True, he deliberately pushes people away with his socipathic ways in the comics but those who love him (Superman, Nightwing, Robin, Oracle/Barbara) never completely desert him. Alfred and Jim Gordon are always there to pull him back when he gets too dark and the new Batgirl is completely devoted to him and takes orders like a good soldier because she's so much like him. A little of this can be seen in the Timm-verse as well, as obnoxious as he gets Batman has a good support system so he doesn't go tooo dark. I can imagine a future Batman as the police state-ist version in the "Kingdom Come" comic building Bat-robots to patrol the streets when his body gives out before I would imagine the Charles Foster Kane version of him in BB coming to pass. Like I said, as long as BB was a possible future I could live with it, but making it the definitive outcome of the Batman we've seen in the BTAS and JLU leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Well, mine at least.

Eh, it could still be just a possible future. I hope it's just a possible future. Besides the fact that Return of the Joker was a good story, I never did like what happened to Tim Drake in it. Brrr.

You know, while I disagree with the idea that Epilogue promotes Batman as Bat-God, I have to agree that Amanda Wallers plan made no sense. We can't even blame it on old age, she didn't look that old when she first came up with the plan. I mean if she really wanted to make a new Batman all she needed to do was pick a reasonably healthy kid with a proper psychological profile and kill his parentsand maybe afterwards quietly slip him a fortune so that he could buy some batgadgets. She didn't really need to clone Bruces genetic so that Batman the sequal would be Batmans biological son.

A couple random questions:

- Given Batman's ruthless iron will, etc., etc., why is he old in B:B, TDKR, etc.? Is there some reason he isn't using the Lazarus Pits or any number of other technologies he has access to in order to stay young? (A Batman AI, like Edmund Alva in Hardware way back when, would also be cool).

- Is "Kent" in B:B Clark Kent, some descendent of Clark's, or deliberately ambiguous?

Also, I wasn't sure I understood the timeline in Epilogue. I'm pretty sure that, thanks to flashbacks, the scenes we actually saw occurred in the following order:

1) The JLU fights the Royal Flush Gang, sometime in the present era.

2) Waller, having decided that Batman is humanity's ace in the hole against the supers, rather than Cadmus, genetically tampers with Terry's father so that Terry is genetically Bruce's son.

3) Phantasm refuses to kill Terry's parents.

4) Terry figures out that he's Bruce's genetic son, confronts Bruce, and leaves him scrambling for his pills.

5) Terry dumps Dana.

6) Terry quits the Justice League.

7) Terry visits Waller.

8) Terry calls Dana and confirms their date. (When did they get back together? Did I miss a scene?)

9) Terry helps Bruce with his pills, puts on his suit, and goes off to meet "Kent."

ITA: Whoops! I swear read all the new posts before posting, but I just missed the note that the black-and-white sequences were imaginary. That didn't occur to me when I saw the ep, although I did wonder whether they were from an alternate timeline that didn't occur, which was far more complex than it needed to be.

Put me in the liked it camp, if only for the references. The only thing that didn't work for me was the Phantasm bit. I just don't buy that if she were that old, she'd still be an assassin for hire. I know they wanted to link everything but to me, that felt forced. And while I dug the last scene, it seemed cut short to me. The voiceover work on the last line could have been better.

Bruce refuses to cheat: it would be like taking steroids to give himself an extra edge. There's a BB episode where he actually takes a dip in the Lazarus pit, but decided that it's not the right thing to do and lets the effects wear off. The most he'll do is design better suits to compensate (hence the BB suit, which he actually designed for himself), but that didn't work out so well.



That's Clark. Superman doesn't age as quickly, so he's still active in the BB era.



Everything in black and white wasn't real, as mentioned a couple of pages back. Other than that you've got the timeline right.

Oh, and while Waller's plan made no sense and required plenty of contrivances to result in Terry becoming Batman, lets keep in mind that the woman was slightly nuts at that point.

To me, it was just one way to point out that the Justice League continues on, and that the world still needs a Justice League. I have no problem wiht picking one of the characters, ANY one of the characters, and telling a story about the future with the same notes as what we just saw in this season. (Main character has a personal conflict, considers leaving the JL because of personal conflict, JL future hangs in the balance, main character gets talked out of it because the world needs him and the JL, life goes on.)

All of the personal stuff about Terry, yada-yada-yada, was just necessary because we're already kind of familiar with it, and they needed a one-episode way to tell the story.

At least, that's the way I see it.

I thought they were real. Basically, the b/w sequences happened right after Terry found out he was a perfect match to donate a kidney to Bruce but before he went after Waller. The only exception might be when he broke up with Dana. Basically, he broke up with Dana, found out he was Bruce's "clone", had the last fight helping out the JL, confronted Bruce about it.

Anyway, non-Epilogue question. I just read that James Marsters got cast as Brainiac on Smallville. I didn't realize that Brainiac actually had a a secret identity in the comics, and he certainly doesn't have one in JLU. So is this something conjured for that show?

samsnee, I certainly didn't expect Smallville spoilers here, and I suspect that a lot of others won't as well. Spoiler tags please?
Topic? Zen Green Lantern bugs me. Because.

It might come across like reality, but Mr. McDuffie himself said that those b/w scenes were what Terry was thinking about doing, not what he actually did. It's pretty subtle, but the fact that the clock was undamaged and that Terry's interactions with both Bruce and Dana had absolutely no tension support this. Plus, Bruce sounds really weird, especially in the first b/w scene when he talks about heart. It's a really odd line reading, and has to be deliberate.

I think the use of black and white was a good device to separate those scenes from the ones that really happened, but I can't say the same for the lack of tension or odd line reading (which shouldn't be there even if the scenes didn't really happen). Also, Amanda Waller's part of the story was so absurd that it seemed more likely that the black and white scenes happened and the color scenes didn't.

By the way, there are problems with Waller's plan that haven't even been mentioned yet. For example, she had no guarantee that the Batspawn would be a son, or that Terry's parents would only have one child (either then or later). Indeed, the odds were against them having only one child and having a son. Also, Amanda Waller was portrayed in previous episodes as someone who was sane. She believed that the ends justified the means, she resorted to extreme measures, and sometimes she made poor judgment calls, but she was not insane. The way she was portrayed in this episode was consistent with this, but her crazy plan certainly wasn't.

From what I remember about the BB premiere episode, it was also happenstance that got Terry to Wayne Manor that night to discover Bruce's secret identity. Did Mrs. Waller have a plan for Terry to learn all that she didn't have to use or was she manipulating events that night? If not, that's a huge coincidence.

I really enjoyed the episode while watching (I loved BB) but my enjoyment has lessened now that I've had time to think about things more. I liked that Terry was just an angry kid who stumbled across a way to deal with things, who might easily have continued on a delinquent path if it weren't for Bruce. I think the biological connection and Mrs. Waller pulling strings cheapens that story a bit. I also have a ton more questions. What about Terry's brother? Why did Terry never get bored with Dana? What was Mrs. Waller thinking?

I didn't mind the focus on Batman so much since he is my favorite but I can understand why that would be annoying. Especially in a season finale.

I wonder -- perhaps Mrs. Waller arranged for lots of men to receive the sperm-altering shots, on the theory that at least one of the resulting children would fall into Batman's clutches? I mean, she wouldn't necessarily tell Terry that he had hundreds (or thousands) of siblings running around the city.

"By the way, there are problems with Waller's plan that haven't even been mentioned yet. For example, she had no guarantee that the Batspawn would be a son, or that Terry's parents would only have one child (either then or later)."

Good point. Cut from the episode was a scene explaining that Waller did this *many* times (ala "Boys From Brazil") in the hopes of producing one suitable Batman replacement. Girls would be ignored and left to grow up without interference. In families with a good male candidate, like Terry's, any other siblings would be killed along with the parents. After Phantasm refused to kill Terry, Waller realized how far around the bend she had gone and gave up on the whole project. Terry meeting Bruce later and becoming Batman was indeed coincidence, or more charitably, fate.

Why would the girls be ignored? Last time I checked there have been non-super powered female heros as well.

Waller wanted a new Batman, not a Batgirl (or Batwoman). She was hardly objective at this point, so she probably considered it inconceivable that a woman could adequately fill Batman's shoes.

In any case, with the nanotech rewriting DNA, it's easy enough to say that the nanotech could also fix it so that only males could be born, since it's the father who determines the baby's gender. The cut scene also resolves the issue, although it does make one wonder just how many "kids" Bruce actually has.

Now I'm having flashbacks to the series finale of Buffy where they made ALL the Potentials into full-blown Slayers with a magic fire axe & a mega-whammy from Willow. And I was on the bubble about this ep already. This isn't helping.

Maybe it shoulda ended with Old Bruce & Waller getting married. Then they both could have wrung their hands & made soup for Terry...

Hey, he really has left his dna all over town! Heh, or how about, "Hey, now that's what I call a Bat-God!"? Man, I got a million of them.

I wonder if all of Bruce's kids are in Gotham? Any in Metropolis you think?

Same here. That felt like a shout.




League of the Batmen?

I hope Waller placed the kids far apart from each other otherwise things might get all incesty in a few years.

Never saw B:TAS, don't watch BB or Superman's show.

I didn't hate this episode. I couldn't figure out why it was all Batman with flashbacks etc.

I do wish we would have found out more about why Waller thinks there should always be Batman. Just that one scene with Ace doesn't seem like enough to convince her.

It seems likely that most of them would be in the same geographical area. Considering Waller's insane obsession with Batman, she'd probably want them to be from Gotham City. Since they'd also be around the same age and from similar backgrounds, there's a very good chance that...well, like you said. By the way, what do we know about Dana's family from Batman Beyond?



It's because Batman is the bestest superhero evah and the Superman and Flash fans are all jus' jellus because Batman is the one !!!111!!!1

Shudder.... Dude!! What the hell were you think... the mental image of that one will take some industrial strenght mental clorox to get rid of.

Yeah, Waller's plan wasn't that bright, but what I was confused on was whether Batman (Bruce Batman) knew Waller's plan, on its entirety at some point. My guess is that he did, but the episode is kinda vague whether Bruce knew the whole nine yards. That conversation between the two should've been shown.

Agreed. I found Waller's Batman/Bruce Wayne obsession (for lack of a better word) to be the most interesting part of the whole story.

Scenes with the 2 of them interacting would have been quite interesting- especially in light of this "sudden" revelation that Waller was a Batman fangirl after all.

Since the season has ended, I thought I'd do my quick overview:

The Good:
-A bona fide story arc that developed over the course of several episodes, with both plot and character development, an evil mastermind who was actually clever, morally ambiguous characters, superheroes making mistakes, and a satisfying finish in "Divided We Fall" (which also had really good animation)
-Amanda Waller (except for "Epilogue") and the voice work by CCH Pounder (including "Epilogue")
-Flash and the voice work by Michael Rosenbaum
-Green Arrow, Black Canary, Huntress, Question
-There were a bunch of good one liners and cool moments, such as people reacting to the lights going on and off in the Watchtower, and even a Jorge Luis Borges joke
-The show pushed the envelope on a few occasions, as discussed in this topic
-I've wanted to see a Defenders cartoon, and "Wake the Dead" is probably the closest I'll ever get

The Not So Good:
-I still prefer the old JL theme music
-I realize that it's hard to make Dove seem not annoying, but this show didn't succeed
-Amanda Waller's plan in "Epilogue"

There's a lot of information about "Epilogue" here

You guys may know it all from watching the other shows but to me it was interesting.

I could see the KC version of Batman if all we had to go on was JLU. But given that the events of Return of the Joker have yet to happen for Batman at the time of JLU, he hasn't really reached his breaking point yet. Bruce's sociopathic loner tendencies are pretty well kept in check until Tim's abduction; it's after that that he begins to push everyone away and turn into the CFK Bruce of Batman Beyond.

As for BB being only a "possible" future for the Timmverse, I think it was fairly well established during the run of the show that it was meant to be a continuation of BTAS, and Return of the Joker was the clincher. Pretending BB is only a possible future is akin to Trek fans wanting to pretend Enterprise will be erased from the canon by the next movie or series.

I guess I feel that a viewer should get to watch the show they tuned in for. Good or bad, this wasn't JLU, it was Batman Beyond. *shrug*

I never liked Batman Beyond, and didn't watch more than a couple episodes, so for me the whole episode was a waste once we got the (sad) end of Ace.

That makes me wonder, then, about how "Mask of the Phantasm" fits into the continuity. Last we saw, Andrea was ready to kill off Joker, and, well, Joker is very much alive in the JL universe. I had heard about some comic book sequel to MotP in which it was explained that Andrea didn't kill Joker after all, but that makes as much sense as Waller's plan.

I like to think that Joker got away from her in the fracas. She was probably all set to kill him, then something else exploded right next to her, knocking them over, and Joker, quick as ever, took his cue to vamonos. It's the simplest explanation. I'd never heard of the comic you mention, but I don't think it fits with what we saw there either. Of course, I really don't buy her being a killer for hire, either. The murders in MotP were personal.

So does anyone new what ep they're showing this weekend?

I believe they are airing "Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Movie" this Saturday and the episode "Clash" the following week when regular shows return.

No, but it was a character piece about a few of the Justice League. Plus it was a great finale to a show that was served so shoddily by WB Kids.

If you say so. Like I said, I didn't like BB and didn't watch it, so as a JLU watcher I got a show apparently that serves the viewing needs of Batman Beyond fans. I'm happy for you if you liked it. I feel as if there's little I can say about the quality of the show or if I liked it, since it was..another show, effectively. One I don't know. I liked the Waller bits?

I don't know if anyone else read the link that clarkins (Thanks!) posted , but this comment from the goofs/trivia section amused me.


There are plain white china patterns. "Pattern" simply refers to the style or form of the the china and can also refer to the design on the plate. It could have been a simple white pattern, a white on white pattern, or a white plate where the pattern is in the plate itself, think ridges or scallops, rather than on the plate.

What amuses most about the comment, besides the confusion, is that it is exactly something I would get distracted by during a story. (example: what happened to Kathleen Turner's cat at the end of "Romancing the Stone"? A friend of mine simply replied that KT's publisher was watching it.)

Topic? How much longer until the new season starts?

Yeah, does anyone know approximately when the new season is going to start?

This should Never be the answer to the question which JL is airing. It's just so wrong on so many levels.

Although it does lead to the interesting image of the JL vs Pegasus. That'd be fun.

...and Yami as a JL ally and peer. Just imagine using Mind Crush on Gorilla Grodd.

I wonder if they could ever do an adaptation of Identity Crisis(Not that I want them to) in the new season? They'd have to introduce Elongated Man's wife, Sue Dibney, plus they already have the female, good version of Dr. Light as part of the JL.

Mmmm...Batman vs. Kaiba. That would be awesome. We can stick Booster Gold and Vigilante with Rex & Weevil.

I'm down for new episodes, though I can wait.

I think it'd be tough to pull off any sort of Identity Crisis story and maintain a Y7.

Saw the Ultimen ep for the first time last night. I thought it was very well written, and loved how they were able to bring Aquaman in order for it to be a true "homage" to the original Superfriends. Shame there was no Gleek though -- I'm surprised they didn't reimagine him as some sort of big hairy ape.

Question: So did they ever do an ep to follow up on Longshadow after he joined JLU, and his ultimate demise?

Nope, I'd say it's safe to say he died before the next episode.

Just to make sure I'm clear.

Longshadow = Apache Chief
The Twin = Wonder Twins
Juice = Black Vulcan

I don't know who the hell Dragon was supposed to be.

I thought the best part of last night episode was Waller calling Batman "Rich Boy"

Which really just makes Waller a piss poor adversary. Because there's a lot of ways to fuck over the Justice League without being all "Mwahaha" about it.

Like giving Bruce an audit. Having a search warrant for the Batcave. Having the IRS track where Bruce is spending his money and how. Checking on Alfred's immigration status. Now all of the above would have been evil, and funny. And there wouldn't have been shit Batman could have done about it. Unlike sending hordes of clones after the JLU.

I believe Storm Dragon is Wind Samurai. I think Waller, as evil as she was in the beginning of the Cadmus arc, knew that Batman was the only one in JLU who wouldn't let power go to his head, since he is the only non-superpowered member (next to GA). So it wouldn't have been in her benefit to screw him over, since he's not capable of destroying cities with just a look like most of the other members.

I think the general rule in the DCAU is to not mess with people who are friends of the superpowered set. It's fairly common knowledge that Lois Lane and Superman are an item (the Joker actually kidnapped her to lure Superman in during the first Batman/Superman teamup), yet she's still walking around. John Stewart has plenty of old friends, and he even has an apartment. Taking him out involves planting a bomb and blowing it up while he's asleep, but no one has actually done it for fear of retribution.

True, but if she knew THAT secret, then she surely would have known Clark's. Which is even LESS of a secret than Batman's. And she COULD royally fuck him over. And his parents.

And true, but I don't think the respect was there at that point for him. It may have been. But her attacking him through legal channels, would have seriously crippled the JLA. It's not like they could fund that shit for themselves. IIRC, ain't none of them have the kind of cash laying around to pay for all of that.

Which is kind of dumb. Sure it makes them madder than hell, but it also takes their heroism away from them at the same time. Makes them come down to your level to get retribution. I kind of like how in Marvel, family and friends are fair game. And I see them changing that a lot in DCU lately.

And even still. Waller can mess with those people in a completely legal way. Through standard channels. Superman's parents.... illegally harboring a known alien. Batman, tax fraud (has to have some of that). Green Lantern, concealed weapon et al. She has the means to make their lives and the lives of their loved ones with pen and paper. But instead takes the Evil Mad Genius approach. Which is sad.

That wasn't the point of Cadmus. Cadmus was there to take out and/or replace the Justice League if the need ever arose. There are clearly many ways Waller and Cadmus could have messed with the League, heck, instead of stealing the Anihalator they could have just blown up the Watch Tower, but that wasn't thier primary goal.

I agree that Waller's goal at that point wasn't to destroy the Justice League. I assumed that the reason she indicated that she knew Batman's secret identity was to let him know that she could expose him or take action against him (including legal means) if he got out of line.

If Waller did expose Batman or try to bring down Wayne Enterprises, he could retaliate by exposing her and Cadmus' illegal activities. She'd probably lose that fight, particularly considering the Justice League's enormous popularity. Of course, this would give her a reason to support a plan to tarnish the League's reptuation.



Superman's secret identity may be the silliest plot detail in the entire history of comic books. The guy puts on a pair of glasses and suddenly nobody can recognize him. I suspect that writers avoid stories about people seeking retalization against Clark through his family and friends because they don't want to deal with the absurdity of Superman's secret ID.

True. But doing it in a more legal fashion tarnishes the JL, while a direct confrontation, could turn the JL into martyrs. Or at least the public opinion could be on the side of the JL.

How much was really provable by Batman about Cadmus, unlike the reverse? Batman's main power of mystique and fear, would have been negated once people learned he was the same as the millionare playboy. The cool part about Batman was, if you think about it, he could be anyone. Could show up anywhere. The lookie loos would be so camped out around Wayne Mansion, Batmans' main HQ would be lost to him. So yeah, Cadmus may take a hit, but they're the government. They can regroup and reorganize under a different name. But Wayne, is fucked for life.

I think it would have been more plausible for Waller to call Superman out on his secret ID. I think he had more to lose than Bruce. Especially with Ma and Pa Kent still kicking.

You can destroy something though, without using weapons or force or even misdirection. That would have been more awesome (though probably less ratings grabbing) to have the JL fight a battle they couldn't win. Against the government and red tape. The IRS is much more powerful than the JL.