and softer side with both being arguably the most extreme they’ve been to date.

The general Cadmus operation was obviously pretty bad, but asking Batman to euthanise a superpowered child, stealing Bruce’s DNA and using it to make Warren McGinnis shoot baby Batmans, and then ordering the murder of Terry’s parents are all so wildly out of pocket it defies belief. You could argue drafting the woman who might have once birthed Bruce’s babies to carry out the assassination intended to replicate him is fucked up too, but there’s plenty of depravity without that aspect.

On the other side of things, she’s almost charming (if a little creepy) in her welcoming of Terry at the start of the episode and attempts to offer him sincere comfort at the end. The idea that she admired Bruce’s actions towards Ace so much that she became his biggest fan is cute too… even if it’s undercut by the means she took to try and ensure the world always had a Batman. I guess that’s the point, even if she’s brooooadly on the side of good, she’s so extreme in her methodology that she has to remain a villain.

You probably thought Cadmus deserved to be much higher up the rankings than I’ve had them to date. Well lucky for you I think this is such a powerfully good use of Waller that I’m willing to slide her and by extension them WAY up the list. Lex is simply too difficult to dethrone, and I think Mandragora’s perfect ‘one-and-done’ deployment is hard to surpass as well.

Lex Luthor
Steven Mandragora
Amanda Waller & Project Cadmus (↑)
Circe
Task Force X
Amazo
Galatea
Chronos
Mongul
Brainiac
Granny Goodness
Dark Heart
Tobias Manning
The Jokerz
Felix Faust
The Annihilator
The Ultimen
Tala
Doomsday
Hades
Roulette
Solomon Grundy
The Thanagarians
Brimstone
Ares
Mordred (and Morgaine le Fey!)
Mordru
Virman Vundabar