Batman Beyond, Season 3, Episodes 1-3:
I had intended to publish this like, way back in late 2020, but I just hit a huge roadblock in both watching and writing. I'm going to proofread these and slowly release them over this month -- been really busy so I had no time to do new posts.
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Episode 1: King's Ransom
Anyway, as we enter the final season of Batman Beyond I feel that it's kind of important to note that back in the day, we really didn't have some sort of huge, overarching plot. I think it was Superman: The Animated Series that actually ended things with a huge bang at its season finales with Darkseid-related episodes, and both Justice League and especially Justice League: Unlimited had multiple storylines that felt like serialization. But that's not to say that the designers behind Batman Beyond wasn't at least thinking about wrapping loose plot threads up. Which means more recurring enemies!
"King's Ransom" features the final episode of the Royal Flush Gang, which have fallen on a bit of hard times. Without Ten, the gang isn't doing particularly well, and the prologue fight against Batman leaves the android Ace damaged and Jack captured. To make matters worse, their client, Paxton Powers (making his return from season one!) refuses to pay full price for the damaged artifact that King gives him. The whole theme of this episode is basically what terrible people King and Queen are, and how dysfunctional the two's partnership and marriage are. There's an interesting bit of world-building here with the revelation that the Royal Flush Gang is apparently a hereditary thing (we see them chronologically earlier in JLA!) from Queen's side of the family, and the most interesting part is that we see a fight between antagonists, with King and Queen holding Paxton Powers ransom.
I do like the increasing amounts of treachery and gambit tossed on top of each other. King demands Wayne-Powers to pay the ransom. Bruce Wayne refuses to pay said ransom. The Royal Flush Gang refuses to have any of Paxton's people involved. Paxton is forced to call Bruce Wayne, but then realizes he'll be ruined if Bruce Wayne makes the existence of his illegal art collection public, then hires the Royal Flush Gang to kill Bruce. We get a huge fight (involving Ace the Bat-Hound!) before we get the ultimate revelation: King betrays Queen, and the whole deal has been King making a huge plan with his mistress, Ms. Thorpe, Paxton's assassin-secretary. Ultimately, Batman arrives and stops Queen from killing King; while Commissioner Gordon arrests Paxton.
There's also the Ten/Melanie B-plot storyline, of course, with the frosty way that she ended things with Terry in their last episode. Melanie is basically making an honest living working at a restaurant. It's... it's all right, and the ending basically has Jack seek out his sister and the two siblings make an honest living while the parents rot in jail. I can't honestly say that I care too much about them, but that's a neat little bow to tie for these characters.
It's... it's an all right episode. It was paced a bit unevenly, but I did like the increasing pile of gambits that the members of the Royal Flush Gang just increasingly pile on each other, and the full revelation of King's plans. It's not a particularly creative solution, admittedly, and it's something I've seen before even in this show, but it's a solid episode regardless that gives both the Royal Flush Gang and Paxton Powers a fitting conclusion.
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Episode 2: Untouchable
I don't like calling an episode in a non-serialized show as a 'filler' episode, but this is basically one, yeah? It's a completely standalone episode with a one-off villain that the episode does away with at the end of the half-hour. The concept is pretty standard sci-fi stuff, with a mystery revolving a supervillain called the Repeller, who has an electromagnetic forcefield which allows him to block everything that Batman has to throw at him, and even survive having molten slag metal poured on top of him. Through an investigation, Bruce and Terry realized that Wayne-Powers has set up a clinic with people with deficient immune systems, who can't live outside of sterile environments, and one of the technological advances they had made is something called an 'Iso Field', which creates a bubble of sterile atmosphere around them.
Terry befriends Irene, one of the girls who quite literally has never touched anything in the outside world, and a rather good chunk of the episode is devoted to Terry befriending Irene... or the reaction of Terry's jealous girlfriend Dana when Terry keeps bringing Irene up. I'm not sure if this season will have a lot more in the Terry/Dana relationship storyline, though it's... it's honestly just kind of there. I wouldn't say that the relationship and dialogue are poorly written, because I've seen poorly written. But I won't lie and say that I'm anything but entirely indifferent to this storyline. Hell, Terry maybe even having feelings for someone that's not Dana is explored so much better in the Ten episode. Anyway, because status quo is god, ultimately at the end of the episode turns out that Irene has a boyfriend all along, which means that this storyline really brought absolutely nothing to the table.
The actual mystery as to who the Repeller is ends up being relatively simple. There's an angry doctor that's confrontational to both Bruce and Terry and is strict towards Irene, and, surprise surprise, turns out that he's just a strict doctor who's the red herring. The much more background-looking doctor turns out to be the real Repeller, intending to use the technology and sell it to supervillains. Classic Scooby-Doo misdirection, but neither Dr. Suzuki nor Dr. Blades are really characters that are interesting enough for me to really care either way, and I feel like earlier season two episodes like "Armory" or "Payback" deal with the mystery game of who's the supervillain much, much better.
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Episode 3: Inqueling
Another interesting one? This one is the last episode for Inque, another one of Batman Beyond's recurring villains, and when looking at the title I thought it's just a remake of "Growing Pains" from Batman: The Animated Series, but with Inque in the place of Clayface. Well, that's not the case! After a disastrous encounter with a client equipped with a special sci-fi gun, Inque founds himself wounded and desperate. She ends up looking for the aid of her biological daughter Deanna. It's an interesting situation they have here, where Inque has been sending money to Deanna, who grew up essentially alone, but hasn't even shown up once in her life prior to this episode.
There's a lot to be said here about their relationship, I feel, especially at the end of the episode where Deanna betrays Inque for essentially leaving her to fend for herself, while throughout the episode Inque has been basically extremely motherly and genuinely looks happy to see that her daughter has grown to be at least a little bit of a criminal like her. And honestly, even Inque's reasons for leaving Deanna behind -- she was on the run -- isn't even all that bad! And she's sending money to her daughter... but there's also the fact that she really could've made contact at any point before this. But then a good part of Deanna's anger towards her mother is basically the feeling of abandonment. I do feel like the fact that Deanna betrays Inque for what's essentially partially revenge and partially greed makes her so much more interesting than if she was just "I'm a good child and my parent is a villain, and it's the right thing to do". We don't really get much more out of the pair since the episode has ended, but I feel like the relationship between the two is told solidly enough in this episode that it's pretty satisfactory.
On the good guys' side, this is a rare Batman Beyond episode without Bruce Wayne, who's off on a trip, so the entire episode hinges on Terry and Max trying to stop Inque on their own. I do really like the brief moment of vulnerability where Terry tells max that he felt like he let down Bruce that one time he screwed up and brought Inque into the Batcave, and now he basically has something to prove to his mentor. I do like that there's a slight parallel between Terry and his surrogate parent, and Deanna and her biological parent.
There's also a B-plot here where Terry blows off Dana for a date several times and I wonder if this season will have a Terry/Dana subplot running through its episodes? Unlike the previous one, though, Dana is very understanding in this one, because she thinks Terry basically sees Old Man Bruce as the father he never had. It's neat.
The episode, as mentioned above, ultimately ends with Deanna cooperating with Inque and getting more and more funds from her to fund their little criminal enterprise, before Batman ultimately hunts them down and faces off against Inque and her daughter in a mutagenic laboratory. Interestingly, following the running pattern of Inque consistently beating Batman in fights, she still has the upper hand against Batman and very nearly kills him until the tainted mutagenic serum that her daughter gave her causes her to dissolve.
The ending is most certainly something that the TAS team kind of likes -- they did this with Riddler in a very memorable episode in Batman: TAS, and a variation with this with Paxton Powers and Blight. But Deanna is relaxing on her new penthouse pool, seemingly having scammed her mother for all of her supervillain money. Batman arrives, giving Deanna a warning that "Inque has been dead before", leaving Deanna in a state of paranoia, and we're not sure if the shadow morphing into Inque's eye is part of her imagination or if Inque has, indeed, reformed and out for revenge. Ultimately, a very solid episode.
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DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- The events of "Ascension" is briefly brought up several times in the conversations between Bruce and Paxton.
- The city of Bludhaven is noted in "Untouchable" as the location of a nuclear testing facility. In the comics, Bludhaven is the 'sister city' to Gotham and the location of many of Nightwing's exploits.
- Both Batman and Inque bring up the events of the episodes of her previous encounters with Batman in "Disappearing Inque" and "Black Out". In particular, Terry still feels guilty for letting Inque into the Batcave in latter.
- The ending of "Inqueling", featuring a secondary villain seemingly getting away scot-free after the primary villain is seemingly killed, but then living a life of paranoia when Batman informs him/her that the death isn't confirmed, is similar to the fate of Daniel Mockridge in the Batman: TAS episode "If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Rich?", where Mockridge spends the rest of his days afraid of when Riddler is going to take his revenge.
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