THE BAT BLOG #5: Steve’s Top 10 Favorite Bat Episodes of the DCAU

Honorable Mention:

– The Once and Future Thing Part 2: Time, Warped –

I like this episode for the sheer fact that Batman and GL John Stewart get the staring roles here. As they time jump trying to stop Chronos from altering and ruining time, the end up in the Batman Beyond Alternate Future where Bruce and Old Bruce meet along with Terry. So Bruce in a sense gets to meet his future heir to the mantle. I love this episode for the proportions of the story.

10. Beware of the Gray Ghost

This episode holds the special place in my heart due to showing Batman’s childhood hero worship. This episode features a plot stolen from the old Gray Ghost cartoon and Batman enlists Simon Trent to find out what happened in the long lost last episode of the series. Truly epic and nice nod with having Adam West play the role.

09. Perchance to Dream

I liked this episode despite the villian as it shows Bruce struggling with what he KNOWS is real and what is being perceived that way. His parents are alive but yet he goes on the run knowing it is wrong. With the inner turmoil he suffers, he eventually confronts Dream Batman and wakes from his slumber at the hands of the Mad Hatter.

08. Heart of Ice

My reasoning for this episode is due to the character of Mr. Freeze. In this series they took his story and made him more of a sympathetic role rather than villian of the week. It added some deep undertones into who he is and in a way is similar and relatable to Batman for losing a loved one.

07. Almost Got ‘Im

This story I added for the purpose of fun. It really is staked out by the cops and Batman but most of the core rogues gallery is sitting playing cards discussing their “Almost Got ‘Im” stories. Joker’s by far was the best and still ongoing throughout the story. Definitely a must watch.

06. What is Reality?

The 2nd episode featuring The Riddler. They trap Gordon in the game and Batman joins in to thwart the Riddler. It is like Batman on the interwebs.

05. Mad Love

Here we actually see the origin story of Harley Quinn, the Joker’s partner in crime and how she came to be. This episode further helps to cement the fact that Harley is a great stand alone villian but is also what Robin is to Batman for the Joker.

04. Wild Cards

I like this JL Episode for the sheer fact Joker is taking over the airways, making the JL run throught the city to disarm bombs. He makes fun of them on several occasions and gives props to Batman for being the only fashionable one. Later his hypnotism with the aide of Ace proves to be his own undoing.

03. His Silicon Soul

I like this HARDAC continuation for one reason alone, Robot Batman! This bot was programmed so well he thought he truly was the Bat. Bruce having deduced they were nearly identical allows the robot to think he killed a life and in doing so prevents HARDAC’s return and commits suicide.

02. Out of the Past

BEST Batman Beyond Episode! This episode showcases a disgruntled and useless and aged Bruce wishing he were in his Prime again. In his moment of weekness, Talia shows up and offers him eternal youth. Bruce is temporarily seduced into the trap and Terry joins a newly temporarily restored Bruce to take down Talia with Ras Al Ghul’s mind in her and Bruce goes back to being old again. Very very epic episode!

01. Epilogue

The book ending to not only the DCAU but the Bat Saga is here. We begin with Amanda Waller explaining that she knew Terry was Bruce Wayne’s biological son. This episode I LOVE and have downloaded to a special addendum disc to my Beyond series. It is so great I will post the entire wiki plot to describe it in it’s true glory.

65 years from now:Terry McGinnis (now in his early 30s) breaks into the high-security home of Amanda Waller (now a very old woman in her 90s). He confronts her and demands answers. She seems unsurprised to see him, and insists on telling the story at her own pace.
Months earlier, when Bruce (now in his 90s) was suffering kidney failure and needed a tissue donor to clone new organs, Terry was tested and found to be perfectly compatible. Surprised, Terry had his DNA checked and was found to be Bruce’s genetic son.
Terry is at first angry, believing that Bruce masterminded the whole thing in order to ensure that he had a successor. In his mind, Terry imagines himself storming into the Batcave and confronting Bruce, who doesn’t deny the accusation and insists that the world will always need a Batman. Terry also imagines himself breaking up with Dana, whom he has continued dating since high school and now knows his secret identity and withdrawing from the JLU, saying “Batman is dead”.
To prove he’s wrong about Bruce, Waller tells Terry a story of a crisis that occurred before he was born:
Ace, the last member of the Royal Flush Gang, began causing havoc when her powers developed beyond causing hallucinations to being able to alter the fabric of reality itself. Waller warned the League that Ace was on the verge of dying from a brain aneurysm, and the resulting psychic backlash would cause massive destruction and loss of life.
Ace being carried away by Batman.
At some point, Cadmus retrieved a special weapon to kill her and prevent the disaster, which Batman volunteered to use. However, when he reached her, he wouldn’t use the weapon. Instead, he asked Ace to reverse the changes she had made, and comforted her over her lost childhood. With him by her side, she died peacefully, and the world returned to normal.
Waller tells Terry the truth: she was the mastermind, not Bruce. After the Cadmus Crisis, Waller went from being the Justice League‘s chief antagonist to its ally. In her role as the Government Liaison to the League, she came to know Batman very well, gaining a great deal of respect for him. She also met a lot of interesting people but none of them were comparable to Batman as he saved the day using his wits, body and will (as opposed to others and their gained superpowers).
The incident with Ace demonstrated to Waller that Batman’s greatest attributes were his compassion, and his iron refusal to never take a life. But as time went on, Waller saw him age, and realized he wouldn’t be around forever or might eventually be killed. However, in her mind, the world needed a Batman.
Waller used her old Project Cadmus contacts to launch “Project Batman Beyond“. Bruce’s DNA was obtained years previously during one of his exploits. She found a young couple, Warren and Mary McGinnis, that was almost an identical psychological match for Dr. Thomas and Martha Wayne. When Warren went in for what he thought was a flu shot, his reproductive DNA was overwritten by that of Bruce Wayne’s by nanobots. A year later, Terry was born, genetically the son of Mary McGinnis and Bruce Wayne.
Genetics, however, do not alone make a Batman, so Waller hired an assassin to kill Terry’s parents when he was eight years old as the three of them were leaving a movie theater showing The Grey Ghost Strikes hoping that the same tragedy would cause the same response. However, the assassin couldn’t bring herself to kill them, as Batman would never resort to murder because it would destroy everything he stood for. Waller was forced to agree, and the project was effectively scrapped. With the McGinnises spared, Matt would be born.
However, nine years later, due to a cruel twist of fate, Terry’s father was killed,^[1] which set a chain of events in motion that turned Terry into Batman.^[2]
Terry is not soothed, believing that, whether Bruce or Waller was the real mastermind, he is still “cursed”, in that his identity of Batman was written before he was even born. Waller implies that she believes it was a form of divine intervention which led to the death of his father. Why Terry became Batman was a mystery, but she still says he is free to choose his own path. He is Bruce’s son, not his clone. In her assessment, Terry may not be as smart as the old Batman, but he is every bit as devoted to helping others—and, she adds, he could have worse role models than Bruce Wayne, who “for all that fierce exterior, I’ve never met anyone as dedicated to helping his fellow man… except maybe you”.
In parting, she gives him some last advice: “You want to have a little better life than the old man’s? Take care of the people who love you. Or don’t. It’s your choice”.
Taking this advice to heart, Terry returns to the Wayne Manor, prepares to propose to Dana, shares a moment of mostly unspoken reconciliation with Bruce, and takes off to speak with Superman on a case.
In the skies of Gotham, something winged flies past a police hovercraft, causing one of the pilots to ask “Did you see that?”