Batman Beyond, Season 3, Episodes 6-8:
Season 3, Episode 6: Speak No Evil
Oh, right. This episode. After how impactful the previous episode was, and how great the next two are, "Speak No Evil" ends up feeling like such a drag. And it's not like the episode itself is done terribly -- the writing is all right, and the animation is neat. And the concept is definitely... original? It feels like something that wouldn't be out of place in those wacky Golden Age era stories (go read Golden Age superhero stories if you don't believe me) and honestly... a talking gorilla isn't even novel anymore.
Anyway, Fingers the gorilla accidentally gets super-smartness thanks to scientists experimenting with Splicer DNA serum stuff, and then Fingers rampages around Gotham City. Terry has a talk with him and discovers that Fingers hates the nature preserver Van Dyle, who's actually secretly a poacher that kidnapped Fingers's mother and other gorilla friends. There's a confrontation, Batman teams up with the gorilla and fights some lions and goons. Van Dyle has a fancy heat-detecting cyborg monocle. But ultimately it's just so... it's just so dry, you know? And I don't mind the morals, because, shit, poaching is evil, but this episode does hammer home the moralizing lessons a bit too hard.
Season 3, Episode 7-8: The Call
I was waiting for this one. I know a future version of the Justice League appeared in Batman Beyond, because as a kid twenty-odd years ago, I bought these 'guide/companion to the show' books. And despite only ever watching parts of the first season of Batman Beyond, I know these guys existed! And I thought it was so cool! The Justice League operates in 2049, and we've got a lot of familiar-sounding titles, but all the characters are brand-new? That's cool! A Superman cameo? A new Green Lantern? Big Barda? Successors to Aquaman and Hawkman? (Micron wasn't featured in that book, so his entire existence was a surprise to me) And then, of course, the JLU of 2049 made a brief cameo in the actual Unlimited show, which was also pretty cool. And now I finally get to watch these episodes.
And... and they're pretty interesting, because the concept isn't even what I expected. Which was "Batman hangs out with the Justice League for a day, but refuses to join because of status quo". Which was what happened in the Static Shock crossover, if I'm not mistaken. But no. The two-parter starts off with the Atom stand-in, Micron, rescuing a runaway train, but then getting mortally wounded when a rogue forcefield pops up and traps him while rescuing the passengers. And then cut to Batman chasing down Inque (for her final appearance, and also I guess since she's alive, her daughter's totally dead), only for Superman to hop in and help Batman defeat her.
Superman pops into the Batcave and has a fun little talk with Bruce, and then invites Terry to join the Justice League... but it's not entirely just because he's doing a good job, but because he suspects that Micron's injury was sabotage, and he tasks Terry into looking at the candidates. Warhawk and Big Barda are almost-immediately hostile towards Terry, seeing him as a pretender to the cowl, while Kai-Ro and Aquagirl are just... calm and kind of there.
The first episode mostly deals with a couple of individual attacks. Aquagirl gets stuck in her training pool which is set to overheat, and Terry ends up causing a whole lot of damage when he rescues her, when Terry really should've asked one of the superpowered people to help out. Later on, as a massive series of explosions rock the city, the Justice League show off their powers in rescuing everyone. As he continues to bicker with Warhawk, Warhawk alone receives a distress call, and flies up to intercept a missile... which explodes and seems to kill him. That shot of Warhawk's empty helm slamming into the Batmobile's windscreen is pretty cool!
Later on, Bruce and Terry do some old-fashioned 'zoom and enhance' on the Batcomputer... and realize that it's Superman's heat vision that set off the missile. In a pretty chilling scene, Bruce hands Terry his secret Kryptonite, stored behind the rows of costumes, and tells Terry to use it... by all means necessary.
And then the second part starts, with everyone reeling from Warhawk's seeming death. I do like how immediately hostile Barda gets, because to all of them, Terry is just some new kid who's implying that one of their closest allies has killed another member of their team, but while Kai-Ro and Aquagirl try to calm everyone down... turns out Warhawk survived. He piloted his armour remotely when he got suspicious. Which... not going to lie, feels like an absolute cop-out for multiple reasons. Batman (and the audience) follow Warhawk throughout almost the entirety of the scene as he flies up to get to the missile, and to top it off, Superman also has X-Ray vision. Admittedly, this isn't really Superman, not exactly, but still... I really did feel like it was completely unnecessary and could've been explained better. Even a brief flashback showing how Warhawk does this (how does that cool armour work?) would've done wonders.
But with his allies ready to now back him up (and Warhawk has a lot of scrappy respect for Terry now), they go off to confront Superman, catching him just as he's about to cut Micron's life-support. The fight is entertaining because, well, Superman is freaking unstoppable! He's Superman! They also see something wiggle under Superman's suit. During the process, Terry understandably hesitates in using the kryptonite to hurt Superman, and would've been screwed up if Micron and Barda hadn't shown up to help.
So yeah, we're going the alien possession route. With Barda's Boom Tube and Bruce's knowledge of where the Fortress of Solitude is, they confront Superman in his little intergalactic zoo, and the pieces are laid out to us -- Superman's possessed by a mind-controlling alien starfish called Starro! We get a surprising continuity nod to Starro's cameo from the Superman: TAS episode "The Main Man", and Aquagirl's telepathic communication with Starro gives the cast (and the audience) an opportunity to learn how Starro got to Earth. And now that it's spawned enough young in a chamber in order to take over the Earth, it decides to take out the Justice League.
Admittedly, though, why Starro-Superman would then choose to bring Terry into the JLU in order to investigate is a bit questionable. Unless Starro isn't as much in control as he'd like to, and bits of Superman is peeking out? The episodes make no real effort to explain it, though, other than real-world misdirection. But man, Starro could've much more effectively killed the JLU members if he hadn't brought Batman on board, just saying.
Anyway, the final action scene is pretty neat. Most of the JLU members get something to do before they're ultimately glomped and mind-controlled by the Starros, and we get a pretty cool chase scene as Starro-Superman stand-flies to chase the flying Batmobile through the Antarctic skies. I say 'stand-fly', yes, because that's the best I could describe the way that Starro makes Superman's body fly. With aid of the Batmobile's grapple gun and an electrical shock, Batman frees Superman from Starro's control, and the two of them head back to free all the other JLU members. There's a bit of surprising coldness when Superman tells Barda to just go ahead with burying the Starros in the pool because Batman 'knew what he signed up for'... that's surprisingly harsh, and a 'I trusted him' would've probably worked better here? I don't know. Anyway, our heroes ultimately use Aquagirl's telepathy and Barda's Boom Tube to return the Starros to their homeworld, and Batman rejects the invitation to the JLU because of status quo.
The worldbuilding angle is definitely nice, and it's great to see Batman meet and team up with Old Man Superman and his fancy black-and-silver costume. Starro as an antagonist makes my geeky heart happy, the Batman-vs-Superman angle and the Kryptonite discussion were great, and I do like the varied characters of the JLU and their reactions to Terry. That said, between the odd decisions that Starro-Superman makes (we never learn why Starro thinks it's a good idea to invite a detective since no one even suspects a traitor other than "Superman") and the rather terrible way that the two-parter handled Warhawk's death and fakeout really does make the episode feel like it's perhaps just one or two revisions short of becoming truly stellar.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- Starro the Conqueror is the first enemy that the Justice League has ever had to face in the comics, debuting in The Brave and the Bold #28, which caused the formation of the Justice League of America.
- Starro's backstory was featured in the Superman: The Animated Series first season episode "The Main Man". Starro actually does have a brief cameo in the background of that episode! Scenes from that episode, namely Superman fighting the Preserver, are shown in this episode.
- "Justice League Unlimited" make their first fictional appearance here. While here it's just made to be a nod to Justice League (this episode was aired before the Justice League show was made), the term "Justice League Unlimited" would later be used for the final seasons of Justice League.
- While most of the members of the Justice League Unlimited are original characters made for the show (other than Superman and Big Barda, who stands in for Wonder Woman), they are all visually meant to be 'legacy' characters to other major DC superheroes:
- Aquagirl is obviously meant to be a parallel to Aquaman, and is identified as his daughter in this continuity.
- Green Lantern is always a title and there has been multiple Green Lanterns even in the DCAU continuity. Kai-Ro (named after a minor Green Lantern character from 60's cartoons) is just the latest of Earth's Green Lanterns.
- Warhawk stands in for Hawkman, although he has slightly different powers. Justice League Unlimited would reveal that Warhawk is, in fact, the son of Hawkgirl and John Stewart/Green Lantern.
- Micron is a stand-in for the Atom, although he can also grow large, a power that Atom doesn't always possess.
- Aquaman (using his Superman: The Animated Series appearance) makes a brief cameo on Batman's computer, being identified as Aquagirl's father. His whereabouts are apparently unknown.
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