Batman Beyond, Season 3, Episodes 12-13: Beyond

Batman Beyond, Season 3, Episodes 12-13:

Episode 12: Countdown

Okay, I didn't know we had a crossover episode. Especially one that came relatively late into the season. So that shape-shifting robot Zeta from earlier in the show wandered off and got his own spin-off cartoon, which... okay? 'Countdown' basically brings Zeta and his supporting cast in for a little romp in Batman Beyond. Zeta has a brand-new more humanoid robot head, and a new best friend called Ro, as well as a bunch of men-in-black agents hunting him down. It's a pretty standard showcase of a character's side-cast, I guess. 

The plot itself is... it's all right? If we're being honest, it's more of Batman and Ro teaming up instead of Zeta, because Zeta spends almost the entirety of this episode disoriented and walking around all confused with a bomb strapped onto his back. The main villain of this one is Mad Stan, who, despite all odds, graduates from being a recurring gag into an actual main villain in his own episode. In-between ranting about the 'dirty feds' and 'basic human rights' and all that, Mad Stan thinks that him running across the shape-shifting Zeta is the government trying to spy on him, and he straps a bomb onto Zeta and sends the oblivious robot to the department of health.  

Meanwhile, Batman and Ro kind of just... track him down? Agent Bannett and his little squadron of men-in-black government people are also hunting Zeta down, and Batman ends up thinking that they would help. Turns out Mad Stan is right about these 'dirty feds'. Ultimately we get a pretty neat identity-switch with Zeta pretending to be Batman and jumping in the Batmobile, while Terry dresses up as a janitor. Not the biggest fan of this episode, if I'm being honest -- I feel like they really could've made for a bigger event out of this, but it's otherwise all right. 

Episode 13: Unmasked

And here we go with the final episode of Batman Beyond, although it really doesn't feel like a season or series finale -- especially jarring with a title like 'Unmasked', yeah? Thankfully, the show would have a much, much more fitting finale in the episode 'Epilogue' in Justice League Unlimited. Or depending on your watching order, that one Joker movie (which we'll cover on this blog eventually) would also make for a far better season finale. 

'Unmasked' is a flashback episode, with the entirety of the present-day scenes just showing Terry and Max discussing the importance of secret identities. Due to Terry's Batman activities, he blows off poor Dana Tan again. Kinda sucks that this plotline has kinda been built up in season three, how Terry's struggling to juggle his Batman life and it's putting a wrench into his relationship with Dana, but there's no real payoff to that. 

The actual storyline in Batman's flashback is actually surprisingly darker than I expected. When Batman is rescuing a boy trapped in a burning building from a fire, he had to take off his mask to calm the terrified boy down. The villainous Kobra, led by the orange-suited Korba One from season two, just happen to have a memory-reading machine (which they really could've used for a world-domination plan; it couldn't have been worse than Zander's) and they plan to kidnap this boy in order to get Batman's secret identity. 

The actual way that Kobra kidnaps the boy -- by sending a second team disguised as policemen -- is definitely something that actually caught even me off-guard. And just like "Curse of the Kobra", we get a recurring elite Kobra goon with exotic weapons that makes the fight scenes a bit more exciting. Kobra One actually even straight-up almost kills the little boy by snake pit if Batman hadn't shown up, and actually even kills one of his minions whose crime was warning his brother of a Kobra bomb. And then Kobra One, seeing his defeat, proceeds to kill himself by jumping into the snake pit. Considering how sterile cartoons became in the past couple of decades in terms of death, it's actually surprising (and somewhat refreshing) to see scenes like this. Perhaps the darkest part, for me, is that Kobra One's death is all for nothing because little Miguel didn't even really catch Terry's face, and puts in the face of the toy he's obsessed with, Sergeant Sam, in place of it. 

Anyway, it's an all right episode. Again, a bit of an odd way to end the season, but still a pretty solid episode in its own right. Some neat interactions between Terry and Max, and a pretty neat exploration of the superhero secret identity conundrum. The third season does have a bunch of rather solid episodes under its belt, for sure, although I don't think either the second or third season really reached the same high as the first season of Batman Beyond. It's been fun, though! We'll cover the movie a bit later. 

Batman Beyond, Season 3, Episodes 9-11: Kobra Kai

Batman Beyond, Season 3, Episodes 9-11:

Episode 9: Betrayal

Okay, when I reviewed "Big Time" earlier this season, I definitely didn't know that we were going to get a follow-up to Charlie Bigelow's storyline. Which is... an interesting one, I guess. Bigelow as Terry McGinnis's childhood friend is definitely an interesting prompt for an antagonist, and the episode itself is actually set up pretty well. Bigelow has found himself in cahoots with another criminal lord, called the Major, and he feels disrespected and mistrusted. To that end, he ends up kidnapping Terry in order to find a friend that he can trust, setting up the Major and his goons to be arrested by the police. Of course, ultimately, Bigelow ends up betraying Terry since it's all a play for him to allay suspicion off of himself. In the final fight, Bigelow falls off a bridge into the river below, which is superhero-cartoon shorthand for 'he's maybe dead but we can't show him, but don't be surprised if he shows up next season'. 

The problem here, I think, is that never at any point in the show do I really believe that Bigelow is anything but a piece of shit. His debut episode has made it pretty clear that Bigelow, at best, is an unrepentant terrible influence on Terry. And none of the characters in this episode are willing to give Bigelow much of a chance, either -- Bruce and Max are pretty quick to dismiss him, and while Terry does extend a brief second chance, it feels a lot more... guarded and hollow compared to how Terry had been with, say, Ten. It's admittedly the right move, since Bigelow does end up betraying everyone. And Terry's deal is more of an alternate solution to make sure Bigelow doesn't get killed by his gangster friends for turning himself in. So... I really don't know. It doesn't help that Bigelow himself isn't even that interesting of a character, so while it's neat to see a conclusion to this story arc, it doesn't feel particularly compelling since Terry's already pretty wise to his tricks. 

Episodes 10-11: Curse of the Kobra

Hmmm, okay, this one is a bit of an interesting two-parter? It feels like they tried to do a bit too much with this pair of episodes, though, and none of the storylines really end up reaching its potential. The episode's 'superhero' part starts off with something typical of these shows -- the terrorist organization Kobra show up and steal a super-powerful thermal bomb. Batman loses in a martial arts battle against one of the Kobra goons, prompting Bruce to send Terry to study under one of his old allies, Kairi Tanaga. This ends up forming kind of the bulk of this episode, with Bruce learning under Kairi's tutelage in the dojo. We get some pretty basic 'learn martial arts' stuff, and for the bulk of the first episode, it involves Terry slowly befriending the enigmatic Zander. Zander is a fellow student, and seems to always be in the presence of two mean-looking bodyguards anytime he comes and goes out of the dojo. 

In-between fighting Kobra goons who steal dinosaur DNA research, Terry tries to get Zander to lighten up. The initially standoffish Zander turns out to be up for a day out with Terry, sneaking out of the dojo to eat pizza and play some virtual games with Max -- turns out Zander is very competitive and insists he never loses. Eventually they get into a scuffle with a bunch of the Jokerz, which leads to Zander's bodyguards showing up and taking him home. Kairi gives some cryptic explanations about Zander to Terry, noting that 'his future has been chosen for him'.

And said 'future' turns out to Zander being the leader of Kobra, because the audience sees Zander supervising the transformation of some of the Kobra minions into dinosaur-people with splicing technology. Because of that meeting with Max and his defeat in a video game, however, Zander decides to kidnap Max. Batman arrives a bit too late to save Max, and ends up having his wings ripped off by one of the Kobra goons. 

Part 2 starts off with Terry waking up in the Batcave, and makes it abundantly clear that he's not operating at maximum efficiency, with his ribs. Some absolutely great scripting between Terry and Bruce here, actually, especially that exchange about fault. Meanwhile, Max wakes up in the Kobra base, with Zander essentially wanting the defiant Max as his wife in the new world order. We get a relatively extended sequence of Max escaping and fighting against the two handmaidens that Kobra has assigned to her. At this point, Zander monologues about his backstory -- he was genetically manufactured by Kobra and grown and taught to be the perfect leader for Kobra. 

Which, uh... makes the fact that Zander's huge perfect-leader plan for Kobra being 'we need to turn all of Kobra into half-dinosaur people because dinosaurs are once the dominant species of our planet, but to do that we need to also plunge the Earth into a global cooling because dinosaurs love the cold!' It's such a hilarious combination of Golden Age comic-book plots that I can't even be angry at it. It's so silly, chief of all the fact that cold-blooded animals would actually die faster in the cold. 

It's a bit of a shame, then, ridiculous doomsday plan aside, that none of the real set-ups we had in part 1 really end up paying off. It's probably one of the more exciting action scenes in this show, admittedly, because that one nun-chuck Kobra goon and dinosaur-men is really neat. We even have Kairi suiting up in a ninja outfit to help Batman out, to atone for her failures as Zander's sensei. But all of this ultimately leads to a rather simple action scene, and ultimately Kairi goes down with Zander on the ship.

And... and while the set-up is neat, Zander himself becomes a pretty bland cookie-cutter villain in the end. And it's a shame because the two-parter sets up multiple avenues that the story could have been explored. Terry and Max actually befriended Zander in part 1, and Kairi has the whole 'master who failed to help her student' story going on. But neither of those are really explored at all in the end because Zander is just monologuing about his manifest destiny. The character himself doesn't even come off as particularly conflicted about how different the world Terry and Max shows him is compared to what Kobra told him. For the matter, I probably would've liked it a bit better if Kairi and Zander's relationship was actually shown a bit more, instead of just being kind of tangential. It's kind of a pity, because otherwise this episode could've been so much better. 

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Kairi is a one-off supporting character in the Batman: The Animated Series episode "Day of the Samurai". 
• Dr. Cuvier, the villain from the second season episode "Splicers", show up in the background of Zander's conditioning. So I guess he's a member of Kobra? 
• The game Sentries of the Last Cosmos, featured in season two, shows up here as the game that Max and Zander play. 

Batman Beyond S03E06-08 Review: Unlimited

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. 

Batman Beyond S03E04-05 Review: Past Sins

Batman Beyond, Season 3, Episodes 4-5:

Season 3, Episode 4: Big Time

This is one of the big episodes of the season, in a way? At least it's framed like one. Throughout the past two seasons we've had a lot of hints about Terry McGinnis having spent time in juvie, and the show has been surprisingly cryptic with the details. "Big Time" finally sheds some light and explains it. Unfortunately, it's... not a very interesting episode, or that well of an explanation. As a much younger teenager, Terry hung out with Charlie "Big-Time" Bigelow, a terrible friend who goes off stealing stuff and brings Terry along with him. Terry managed to escape the worst because he was underage, but Bigelow spent three years in prison. There's a bit of an attempt at some depth to this with Terry and Maxine's conversation, but ultimately, that's all there is to Terry's backstory. It's just there to give a bond between Terry and Bigelow. Which would be nice, if this episode was really all that interesting. 

But... it's not. Perhaps the episode could've benefited more by playing Bigelow's intentions up as a mystery, but it's pretty quickly revealed to both the audience and Terry that Bigelow is a terrible influence. He first shows up quite literally creeping on Dana, then tries to get Terry to help him on a criminal job. Because he's a good guy, Terry actually manages to convince Bruce to give Bigelow a chance. And, of course, Bigelow immediately proves to be untrustworthy, because the audience knows that he's actually working alongside Richard Armacost, an evil business mogul that's trying to steal Wayne-Powers industrial secrets, who's also working with the Wolverine-clawed mercenary Karros. 

Everything honestly plays out more or less as you think it would. Batman keeps showing up to spoil their heists, there's a fight between the bad guys, and at some point in this conflict, Bigelow gets doused with Cerestone, ultimately mutating into a hideous flesh-beast that fights Karros and Armacost, before Batman shows up and beats up everyone. End episode. And... I don't know. I feel like there's a lot of stuff that they could've explored here. Perhaps a version of this episode where the audience doesn't know if Bigelow is actually evil or is trying to reform, making Terry and Bruce's argument and the subsequent proof that Bigelow betrayed Terry more painful. Maybe a version of this where the episode explores whether Terry is more involved with Bigelow's possible redemption -- because all they had are two angry confrontations in this one, meaning that it's a lot less impactful. Or maybe Bigelow being such a huge douche makes it just a bit too hard for me to be invested in whether he becomes good or not? I don't know. It just feels like a bit of a disappointment. 

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Season 3, Episode 5: Out of the Past

What's not a disappointment, however, is this one, "Out of the Past". I know the contents of some of the episodes that are about to come in this season, but this one absolutely blindsided me. It's a huge, loving tribute to the history of these characters in the universe itself, and a wonderful focus on a retired superhero like Bruce Wayne. Hell, even the opening scene, with the hilarious Bat-musical (actually performed by Conroy himself!) is really quite impactful for the episode itself. It's funny, of course, but it also ties into Bruce having to see his legacy be interpreted in different ways, in addition to being a painful reminder of what youth was. There's also a running theme of Terry and 'Talia' noting that Bruce misses being under the cowl, and while Bruce never confronts Terry about it, seeing the musical actor as that 'someone else under that cowl' probably is something that stings even further.

It's also Bruce's birthday, and it has put him in a reminiscing mood, and the show does a great job of showing respect to continuity by having Bruce morosely remember a lot of the women he's been close with in his life (though no Diana yet; this show was produced before Justice League)... and then one of them shows up! Talia al Ghul has always been an interesting character and one that I thought was going to show up sooner or later in Batman Beyond, since thanks to the Lazarus Pits, Talia and her father are essentially immortal. I had always expected them to turn up when I watched season one -- certainly they would be far more likely to survive into far future of 2039 compared to someone like Bane. 

As Bruce's body can't even stomach the meal that he once shared with Talia, she offers an enticing offer -- for Bruce to use the Lazarus Pit. And it's such, such an interesting dilemma that Old Bruce has to wrestle with, and I appreciate that while the episode does moralize a little in the end (which then gets swept aside by the whole Ra's al Ghul stuff) I do like that Bruce does actually consider taking the cure. Admittedly, to his credit he does refuse at first, and only in a moment of literal vulnerability when he was mugged and nearly killed by a car that he decides to take up Talia's offer. 

And, honestly, I wouldn't really see too much of a problem if Talia was actually being genuine. Bruce does, though, noting that he probably doesn't have the right to artificially prolong his life compared to others, and later gets pissed because this is 'cheating' when he exercises after his youth is partially restored. Kevin Conroy does amazing work in this episode. Of course, I would say that having someone as brilliant as Bruce live a bit longer on Earth would be a good thing, but then turns out that Talia is actually evil all along. Or, rather, Talia is actually dead all along, and what has been flirting with Bruce all along had been Ra's al Ghul, piloting Talia's body after demanding the 'ultimate sacrifice' from her, and now he wants to steal Bruce's body. 

...actually a twist I didn't see. I expected Ra's to be involved somehow, or for Talia to be secretly evil. But for Ra's to have actually killed and hiijacked Talia's body? It actually blindsided me. And Ra's al Ghul's voice speaking out of Talia's body is creepy as all heck! The rest of the episode more or less plays out as it would, with action scenes and stuff as Terry fights Ra's goons and rescues Bruce. The machinery explodes, though, and as he runs in and tries to salvage the computer, Ra's/Talia is consumed by the explosion and presumably dies. A pretty fitting end for someone as scummy as Ra's, honestly. 

And... and there's a lot to really like about this episode. Bringing back one of Bruce's greatest enemies to torment him one last time? The general sombre tone of the whole episode as Bruce mourns times long gone by? The absolute banger of the triumphant Batman: The Animated Series music when youthful-Bruce and Terry fight together in that hallway against the goons? Shit, that music literally gave me chills down my spine. Sorry, Batman Beyond, your music is good, but this is just so much better. Part of me is a bit annoyed that they killed off Talia in a pretty offhanded manner, but the rest of this episode is so good! Possibly one of the best episodes out there. 

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Cerestone was previously mentioned in "Ace in the Hole", because this episode was produced before it but was aired much later.
• Ra's al Ghul and Talia al Ghul were last seen in the DCAU continuity in a Superman: The Animated Series crossover, "The Demon Reborn". 
• Pictures of Zatanna, Lois Lane, Catwoman and Barbara Gordon appear on Batman's computer. DCAU Batman's other major love interest, Wonder Woman, hasn't actually appeared on-screen yet since this show was made first. 
• The members of the Bat-musical include actors playing Batman, Joker, Penguin, Two-Face, Catwoman, Poison Ivy, Harley Quinn and Robin. 
• Notably, Robin is in his Golden Age "underwear" costume that bares his legs, which never actually made an appearance in DCAU. 
• "I am vengeance, I am the night, I am Batman" is, of course, the iconic lines spoken by Batman in the first episode of Batman: The Animated Series.
• The musical includes Batman describing (or, well, singing) about criminals as a 'superstitious, cowardly lot!', something he does a lot in the comics, popularized by the very first Batman comic in Detective Comics. 

Batman Beyond S03E01-03 Review: Poker Face

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. 

Batman Beyond S02E25-26 Review: Doggy Business

Batman Beyond, Season 2, Episodes 25-26

Episode 25: Where's Terry

This one, I didn't really like quite as much. It's, on paper, a pretty all right episode, but I just... I just didn't get into this one. The episode starts off with Terry seemingly being gone, missing in action. No one's seen him -- not his mother, not Dana, not Bruce and not Max. All they have to go on is that Terry separated from his friends chasing down a suspicious individual after going to the movies. 

It's kind of interesting to see all these other people in Terry's life worrying about him, but ultimately it's just an excuse for Bruce and Max, the two allies that know about Terry's double-life, to have a bit of a team-up. It's already been building up throughout the season that Max already figured out Bruce Wayne's secret identity, and I also love that the two of them basically already sort of figured out that the other party had figured out. 

It's just that... it's just that what they do, I think, isn't very interesting. Sure, we've got some great moments, like Max coming in to help Old Man Bruce from a bunch of gangsters, and Bruce's offscreen-interrogation (which they had again in the later-released Justice League), as well as Bruce making Max think he's going to distract the people when he's using her as bait... but ultimately it all sort of amounts to a B-plot that doesn't really do much, and despite me liking both Old Man Bruce and Max a lot, their interactions here are way too bland. 

Terry himself finds himself at the mercy of Shriek's second return! And Shriek is... I'm actually not sure what he's doing, he's just fighting Batman or something, I guess. At least Ollie shows up too, I do like the interaction between him and Shriek. Shriek's battle with Batman leaves him trapped in a section of the underground tunnels with a young runaway boy called Dak, and... again, while we do have some neat visuals (mostly Shriek's sound waves moving like a worm through the underground tunnels; and the flooding) and the idea of a runaway who idolizes supervillains is neat, it's not the most interesting thing either. Maybe it's because I just find Dak a bit annoying?

Either way, despite blaming Batman for beating down all these other supervillains who are "only doing it to be free", Batman ends up saving Dak, and trusts him to get out of the hole that he managed to crack open in the ceiling of where they were trapped. Dak ends up repaying the favour by covering for Batman. It's a nice moment, even if the scene didn't quite land for me. Ultimately, Dak tricks Shriek into attacking a wall that leads to the river, following what Batman taught him before, flooding Shriek and Ollie away at the risk to Dak himself. Batman breaks free, saves Dak, while Old Man Bruce whacks Shriek from behind when he tries to menace Batman. 

Overall... it's a neat episode, honestly, but not one that I'm going to be in a rush to rewatch any time soon. 

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Episode 26: Ace in the Hole

It's really interesting how the first season is basically kind of a buildup to a confrontation with Blight, while season two is just... really just there? Every single episode in this one was just standalone stories, either featuring returning villains or having a 'Troubled Youth(tm)' storyline. None of which are honestly a problem -- Batman: The Animated Series managed multiple seasons without any huge overarching plot, after all -- but it does make this season feel a lot less... interesting, y'know? There are certainly some great episodes in this season, but there are also a bunch that made me simply shrug at them, like the car-jacking one, or Howard Groote, or the Eggbaby...

At least this one was neat. "Ace in the Hole" is basically one of those "origin story and resolution in the same episode" stories, except it revolves around Ace. When Ace goes a bit berserk and chases down a strange man and gets loose in town, we get to learn from Old Man Bruce about the circumstances behind Ace coming into Bruce Wayne's care. 

Turns out that poor widdle baby Ace was taken and raised by an abusive, terrible dog-fighting manager called Ronny Boxer. The episode really sells just how fucking terrible people who raise dogs for dog-fighting rings are. It doesn't show anything graphic, but, man, the episode really manages to make me loathe Ronny Boxer pretty quickly as he raises Ace to be a 'fighter'. During a GCPD raid on the illegal dog-fighting ring, Ace manages to escape in the chaos, and happens to meet Old Man Bruce, who's putting flowers down on Crime Alley. They save each other in turn from a Jokerz gang member, and that's how Bruce met Ace. 

Interestingly, nothing about this other than the Crime Alley meeting is something that's known to Bruce, so it's all just something that the audience sees while we see Ace wandering around 2029-era Gotham, while Terry has to juggle looking for poor, missing Ace. I do really like the scene of Bruce pushing Terry to go hunt down the bad guy, Ronny Boxer, brushing away concerns about Ace with "he's a resourceful dog, he'll be fine" while giving sad, longing glances at Ace's dish... god damn it, Bruce. 

Batman's investigation finds out that Boxer has been doping up his dogs with some growth-steroid called Cerestone, while poor Ace gets captured by the corrupt dog-pound man who caught him so many years ago. The dogcatcher sells Ace back to Boxer, who recognizes him and plans to use him as a prize dog again. Batman arrives on Boxer's cargo ship, and ends up finding himself sealed in an arena, fighting against one of Boxer's experiments, a mutated, deformed bulldog the size of a dinosaur. Poor Terry straight-up ended in the giant thing's mouth at one point!

It's honestly a fight that dragged on a bit longer, but ultimately Ace breaks free of his own cage, and attacks Boxer, dropping him off the railing of the ship (he survives, unfortunately) before jumping into the arena to help Terry fight the giant mutant bulldog. It's a fun, happy ending for Ace as he runs back to Bruce's arms at the end of the episode, and, man, the smile on Bruce Wayne's face and voice is very, very heart-warming for sure.

An interesting one -- I really didn't expect an Ace backstory for sure. Anyway, that was an odd one but a good one to end season two off on. See you guys some time in the future for Batman Beyond, season three!

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DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Dak name-drops Blight, Spellbinder and the Royal Flush Gang.
• The Stacked Deck is a villain bar that was featured several times in Batman: The Animated Series. 
• Cerestone will be properly introduced in season 3, but due to the shuffling of episode production orders, this one ends up name-dropping Cerestone a bit earlier. 

Batman Beyond S02E22-24 Review: Deceivers

Batman Beyond, Season 2, Episodes 22-24

Episode 22: April Moon

As we go into the second-to-last batch of episodes in season two of Batman Beyond, "April Moon" is... an interesting one. It's an episode similar to the earlier "Armory", I feel, in that the episode is pretty centered around the antagonist's story, and it ends up being a pretty powerful -- if standalone -- story. 

The opening of this episode is deceptively simple, too. A bunch of gangsters who's gotten cyborg implants? The visuals are neat -- metal arm-whips, retractable suits of armour, retractable knee-chainsaws... fun visuals, if nothing else, even if most of the gang members are interchangeable. They fight Batman while trying to rob a bank or something, and as Batman goes off to investigate, we get to see that Bullwhip's gang is in cahoots with an old doctor specializing in artificial prosthetics called Dr. Corso -- something that Terry and Bruce figure out in record time because, just like "Armory", this episode isn't necessarily about their fight or crusade against crime. They're secondary characters here, almost. 

Corso manages to blindside Batman and escape, but Max later points out that Corso could've done much worse under those circumstances, so it's clearly not black-and-white. It's kind of interesting that between "Zeta" and this episode, Max is basically playing an ally of Terry's that's far, far more willing to see the good in others, whereas Old Man Bruce is a heavy cynic. Max poses as a potential patient who's lost two legs, setting up a meeting between Batman and Corso... but Corso ends up being loyal to Bullwhip, noting angrily that they're going to "kill her now", and gives us some exposition about his pretty wife April, the only good thing in his life. A hostage situation is interesting, and it's even more interesting where Corso really doesn't even entertain the idea of working with the superhero to get her back, and actively aids Bullwhip's gang when they show up to fight Batman. 

Batman did get the fact that Corso has built in a failsafe into Bullwhip's gang's cybernetic limbs, but refuses to give the voice command to Batman because, again, he's far more concerned about April's safety than anything about doing the right thing. Both Terry (and the audience) end up easily clued into the fact that the password is... well, obviously, April Moon. 

Batman ends up tracking Bullwhip's gang and meets Dr. Corso outside of their base, with Corso trying to undermine Batman's attempts to take down the gang. They end up finding out that not only is April with the gang, she's not a hostage but rather a member of the gang, even kissing Bullwhip. So she's probably a honey-trap, sent by Bullwhip to seduce the doctor... or, depending on the timeline, Bullwhip and his gang ended up cooking up the plan with April after she's married the doctor. I'm frankly not sure which is worse, but it sure is a pretty surprising twist. 

The actual fight is pretty simple, with Batman using the 'April Moon' code to cause all of the cyborgs' machines to self-destruct. The gang member who's gotten both arms and legs replaced with robotic limbs... yeah, that poor guy. Bullwhip escapes, but when Terry returns to Bruce and tells the whole story to him, we get a pretty chilling delivery from Bruce about how "he may not be coming back after all". 

And the implication of Bruce's line is probably enough to be creepy, but the episode actually ends up showing Dr. Corso meeting Bullwhip, with Bullwhip wanting one more upgrade, promising to let April go after that upgrade, while Corso ominously says "no holding back..." as the grief-stricken doctor, who has lost everything in his life, prepares to kill (and/or torture) the man who destroyed his life. Ominously dark! I like this one. Perhaps a good part of why I like this one is that I didn't see the twist coming at all... but honestly, it's a pretty solid story with a very solid twist at the end.

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Episode 23: Sentries of the Last Cosmos

Mmmm, yeah, I'm not feeling this one either. It's not as eye-rolling as "The Eggbaby", but I still felt like this was kind of a boring one. Again, I think it's because I simply can't take the concept of this episode really seriously at all. 

The idea is that a VR game, "Sentries of the Last Cosmos", got pretty popular. And people run around pretending to be copyright-free Jedi Knights with VR, and one of Terry's friends Corey Cavalieri is a huge fan. Except turns out that the Sentries are real, and they're using the VR game to recruit members. Corey gets invited into the game's creator, Simon Harper, and he meets a whole lot of other fans... all of whom are basically recruited into a weird cult where Harper shows up in Fake Jedi robes, tells them that Sentries of the Last Cosmos is a game that is actually a way to screen and recruit for real Sentries, and that they're going to beat the 'Dark Regent'. 

All of this, by the way, is a plan for Simon Harper to brainwash a bunch of youth to kill the original writer of the Sentries franchise, a writer called Eldon Michaels who sued Harper for stealing his script. Let me recap -- Simon Harper has a successful VR game, and somehow is also able to replicate the technology in said sci-fi VR game, equipping a bunch of his kids with hover-discs and fire swords... and he's worried about a copyright suit? Even if he's someone who is willing to resort to murder, like, hire an assassin or something.

I dunno. I guess it's supposed to be a pastiche on MMORPG's or people who get too much into video games and fictional worlds and whatnot, but the whole episode kind of just fell flat on its face for me. And... I dunno, I guess if Simon Harper's motivations are a bit better? Corey as a guest star also really didn't have much to him beyond being a huge fanboy.

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Episode 24: Payback

A simpler one, but also one that I kinda like. This is also an episode that relies on a twist, just like "April Moon", but while I saw the twist for this episode a mile away -- it's basically Anarky, but transplanted to 2029 -- it was still kind of enjoyable. I'm not a big fan of yet another "TROUBLED TEENS" plot, which kinda feels shoehorned in... but the fact that it leads into some genuine Terry character development and actually leads into the villain's more personal motivations compared to, say, "Last Resort", I feel like this episode flows a bit better. 

So Payback is introduced to us as this shrouded man with a lightsaber whip, who attacks a boss that's particularly abusive to a teenager, forcing him to work overtime. Payback also introduces himself as essentially a hero and Batman's ally, and we learn that he's a serial attacker who's been targeting parents, teachers and bosses that are abusive to teenagers. 

Learning that all the teenagers that Payback 'protected' are enrolled in Gotham Youth Counseling Center, Bruce sends Terry incognito there, and sure enough, Terry gets a couple of leads. A potential next victim (an asshole boyfriend), and what initially seemed to be two suspects -- the head Dr. Stanton (it's not said, but I guess the encounter with Dr. Wheeler had left Terry suspicious of him) and the quiet, towering genius Howard Lewis (who's the initial red herring). We're also introduced to Stanton's son Kenny, who keeps asking his father to talk with him and stuff. While downloading the computer, Terry gets whacked and left unconscious by an unseen assailant, but he manages to seemingly deflect suspicion. 

While they confirm that Payback is related to the Center, Terry is very quick to insist that Payback's identity is Howard, while Old Man Bruce admonishes him and says that there isn't a clear motive. Terry attacks Howard anyway, causing a huge fight in the center, but turns out that Howard isn't Payback, who's out attacking another victim. Terry fucked up, and Bruce is very, very quick to scold Terry for not only wasting time and allowing Payback to get away, but also because he assaulted an innocent man. 

Terry, meanwhile, jumps into the conclusion that Payback is Dr. Stanton, while Bruce is angry and insists that they do things 'his way' from then on... cutting perfectly into Terry complaining about Bruce as a shitty boss in the Center, ranting about how Terry's never going to be ever good enough for Bruce. Again, as the episode itself explains, this is supposedly a trap to lure in Payback to attack Bruce at a certain hotel, but as Terry himself points out at the end of the episode it's not necessarily an act. It's kind of interesting, and I'm not sure whether the third season will follow up on this, but Bruce Wayne fighting against one of his proteges because of an ego thing? That's certainly a fun plot. 

Payback, of course, attacks Bruce Wayne, leading to a pretty cool confrontation on an elevator that shows us how badass Old Man Bruce can be. He doesn't suddenly pull out any Old-Man-Batman-fu, but his simple presence and gravitas does make him pretty damn badass. Terry shows up, fighting Payback in a pretty neat battle, but when it's over turns out that Payback is... Kenny, the young kid, in an armoured suit. And the motive is, well, basically wanting to solve all of the problems of the patients in the Counseling Center, so that his dad will have more time for him. At least Bruce's words to Stanton senior seems to have an effect, but, well, between the real Terry/Bruce conflict and the tragic Kenny story, it's honestly a pretty neat episode overall. 

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• In addition to a lot of other Star Wars references (like the 'Wise One' robes, finger lightning-bolts and the talking gate camera), Terry specifically references Jar Jar Binks ("is Jar Jar lame?") and Eldon Michaels lampoons the franchise's opening dialogue ("it all started a long, long time ago in a cosmos far from Earth" instead of "a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away").
• In a trick that they used in Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (and later in Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker), Payback is voiced by the same voice actor with the red herring character, Howard Lewis.
• I'm not sure how intentional it is, but the Batman villain Anarky was also originally introduced with him being a much younger person being overlooked by Batman as a potential suspect as the secret identity of a supervillain. 

Batman Beyond S02E19-21 Review: Spin-Off Material

Batman Beyond, Season 2, Episodes 19-21

Episode 19: The Eggbaby

I guess there has to be one each cartoon series? An obligatory "ha ha, this plot is dumb, kids like dumb weird storylines, right?" Except this one is never quite as lubricous as a show like, oh... Looney Tunes or Tom and Jerry or even Teen Titans can get, so it's just... kind of dumb. Basically, due to plot contrivances, Terry ends up with a simulated robotic baby (the titular 'Egg Baby') that he has to keep happy for Family Studies. Is that even a real class in American schools? Again, due to contrived reasons, Terry ends up bringing the Egg Baby along as Batman. Granted, said contrived reason is admittedly Old Man Bruce not giving two shits, which I think is actually the funniest part of the episode. 

The villains in this one is a rather bland parody of a Golden Age villain or something; Ma Mayhem is huge, abusive and a mob boss, and she's got two sons, Carl and Slim. One's a thug, the other's a hacker. Oh, and they're only stealing jewels. The voice acting is pretty all right, but again, they're simply not enough to carry the episode either. 

Anyway, Batman carries the crying robo-baby into a fight against a bunch of gangsters, and hijinks ensue. Oh no, the baby got left in the bad guys' truck, because Terry didn't have the sense to leave the baby in the car! Stuff like that. I'm not going too far to say that this episode is unwatchable, but this one and the Howard Groote one are easily on the bottom of the heap as far as this season's episodes go. 

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Episode 20: Zeta

This... is an interesting one. If I didn't know that Zeta here would actually receive a spin-off show on his own, I'm not sure if I would've felt differently. I actually know about the Zeta Project, and that it's spun off of a character from Batman Beyond... I just didn't realize that the character appeared for a grand total of one time. That said, "Zeta" the episode is pretty memorable. 

It's a nice build-up from the Synthoids that were introduced earlier in the season, because Terry and Max figures out that their teacher Ms. Martel is actually just reading from a textbook (or, well, Wikipedia some answers, I guess) to teach her class. Things get wild when Ms. Martel actually turns out to be capable of jumping around like a superhero and fight against a bunch of secret agents -- including the first appearance of NSA Agent Bennet. After rescuing the real Ms. Martel, Commissioner Gordon and Batman find out information that the synthoid is actually a rogue assassin robot called Zeta that was supposed to infiltrate a terrorist group, but went rogue and refused to take orders.

Love the design on Zeta, by the way, with how oddly bizarre his proportions are despite being humanoid, and the fact that he lacks a conventional face in his true form. That's pretty cool.

There's a pretty brilliantly-scripted scene when Max seems to be doing research on Zeta, and Dana enters the room with a somewhat more ominous music. Oh no, Max is about to be attacked by Zeta! There's a neat bit of deflection where it seems that Dana is actually Zeta in disguise when, well, it turns out that it's actually Max that is Zeta, and is using the guise of Max being a scatterbrained computer geek to cover up for some of her mistakes in mis-gendering a classmate. Terry figures this out quickly, though, because Zeta-Max doesn't actually know anything about Terry's secret identity.

As Batman and the NSA get ready to take down Zeta, Zeta himself is interestingly a lot more benign. Again, as someone who's watched and read a lot of sci-fi material, the idea of a robot (an assassin robot at that) going full-on Data and trying to express the human qualities of empathy and morality is an always interesting story to tell. Zeta keeps Max hostage, but isn't willing to hurt her, and even brings her sandwiches. Max even convinces Zeta to not kill, and Zeta drops all of the guns he stores under his robo-ribs into a trash can. It's kind of interesting, though, because Zeta does have a point that the whole world is literally out to kill him. And Batman swoops in, because to Terry's eyes, Zeta is a rogue murder-bot who just kidnapped his best friend. It's a pretty tense scene, but Zeta stops short of delivering a killing blow, and Batman ends up being convinced by Max that Zeta's cool.

...unfortunately, this means that the NSA becomes the new antagonists of the episode, and the scenes that follow are honestly pretty neat. I wonder if this episode got a higher action scene budget because they wanted this Zeta character to have a spinoff? Between Batman's gadgets and Zeta's pretty creative uses of his powers (he plugs in the factory's machines into his own body, which is cool) the fight at the factory is pretty cool. 

Zeta's backstory is even pretty nice, even if we only get a quick telling of it -- when replacing an accountant who was only unwittingly associated with a terrorist cell, Zeta realized that living with the accountant's family and seeing his daughter ride a bike for the first time, Zeta ends up disobeying orders and refusing to deprive the man of his family. (Hiding out in a school, though, is a full superhero-comic hand-wave) Max comes up with the idea that Zeta could simply make his own face out of a combination of all the people he's copied before, which is neat. 

Of course, the episode has to end in an action scene, and with a new face and a newfound freedom after removing the NSA's tracker, Zeta still ends up blowing his cover when a metal bar phases through his illusion. Despite Batman's assistance, Zeta gets brutally shot off of a building by the NSA agents and seems to have blown up and died. Except only Batman gets to see that the destroyed corpse was just an illusion, while Zeta himself is unharmed and heads off. Batman covers the location with explosives, essentially faking Zeta's death. 

And... and it's certainly not the best Batman Beyond episode out there. I still think that the 'the high school allows me access to the NSA network without being traced' thing is kind of silly, but the interaction between Zeta, Max and Terry is told pretty well even if it's something I've seen many times in other sci-fi shows. Overall, a pretty solid one. 

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Episode 21: Plague

Yeah, all the season 1 supervillains get to show up again, huh? I do like just how calm this episode starts off, with Nelson returning from a holiday and a customs officer finds a green vial in Nelson's luggage. Turns out that it's planted by agents of the terrorist organization Kobra, and the airport customs officer passes it off to his partner, False Face, who can change his face like a man moulding a clay sculpture. 

Terry gets dragged into this when Stalker shows up and attacks Nelson. While it is questionable that Nelson survives being dropped from four stories high and slams down onto a car without even a broken bone, Batman ends up engaging Stalker, thinking that he's back to his games of hunting him down. Turns out that Stalker is working with Agent Bennet from the previous episode, which is interesting! Granted, I've never liked Stalker all that much in his first appearance, but it is interesting to see Stalker being played up as a full-on mercenary who is very much willing to lend his services to the NSA to hunt down a super-virus that Kobra is holding the city random for. There's even a cool flashback for Bennet as he sees the remnants of a small village that Kobra tested the virus on. 

(Granted, Kobra One's speech about how the virus is spread by the touch of credit cards is a bit eye-rolling... even without the foreknowledge that a global airborne pandemic would hit the world a couple decades later, it's kind of baffling that they wouldn't use air or water as the obvious way to spread a pandemic. Even Joker did it in the 90's, Kobra!)

Anyway, it's a hero-teaming-up-with-an-antivillain episode, with Batman and Stalker sneaking into Kobra bases. Unfortunately Stalker's got a bit of a temper problem and blows their cover, knocking out the Kobra agents before Batman could do the sneaky-sneak and find out the information they need. They still do, because of Stalker's observational skills in picking out which one of the Kobra goons is the boss. Batman and Stalker track down Falseface and the rest of the Kobra agents, and Stalker ends up letting Falseface go in order to save Batman (and the vial) from being crushed by credit bars. 

Turns out that Kobra One is using Falseface as a backup, however, having infected him with the virus. Stalker's grenade had coated Falseface with something that allows Stalker to track him, and during the confrontation, Batman is trapped under burning debris while Falseface gets killed by the virus. Stalker shows up, seemingly about to pierce Batman with his spear... but turns out that Stalker's helping Batman, not because they're buddies now but because Stalker wants to be the one that kills Batman when the time is right. 

Kind of a cool episode, actually. I did like the many moving pieces in this one, I did like the multiple named villains from Kobra One to Falseface to (technically) Stalker. Again, I still think Stalker isn't the most interesting among Batman Beyond's rogues gallery, but it's still neat to see the writers do something different with him.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Zeta would show up and be the star of his own personal spin-off series, "The Zeta Project", which lasted for 23 episodes. 
• In "Zeta", the cities Dakota and Central City are briefly mentioned. Dakota is the hometown of superhero Static, whose cartoon series was in production during the development of this season. Central City, meanwhile, is the hometown of the Flash. 
• Kobra, or rather, the Cult of Kobra, is a group of international terrorist introduced as a group of lunatics trying to bring in the Kali Yuga, an age of chaos. The titular Kobra is Jeffrey Burr, one of two twins that were abducted as children by the cult, and he had a mental link to his twin brother Jason Burr. The Cult of Kobra would face off against superheroes, among them Batman, Wonder Woman and the Outsiders. 
• Falseface is original to Batman Beyond, but the name is similar to the False Face Society, the criminal organization that serves Batman's villain Black Mask.

Batman Beyond S02E16-18 Review: Parenting is Hard

Batman Beyond, Season 2, Episodes 16-18

Episode 16: The Last Resort

This one is... an interesting one? I feel like there's a huge attempt by the show-writers to try and go for a more 'troubled teenagers' series of storyline in this season, and not all of them, I feel, worked. "The Last Resort" here is honestly not an overly-interesting story on paper, and feels like it's a bit too on-the-nose at times, but I did really like how the episode itself told its story. 

Granted, it is kind of hard to buy that there are so many negligent parents that stupidly just sign up their children in a behaviour-rehabilitation clinic that clearly dresses their charges up in prison orange jumpsuits and doesn't seem to allow the children to meet their parents too often -- and somehow, all the parents ignore anything that the children have to say. And that no parent, client or social services officer have actually seen what's going on here. But... okay. More fucked-up things have shown up in comics and, regrettably, real life. 

The episode's plot is actually very well-scripted, suspension of disbelief aside. The founder of the clinic, David Wheeler, basically accepts a lot of troubled kids. One of said kids includes Chelsea Cunningham, recurring background character and Terry's friend, who, in probably one of the more haunting parts of the episode, got put in because she sent an e-mail to the school principal (who gets away scot-free!) complaining about the clinic, and the principal makes a call to her father, presumably making Chelsea out to be a truant or something.

The clinic itself also introduces us to a bunch of the children -- Chelsea's friend Adam, a former street artist that's rendered seemingly mute and near-catatonic after a procedure called "Iso", and is painting without ink on a blank canvas. And then we've got the sleazy Sean, who's a pretty nasty jerkball. As Batman investigates, turns out that the clinic's methods of rehabilitation is forcing everyone to stand in the hall, deprive them of sleep, and listening to Dr. Wheeler's speech about how they're worthless and they can only be saved by obeying him. Anyone who begs to sleep gets tossed into "Iso", the sensory deprivation chambers. Honestly... it's probably the most stupid way to rehabilitate a bunch of unruly teenagers -- society will drill in 'lack of sleep' into everyone eventually. But the way that the episode portrays it is admittedly pretty horrifying. There's also even a lack of any ulterior motive -- no scary Kobra cult trying to brainwash children as its minions or something. For all intents and purposes, Wheeler seems to think that this torture will make the kids disciplined, which I feel makes the sequence feel so much more sinister. 

Terry then goes investigating in his civilian guise, but is denied entry with a falsified claim that Chelsea cancelled the visit. It's all just a roundabout way to get Terry captured by the staff, and I feel like this sequence is odd -- would the guards of the paranoid facility really not search Terry's backpack for the bat-suit, especially after they found him snooping around? Would there really be no cameras or personnel to see Chelsea talk to Terry in the vent? Would Terry's camera really just immediately replay the condemning recording immediately? Would Wheeler really wait until later in the day to shove Terry into Iso?

Still, I did like the sequence where Terry seems to gain an ally in Sean (who was the one who picked a fight with him and blew his cover), and after a "you can prove to the world you can be better" speech, the two of them attack the guards on the way to Iso, arrange a jailbreak, and Batman beats up the guards. We then get to see that Sean is about to murder Dr. Wheeler by tossing him off the rooftop as revenge for putting him into Iso, and Sean refuses to back down even though Batman points out that he could be a hero. Obviously it's a Batman episode, so Batman rescues Wheeler when he gets dropped, but it's a pretty sobering -- if fun -- twist that Sean really doesn't care about anything but revenge at this point. 

The episode ends with an interesting scene -- Chelsea giving the cold shoulder to her father. Honestly, with the state that the correctional clinic really is, I'm surprised none of the other children are doing the same thing that Chelsea does. Ultimately I think the episode does try to do a bit too much, and maybe the episode would've worked better if it was just a Terry-investigates-a-clinic episode instead of "why does Batman have so much trouble"... but overall, an interesting one. 

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Episode 17: Armory

This is another one that feels pretty much lifted from a comic book run that is in its "stories for troubled teens" phase. Only that the main focus of this episode, interestingly, isn't the teenager! While Jared is certainly how Terry/Batman got roped into the plot, a significant focus of this episode centers around Jim Tate, the titular antagonist of the episode. 

We've seen the Tates before in a Spellbinder episode, and they're basically a family that's perhaps a bit too extravagant for their own good, and Jim's implied to spend a lot to get into the good graces of his step-son, but they seem to be happy and ultimately kind people. And then Jim gets laid off at the beginning of the episode, right after the character establishing moment of buying his teenage son a brand-new sports car. It's neat to see a reference to the Wayne-Powers Corporation, but man, that scene as Jim gets laid off and tries his best to find work all over town is all too real. And through no fault other than miscommunication and perhaps an unwillingness to admit his problems, poor Jim has to juggle finding a new job and his wife thinking that they still have loads and loads of money to burn on fancy curtains.  

It would be way too easy to just make Lorraine a spoiled rich bitch, too, wouldn't it? And while she certainly yaks on about fancy house remodeling and curtains and stuff, she also simply didn't know that her husband's situation was far, far worse than he was letting on. 

Ultimately, Jim ends up falling in with a bad crowd, meeting with the shady Istivan Hegedesh, who has deals with foreign countries that would pay good money for a prototype weapon that Jim worked on while under the employ of Wayne-Powers. With allusions to how this would just 'be like war', Jim ends up donning a super-suit as what the media dubbed the 'Human Armory', beating down Batman and the police with an arsenal of non-lethal weapons. Again, I do really like just how sympathetic the writers made Jim, and just how much it's clear that he views it only as a means to end while Istivan continues to talk about how 'war must have casualties' and stuff. 

Batman doesn't even really get involved until the second half of the episode, which is a storytelling method that I approve a lot of -- after a bit of a conversation with Jared, who bemoans Jim becoming distant and locking himself in the shed all the time, Terry and Max put two and two together. Still, even then, arguably the huge climax of the episode is the confrontation between Jim and Istivan, overheard by Jared... and Jim finally realizing that he's gone too far. We do get a superhero showdown, with Istivan wielding the prototype sonic cannon, and Jim using his own glue gun to help Batman out. 

Again, while the plot itself honestly is pretty simple, I feel like the execution, and both the animation and voice acting for Jim Tate, really does end up making what is easily one of the most memorable antagonists from Batman Beyond.

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Episode 18: Sneak Peek

Far, far less memorable is Ian Peek from this episode, although he isn't a bad villain per se. The episode begins with introducing Ian Peek, who's... a reporter that reveals damning, scandalous secrets of Gotham City's celebrities and elites. And there's an attempt at a moral throughout the episode with Mama McGinnis telling Terry that "it's not so funny if it's you on the show".

While his real superpower might be the ability to avoid the massive amount of lawsuits that his victims would undoubtedly throw his way, Ian Peek turns out to have a device that allows him to essentially become a 'ghost', turning into a dematerialized human being of glowing blue and black matter. It's an interesting concept, and it's also sort of interesting, I guess, that all Ian Peek wants to do is to do his job at exposing secrets... but he's otherwise so shallow that I really have a hard time taking him seriously. He ends up exposing that a triad crime boss is making a deal with D.A. Sam Young and... obviously, this lands him in a shootout with the triad. 

Terry's own encounters with the mysterious glowing man and a vague pseudo-science lecture at school about the sci-fi trope that is phasing (hi, Flash!) ends up with Terry and Bruce figuring out that apparently, an old Wayne Enterprises employee, Nabuo Taka, actually developed such a device. And... and honestly, the idea that a rogue Wayne Enterprises tech is being used by a supervillain is kind of a great plot hook, but the fact that the episode basically already spoiled that the glowing man is, in fact, Ian Peek, means that this all ends up with a bit of a somewhat disappointingly underplayed side-plot. 

While Batman saves Peek from the triad boss's goons, Peek ends up planting a camera on the Batmobile, and Peek sets up a teaser where he wants to reveal the true identity of Batman and his mysterious mentor -- and.... honestly, the blurring managed to fool all of Gotham City? Sure. I did really like that Bruce Wayne is pissed off that out of all the villains that the two Batmen have, it's some schmuck like Ian Peek that gets to do it. I also do like the moment where Terry tells Peek to leave Bruce Wayne out of it, considering just how much he's done to the city. 

Turns out that Peek's usage of experimental science technology has side-effects, but ends up with his stomach slowly phasing out even without the belt. Peek cancels his show as his dematerializing becomes worse, and tries to make a deal with Bruce Wayne. It feels more of a convenient exposition more than anything (he killed Taka to steal the belt... to, uh, make tabloid scoops), but ultimately he phases through the ground and falls into the center of the Earth despite Batman's efforts to drag him out. 

And... I dunno. It's a solid episode, honestly, but it's also pretty dry compared to the previous two. Still enjoyable, though!

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DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• In episode 16, Terry briefly mentions renegade synthoids (Cynthia from "Terry's Friend Dates a Robot") and 'living heads', which is a nod to Mr. Freeze from "Meltdown". 
• The Tate family first appeared as victims in "Spellbound".
• Paxton Powers is name-dropped as one of the reason that Jim is fired, and also has a cameo in "Sneak Peek" where he has some fun with a bunch of scantily-clad ladies. Honestly, that's hardly a 'scandal' for a rich man like him. 
• The boxer in "Sneak Peek" re-uses the character model of one of Clayface's disguises from TNBA's "Growing Pains" episode.

Batman Beyond S02E13-15 Review: Robophilia

Batman Beyond, Season 2, Episode 13-15

Episode 13: Terry's Friend Dates a Robot

Well, it's a bit of a shame, and I actually really enjoyed the past couple of episodes, too. And... to be fair, "Terry's Friend Dates a Robot" isn't a terrible episode for what it's trying to tell. The story is a solid one, and Howard Groote got a pretty great voice actor that really sells the socially-awkward-but-trying-to-not-be-a-loser sort of guy. And honestly, if it was handled well, the  fact that someone is selling artificially-intelligent, very life-like humanoid robots is a very interesting concept for a superhero episode. Even discounting the general creep factor of what the synthoid factory are making these guys for (Groote only uses Cynthia as eye candy, but you know others aren't) we could've gotten some sort of an L.M.D. style storyline or something. 

Instead, all we got is a pretty simple and frankly quite disappointing story about a yandere robot girlfriend. And there's nothing wrong with the concept, it's just that the story never really moves beyond the most basic parts of the story. Terry's classmate Howard Groote is trying too hard to be cool even though he's a dork, he follows Terry to a synthoid factory (Terry is buying robots for training; turns out Old Man Bruce has synthoids of his old rogues' gallery), buys an illegal robot girlfriend from Louie, and then struts around school because he suddenly becomes super-duper popular. And then his synthoid girlfriend Cynthia gets overly possessive of him, and starts shoving lockers around to beat up Nelson and gets super-duper crazy during a party. Batman fights her, then the house blows up, and Groote gets in trouble with his parents. 

And... and honestly, that's about it. There are a couple of fun bits in the episode, of course -- the cameos of the TNBA villains as robots is neat. There's a couple of wink-wink-older-audience jokes in it too as Chelsea mistakes Howard's argument with Cynthia as something more intimate. And I'm not sure how they managed to sneak in Max's "robo-bimb" line, but they sure did. Again, as annoying as the voice was, the voice actor for Howard is a neat balance of being a loser and trying to show off, and the scripting is at least a fun parody of regular teenage dramas. It's just that there's really nothing else beyond that, and this really feels like something that should probably be reduced to half an episode's worth of backup plot at best. 

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Episode 14: Eyewitness

This is actually an alright episode on paper, even if there's a huge sense of "been there, done that". Not just in comparing this to better mind-control illusion episodes in Batman or Justice League either, but I honestly feel like we've had better Spellbinder episodes before. 

The concept is interesting enough -- Batman and Commissioner Gordon are butting heads, not helped by the cold open showing us a very realistic sequence of Batman jumping and absolutely foiling a sting operation that the GCPD is doing. All the scenes between Old Man Bruce and Old Commissioner Barbara are very, very fun to watch, and even if they never really spell out what caused the rift between the two (and what Terry's criminal record entails). 

But when Mad Stan attempts to blow up a massive building and kill Barbara's husband DA Sam Young, Batman seemingly snaps and kills Mad Stan. Obviously it's something that wouldn't happen -- and the episode makes it very, very clear. There's no ambiguity, and I kinda feel like it would've helped the episode a bit if we actually see Terry being just a bit more violent or angry even if he (obviously) didn't kill Mad Stan. Mad Stan being actually pretty funny with his bro-esque "down with the corruption, man" vernacular also makes him a fun villain to watch that makes you go oh-shit even if he's, y'know, a terrorist. 

But, well, the lack of any ambiguity honestly just ends up with the whole episode with Batman running around trying to avoid Barbara while he and Old Man Bruce try to prove Terry's innocence. And... and honestly, it's not that interesting to hold the whole episode, I'm sorry. It would've helped a lot more if Terry's innocence was actually ambiguous (even though he obviously wouldn't murder), and if we see a bit more of Barbara's internal conflict. There are a couple of great moments, like Barbara's resoluteness in taking down what she views to be a murderer even if it means ruining Bruce, Barbara and Sam's lives in the process. The action scenes, especially the rooftop bit, was pretty fun... but ultimately, again, the episode feels like it's dragged on a bit too long.

Quite literally with a minute or two to spare, Bruce figures out that it's Spellbinder, who somehow is also able to hypnotize everyone into not seeing him; has inserted the hallucination into Barbara's mind, and Barbara is immediately willing to forgive Terry afterwards and we get a pretty truncated apology and wrap-up to everything. Honestly, even with the simple explanation that Spellbinder is pouncing on Barbara's dislike of Batman, I really did feel like the themes explored in this episode could easily be edited to feel far, far more poignant.  

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Episode 15: Final Cut

Another one of featuring a recurring villain, this one is... a bit of a more divisive one for me. On paper, there are a lot of things about this episode that I like. A fair amount of world-building about the Society of Assassins? A villain-on-villain battle, which also involves Batman being blackmailed to help one of the villains? A significant focus on Max as a sidekick without superpowers, as well as her smarts? A surprisingly interesting subversion of how a non-superpowered sidekick can help out, when Max is absolutely out of her depth against someone like Curare? Heck, we even get a fun, Batman: The Animated Series style of fights that involve ridiculously huge props in the final battle in the museum of weapons. 

And yet... "Final Cut" feels like it's not quite there. Don't get me wrong, it's still a very enjoyable episode. As I said, the concept of infighting between the Society of Assassins leading Batman to get dragged in as what's essentially a blackmailed bodyguard is a very interesting one; as is a focus episode on Max that isn't just her being involved with the civilian side of the world of Batman Beyond. They even got Tim Curry to give Mutro Botha a very fun, wacky accent. 

And yet... I dunno. So much of the episode felt like it's just lacking. The plot itself is pretty simple after the setup, and proceeds basically how you imagined it would. A lot of things never quite get addressed -- why Curare is perfectly happy on blowing up the city, or why she's going around turning the Society of Assassins' members into brain-dead vegetables instead of killing them... the fact that Curare is almost completely silent throughout the entire episode doesn't help. Also, while I know that there's a degree of accepted unrealism that comes with the territory, Max's investigation somehow finding that the international assassin is careless enough to drop a credit card that could be scanned by a high schooler's laptop feels like it's stretching a civilian's techno-whiz skills a bit too far. 

Still... other than those complaints, it's honestly a rather solid one. Batman and Mutro Botha has a very fun friction-filled working relationship, and I do really like the realism behind Max's earlier panic and guilt after her little fuck-up, and her elation in the final scene of the episode when she's riding the saved-the-city high. Thanks to the locations of the fights in this episode (Curare vs. Devon on an airplane in the cold open; and later Curare against Batman in the museum) it's also one of the prettier and more exciting episodes to simply watch for the simple fighty-fighty. I still think that "Final Cut" does lack a certain je ne sais quoi that makes me feel that it's not quite as good as it could've been, but it's definitely a very solid one nonetheless. 

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• At the beginning of episode 13, Terry fights robots of the Riddler, Two-Face and Killer Croc, all using their The New Batman Adventures character models. 
• The GoleM (or, rather a GoleM) makes a brief cameo in the synthoid factory. 
• Episode 14 has Bruce and Barbara make a brief reference to Alfred, who, of course, is the best at making tea and crumpets. 
• Mad Stan returns after being a minor antagonist in the episode "Rats". So does Spellbinder's VR bubble from "Hooked Up".
• The monocled member of the Society of Assassins, Devon, is also Curare's handler in her debut episode. 
• In a rather odd bit, the final scene of "Final Cut", involving a character disarming a bomb by ripping it out at the last minute and then saying "Can we go home now?" is exactly what Batgirl did in the TNBA episode "Sins of the Father".