Batman Beyond S01E10 Review: Hypnotism

Batman Beyond, Season 1, Episode 10: Spellbound

Another episode, another brand-new villain for the Batman of the future to fight. And it's honestly kind of important that we actually set up a small rogue's gallery for Terry to fight, because if we're just mopping up the messes of the past, Batman Beyond would struggle to really set up an identity of its own. And Spellbinder, loosely based on a comic-book villain of the same name, is a pretty fun villain to use in an episode. We've had villains in Batman: The Animated Series that deal with illusions and mind control before like Scarecrow or Mad Hatter, but I really do like the specific depiction of Spellbinder's mind control here, straight-up using his insanely advanced floating eyeball technology to project a VR world into his victim's head. 

And Spellbinder uses this to... commit crime? I guess? He's a school counselor at Terry's high school, which is all sorts of creepy, and he apparently stalks the richer kids in the school and ends up robbing them, which is very creepy. Spellbinder's first victim is recurring minor character Chelsea, who is thrown into a Temple of Doom simulation where she just plays along with it... but instead actually steals a very expensive statue and drops it into the clutches of Spellbinder, who flies away in his ridiculous hover... hover-thing. What is that thing supposed to be, anyway? And because Spellbinder's civilian alter-ego is the school psych counselor, he ends up basically framing Chelsea's robbery as an act to get attention, causing the police to sweep it under the rug. 

But then more robberies with a similar premise happen, and even if the action scenes are mundane, there's some great animation and storyboarding with the visuals of the hallucinations. An auction house manager thinks he's saving his friend in a war, when in reality what he thinks is a fellow soldier he's evacuating is actually a precious dress, and ends up seeing Batman as an enemy soldier. And... I kinda wish that they had actually capitalized more on Ira Billings' role as a student counselor, which would fit pretty well into Terry's own personal life as a student.

The third caper is the wedding of Terry's friend's mother, who gets hypnotized by Spellbinder into thinking she's in some sort of horrifying alien bug-world and ends up freaking out on the altar and running away. Kinda dumb that Spellbinder was apparently walking around in the crowd clad in his full-body-spiral suit and holding an eyeball, but the ensuing chaos as Batman has to try and stop Jared's mom from hurting herself as she escapes what she sees to be bug alien monsters is pretty well--done. In-betwen being forced to save the civilian and also being thrown into an illusion of jumping from a waterfall into a pool, Batman fails to apprehend Spellbinder. Of course, it's at this point where it's clear that Bruce, who's watching Terry through the cameras in the batsuit, is able to see the 'real world', so to speak. 

Also, thanks to Terry's near-death sequence, this episode gives us a pretty clear view of the Tron-like circuitry of the future batsuit under all that sleek black armour. That's pretty cool. 

The final action sequence in this episode is Ira Billings hypnotizing Terry... and, in a fun twist, not becasue Spellbinder figures out that Terry is Batman, no. He just wants Terry to rob his boss, Bruce Wayne, with hints that he's going to use the whole 'trauma after losing his father' as an excuse later on. And, honestly, considering how Chelsea and Terry were targeted by Billings specifically because of potentially using mental illness as a smokescreen, I kinda wished that the episode was a bit smarter in utilizing this theme. 

Bruce manages to take the hypnotized Terry out with his cane, and ends up figuring out Spellbinder's real identity. We then have the third-act fight, with Spellbinder zapping Batman into seeing zombies and whatnot, but Bruce basically helps Terry see through the illusions and tell him to punch where Spellbinder actually is. And... honestly, the fight's all right, if a bit anticlimactic. And overall, the episode itself is a pretty solid villain-of-the-week outing, but it's one that could've been done so much better and had a better unifying theme as far as integrating Spellbinder as a personal threat goes. It's still a pretty solid one, though, and the fun visuals and the design of Spellbinder's suit in general are all pretty dang slick. 

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Spellbinder is a reimagined version of a classic one-off Batman villain from the 60's. In the comics, Delbert Billings is a painter who used hypnotism and optical illusions to commit crimes. Batman Beyond's Spellbinder's costume takes some cues from the original comic-book Spellbinder, particularly using spirals as a theme.
• The 'retro' suit that Terry discovers has the initials D.G., which, of course, refers to Dick Grayson, the first Robin. 
• The auction manager briefly references a line of clothing by 'Princess Audrey'. It might be a huge coincidence, but it might be a stealth early-bird mention of Princess Audrey of Kaznia, Wonder Woman's buddy from the later-produced Justice League episode "Maid of Honor".