Batman Beyond


Batman Beyond is an American animated cyberpunk superhero television series based on the DC Comics superhero Batman, and serving as the sequel to both Batman: The Animated Series and The New Batman Adventures. Created and developed by Paul Dini, Bruce Timm, and Alan Burnett and produced by Warner Bros. Television Animation, the series began airing on January 10, 1999 on The WB's Sunday Night lineup as a two-part pilot.
The series follows the exploits of teenager Terry McGinnis, who becomes the new Batman for the city of Gotham in the near future. Terry is aided and mentored by the retired Batman, Bruce Wayne, as he faces a variety of criminals including several new supervillains. Despite being conceived as a kid-friendly Batman series by Warner Bros. Animation, it ended up being darker than its predecessor Batman: The Animated Series, yet went on to receive critical acclaim and gained a cult following.
Batman Beyond ran for three seasons, concluding with a direct-to-video film, Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker. The decision to end production on the series came due to Warner Bros. Animation opting to favor pushing forward production for the Justice League animated series, though with Batman Beyond featuring crossovers with additional shows in the DC Animated Universe.

Plot

In the then-future year of 2019, Bruce Wayne is in his late fifties and still fighting crime as Batman, despite suffering recurring health issues relating to his age and past injuries. During a rescue of a kidnapped heiress, Bruce suffers a heart attack and, at the risk of being killed by a criminal, betrays a lifelong principle by threatening him with a gun, the weapon used to murder his parents and motivate him to become Batman in the first place. Realizing that he will inevitably have to break his strict code to never kill for survival if he continues to fight crime, Bruce reluctantly decides to permanently retire as Batman to avoid becoming a killer. By this point, his butler and confidant, Alfred Pennyworth, and additional colleagues, such as Lucius Fox and James Gordon, have since died. All of his rogues' gallery are either still incarcerated or residing at Arkham Asylum, reformed, missing, in exile, retired, or dead. Bruce has also severed ties with Superman and the Justice League.
Twenty years later, Bruce lives alone in Wayne Manor with only the company of his Doberman, Ace. One night, teenage Terry McGinnis is chased by thugs onto the lawn of Wayne Manor, and he and Bruce fight them together, but Bruce has another heart attack shortly afterwards. Terry takes Bruce inside and takes care of him. Exploring the mansion, Terry discovers the Batcave and asks Bruce to let him take up his mantle.
Terry's decision to become Batman stems from sharing a similar origin story to Bruce, in that his father, Warren McGinnis, is murdered after learning of an illegal weapons project being conducted at Wayne-Powers. Bruce grants Terry a high-tech Batsuit he made shortly before his retirement, granting him increased strength and agility, flight capabilities, stealth, and enhanced sensor systems, with Bruce allowing him to use it not only to get justice for his father's murder, but also to prevent the illegal weapon being manufactured being sold to a foreign power. His actions lead to Bruce accepting him as the new Batman and providing him cover for his work under the pretense of Terry doing part-time work for him outside of school hours, with the two having moments where they differ in methods, but also gaining respect for each other's work as Batman.
Terry mainly lives with his remaining family - his mother, Mary, who was divorced from Warren around the time of his death; and his brother, Matt - while dating fellow student Dana Tan, though his life as Batman creates complications to their relationship. Alongside Bruce, Terry is aided in his life by Max Gibson, a close friend and highly intelligent student who uncovers his secret several weeks after he becomes Batman, serving in a role similar to Alfred Pennyworth. Apart from Max, Terry's role as Batman is also known to Barbara Gordon, who aided Bruce as Batgirl before parting ways with him to become the Gotham City's Police Department's new police commissioner following her father's death. Like Bruce, Terry develops his own rogues' gallery amongst the criminals he brings to justice, and also faces some of Bruce's own enemies from his time as the Dark Knight.

Voice cast

The second Batman, he is a high school student and former delinquent. Under the pretense of doing errands for Bruce, Terry fights crime as the new Batman. Terry was chosen to be the new Dark Knight as he shared a similar loss as Bruce had, that being the death of a parent.
The original Batman, although initially reluctant he later becomes Terry's employer, mentor, and predecessor who guides Terry through the Batcomputer but also occasionally ventures into the field to help his successor if the situation demands it, despite the risks associated with his age. During his final mission, rescuing a wealthy heiress as the Dark Knight twenty years prior to the events of the main story, Bruce suffered a heart attack that nearly cost him his life, forcing him to break his primary moral principle by threatening to kill a criminal with a gun in self-defense. Horrified that he nearly used the type of weapon that took his parents' lives and the very thing that drove him to become a vigilante, and afraid of what he might do next, Wayne reluctantly hung up the cowl.
  • Cree Summer as Maxine "Max" Gibson: A genius high schooler and friend of Terry's. She discovers his secret identity, and from then on occasionally helps Batman in a role akin to that of Alfred Pennyworth, Bruce Wayne's deceased former butler, though she is considered a nuisance to his predecessor. Her parents are divorced and she has an unnamed sister.
  • Lauren Tom as Dana Tan:
Terry's on-and-off girlfriend in high school who is initially and formerly unaware of his secret identity as the new Dark Knight, and thus surprised or upset by his frequent absences which she only knows due to him working as a personal assistant for Bruce Wayne, to support his family financially following his father's death. She also has a father who is disapproving of Terry because of the latter's past as an irresponsible delinquent, which serves as a reminder and another motivation for Terry being Batman.
Bruce Wayne's pet dog and his sole companion in Wayne Manor, the billionaire rescued and took in the stray Great Dane after the canine defended him from a Jokerz thug during one of Wayne's annual visits in memory of his parents to Crime Alley. Fiercely loyal to Bruce, he eventually develops a bond with Terry as well.
The new Commissioner of the Gotham City Police Department, having succeeded her father Jim and one of Bruce's former crime-fighting partners, Batgirl. Barbara was at one point in her younger years romantically involved with Bruce, which ended badly. Unlike her father, Barbara initially has a rocky relationship with the new Batman, being aware of his criminal record and showing resentment towards Bruce for dragging him into this life and is at first against him intervening in police duty, even threatening him with arrest. This is revealed to have been due to a long standing grudge towards Bruce for how he treated his former partners and also because of a fateful night when the Bat-family splintered. She slowly gains a grudging respect for Terry after he helps her in several sticky situations and begins acknowledging his help whenever needed, though she does not use a Bat-Signal, unlike her father. However, she still has direct access to the Batcave. She is married to Sam Young, the District Attorney of Neo-Gotham.

Episodes

Crossovers

The third season of Batman Beyond featured the two-part episode "The Call" with a futuristic Justice League, a springboard for the Justice League animated series. The setting and characters of Batman Beyond were also briefly revived in Static Shock during the episode "Future Shock" in which Static is accidentally transported 40 years into the future.
Justice League Unlimited revisited the Batman Beyond world twice in 2005. The first was in "The Once and Future Thing", which featured Batman, Wonder Woman and Green Lantern transported 50 years into the future to stop a time-travelling villain with the help of the future Justice League.
The second time was meant to be the de facto series finale for Batman Beyond: the episode "Epilogue" reveals that Bruce Wayne is Terry McGinnis's biological father. The story, set 15 years after Batman Beyond, centers on Terry tracking down an elderly Amanda Waller. She explains through flashbacks that, even though she grew to trust and respect Batman, she was aware of him aging, getting slower, and getting weaker, thus accepting the idea of either Bruce retiring or being killed at some point. Finding the idea of a world without Batman unacceptable, Waller used her Project Cadmus connections to gather the technology for "Project Batman Beyond", whose goal was to physically create a new Batman, starting with a secretly collected sample of Bruce Wayne's DNA. Some years after Bruce retired, Waller found a young Neo-Gotham couple—the McGinnises—with psychological profiles nearly identical to those of Bruce's parents and gave Warren McGinnis a nanotech solution to rewrite his reproductive material with that of Bruce. The eventual result was his wife Mary McGinnis giving birth to Terry, a child sharing the genetic traits of his mother and Bruce Wayne. When Terry was eight years old, Waller employed an elderly Andrea Beaumont in her Phantasm alias as an assassin to kill Terry's family, hoping the trauma would put him on the path to becoming Batman. However, Beaumont could not commit the act, arguing that she would be doing something against what Bruce stood for. Waller eventually conceded that Beaumont had been right and abolished the project altogether. Eight years afterward, Warren would be murdered because of Derek Powers, and Terry would meet Bruce by happenstance—resulting in Terry becoming Batman's successor. Waller concludes by reminding Terry that he is Bruce's son, not his clone, and that, despite the circumstances of his existence, he still has free will to live out his own life; Although not his clone she later tells Terry how he is not even close to as smart as Bruce Wayne but he does have his heart. Terry comes to terms with his revelations, and continues in being Batman. With a new sense of purpose, Terry plans to propose to Dana, while continuing his life of crimefighting.