Batman Beyond S01E01 Review: The Hero Gotham Deserves

Batman Beyond, Season 1, Episode 1: Rebirth, Part 1

It's the 20th anniversary of Batman Beyond, and it's a show that... as a kid, I frankly didn't really like. How dare they imply that my hero, Batman, ended up growing old and has to be replaced by some punk kid I've never heard of before! How dare they replace all of my favourite villains with third-rate knockoffs! Of course, I've mellowed out a lot, and I've heard a lot of great things about Batman Beyond as a whole. In particular, the episodes I reviewed while covering the Justice League season -- Epilogue in particular -- genuinely impressed me. I've been intending to watch through the series without any preconceived "grrr this is a replacement" and appreciate the show basically without being a bratty little kid, and here we are! I'm not sure how regularly this is going to be a thing, it depends on my watching schedule -- I just thought I needed to get at least this two-parter out first instead of waiting until I finish the entire season, considering I have a backlog of other TV shows I haven't watched and reviewed.


And the first episode opens with Bruce Wayne, the Batman, in a cool-looking brand-new suit with a red logo, a retractable cape-wing thing, and a full-face mask. It's clearly Gotham City, but in the future, and apparently we get hints of some dude called Derek Powers trying to take over Wayne Enterprises. Meanwhile, Batman goes and tries to rescue a girl (Bunny Vreeland, daughter of Veronica Vreeland from Batman: The Animated Series) kidnapped by a bunch of random thugs, only to get a heart attack in the middle of fighting them, and while Batman manages to take down all but one, he ended up being forced to pull a gun to defend himself. It's just to scare the final thug into running away, and he does it for a good cause, but a combination between being forced to use a gun as well as his failure is such a sobering and soul-crushing moment for old man Bruce that he ends up hanging up the suit, vowing "never again."

That's an amazing prologue, setting up that, yes, even someone as badass as Batman will eventually become old and vulnerable, while also keeping things ambiguous enough in this future time period that implies things without confirming anything. Where are Nightwing, Robin and Batgirl, and why are their costumes on display? Where are Batman's other allies like Alfred and Gordon? What about Superman? Or the Justice League? What's going to happen? It's the same sort of uncertainty that Young Justice's sequel seasons would use to great effect, and while this prologue does lean a bit too hard into making Batman into a bit of a failure of sorts, the rest of the two-parter debut is definitely going to fix that.

And then we jump even more into the future, into the year of 2039, exactly 20 years later. So apparently the prologue sequence of Batman hanging up his cowl happened in 2019. Huh! As with all imaginations of the future, we get wacky futuristic buildings, policemen on hoverbikes, and random Japanese kanji plastered all over the buildings. Considering the amount of effort that dubbed anime ended up going through to remove kanji from shows like Digimon, Pokemon or One Piece, it's actually sort of hilarious that this American-made cartoon just plainly have random foreign words plastered all over their backgrounds.

We're introduced to our hero, Terry McGinnis, your average high schooler, who ends up in an encounter with a burly dude dressed in a clown suit and spray-painting all over some public transport, before extorting money from a random lady in the bus-tram thing, because "I give you funny, you give me money". This is a member of the Jokerz Gang, a gang of punks that fashion themselves after the Joker while being nowhere as effective, funny or brutal as the real deal -- so in other words, like all those edgy teenagers on the internet who post those "as a kid you root for Batman, but as an adult the Joker makes more sense" memes. Terry beats up this random Jokerz gang member (he's named Scab, but none of the Jokerz have their names said on-screen). And we quickly sort of learn a bit more about Terry. He's in Hamilton High School (gotta appeal to the audience by having the protagonist be their age) and he's got a girlfriend, Dana Tan, and he's got his own local bully-rival, Nelson. None of the school stuff in Batman Beyond has really appealed to me all that much, but they do help with the world-building, so yeah.

Meanwhile, Terry's dad Warren McGinnis ends up getting embroiled in some intra-company conspiracy thing as one of his co-workers, Harry, passes him a tiny CD, but ends up being electrocuted and taken away by the Wayne-Powers' head enforcer, Mr. Fixx. And as Warren talks to his boss, Derek Powers, he gets given a cover story about how Harry has a severe allergic reaction, and Warren will be able to see him next week.


I also find it hilarious that the people of 1999 apparently can think up of hoverbikes and robotic wingsuits and whatnot, but also can't imagine that within the next decade people will be able to make data-carrying receptacles more sophisticated than a CD. Ah, the 90's.

Anyway, in a pretty huge revelation for the time that the show was produced, we learn that Terry doesn't come from the most wholesome family. His parents are divorced, and while it seems to be an amicable one from what little we see, Terry and Warren have a bit of an argument and Terry says some hurtful things about being a "success" like Warren. Also, instead of more traditionally wholesome sports or study groups or whatever, Terry really just likes going to the club with his girlfriend, and while it's certainly not something that should be thought of as abnormal or dirty, again, at the time that the show was created, I remembered how oddly different this is compared to most other shows on air.

And then the Jokerz gang shows up! Now led by someone who actually impersonates Joker (albeit with white lip makeup and a pompadour), the J-Man, they beat up Nelson in front of the club, and one of the grabs and starts tickling Dana which is probably the closest thing you could get into showing a gang member molesting a teenager in a cartoon. Terry understandably picks a fight with the Jokerz, leading to a bike chase.

It's this fateful bike chase that ended up bringing Terry and the Jokerz to the Wayne Manor, which is a lot more imposing and less friendly-looking than it has been in the past. Old Man Bruce shows up and basically tells them all to fuck off and leave his property, and we get a fun smirk from him when the Jokerz proudly declare that they are the Jokerz. We get a team-up between Terry's undisciplined flailing around and Old Man Bruce just laying the law with nothing but his walking stick and arthritis, absolutely trouncing the Jokerz gang... and even backhand-whacks one while in conversation with Terry.

The Jokerz escape, Old Man Bruce is still a badass, but... a badass with heart problems. Terry helps Bruce into the mansion, and we get to see the adorable and best character of the show, Ace the dog!

(Who, in light of Justice League Unlimited's "Epilogue" episode, is 100% named after Ace of the Royal Flush Gang, and it's pretty sad yet also heartwarming). 

After helping Bruce sit down and eat his medication, Bruce ends up falling asleep, while Terry excuses himself... and accidentally opens the way to the batcave when he sees a bat stuck on the grandfather clock. Terry walks into the cave, realizes enough about what's going on, before Old Man Bruce shows up and tells him to "get out". It's honestly pretty great hearing Kevin Conroy simultaneously inject a lot of vulnerability and tiredness into Old Man Bruce's voice but still making him sound as badass as ever.


Terry returns back home after all of this... to find his dad dead, and his home vandalized and spray-painted with Jokerz graffiti. His mom is there, the police are there, and the death happened suddenly and off-screen. No dramatic slow-motion shot of pearls dropping in Crime Alley, no last-minute responsibility speech from Uncle Ben... it's a genuinely shocking swerve, and the subsequent brief montage of a funeral and mourning ends up with Terry angsting and angry at himself that he went around picking fights with a gang, blaming the Jokerz for tracking him back to his home and killing his dad as revenge. Of course, the audience knows that Warren is most likely killed by Derek Powers due to the whole company espionage thing, but the self-blame has always been a great motivator in these superhero shows, and Terry's feeling of guilt and responsibility ends up being a driving force.

While cleaning up his room and preparing to move in with his mother and little brother, Terry realizes that his father hid the mysterious CD behind a photograph. He's being watched by Powers' people, but Terry ends up going off to the Wayne Mansion. Old Man Bruce is unwilling to help, again, because he's hung up his cape, but Terry's yellings in front of the mansion about something stinking in Wayne's company, and the "you're no Batman!" accusation ends up causing Bruce to relent... and this is the end of the first part.

Y'know... this story is a lot more mature than its predecessors. The tone is all different and funky, the  main focus as far as villains go is less on bank heists and colourful criminals and more on corporate espionage, and we get to see a Gotham City that's changed utterly in a world where Batman has retired. But honestly, Batman Beyond does a lot of things well. Old Man Bruce and Terry McGinnis are characterized relatively well, with the former being surly and bitter without losing his badassery or being too much of a cunt, whereas Terry is enthusiastic and well-meaning without basically becoming an annoying chirpy sidekick. We'll pick up this series tomorrow for the second part of the series premiere, but it's definitely a pretty great opening to a series that I didn't give the time of the day as a kid. 

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Nearly every single thing in Batman Beyond is either original or only very loosely based on the comics, so this segment won't be quite as numerous as before. Mostly, it's just going to be nods at the larger TAS canon in general.
• Most of the ones we see in this episode are in the form of costumes -- the main heroes from Batman: The Animated Series (Batman, Robin, Batgirl, Nightwing) have theirs displayed prominently in display cases. 
• While the only real thing that this has with the iconic graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns is featuring a crotchety old Bruce Wayne, the "never again" line is definitely a homage to that. 
• Ace borrows his name from the Golden Age animal sidekick of Batman, Ace the Bat-Hound. This Ace doesn't wear a cowl and go around to fight crime, though. His breed is also changed from a German Shepherd in the comics to a Great Dane.