Batman Beyond is an American animated television series created by Warner Bros. Animation in
collaboration with DC Comics as a continuation of the Batman legacy.
Depicting teenager Terry McGinnis as a new Batman in a futuristic Gotham City under the
tutelage of an elderly Bruce Wayne, the series began airing on January 10, 1999, and ended
its run on December 18, 2001.
After 52 episodes spanning three seasons and one direct-to-video film, the series was put
on hold for the Justice League animated series, despite the network having announced plans
for a fourth season.
Batman Beyond is set in the chronological future of the DC animated universe.
Batman Beyond is said to explore the darker side of many Batman projects, playing on key
elements such as emotions, personal relations, fear of the unknown, to cyberpunk and sci-fi
themed elements such as issues and dilemmas of innovation and technological and scientific
progress affecting society, and to the disturbing psychological elements of the character of
Bruce Wayne.
As such, it was considerably darker than most other children's programs at the time, although
producer Bruce Timm recalls it was conceived as a kid-friendly Batman cartoon.
It is also the first Batman series to portray the hero as a teenager.
IGN named the show 40th on their list of "Top 100 Animated TV Series."
The premise of Batman Beyond has been used in various comic book stories published by
DC Comics, including an ongoing series beginning in 2011.
Story
The pilot episode, titled "Rebirth," initially begins in the year 2019, 20 years after The
New Batman Adventures.
An aging Bruce Wayne continues his role as Batman in a high-tech Batsuit, having severed
his ties with those of his former allies and enemies who are still alive.
In the rescue of a kidnapped heiress, Batman suffers a mild heart attack and, at risk of
being beaten to death by one of the kidnappers, is forced to betray a lifelong principle by
threatening to use a gun.
Ultimately, Bruce reluctantly decides that his time as Batman is over and vows "never
again" as he shuts down the Batcave.
The story fast-forwards to 2039 in Neo-Gotham, a futuristic megalopolis featuring staggering
high rises and flying vehicles.
Bruce is now a recluse living in bitter isolation in Wayne Manor, with no companion but his
guard dog Ace.
Terry McGinnis is an athletic 17-year-old high school student and reformed troublemaker
with a deeply ingrained sense of personal justice.
Living on poor terms with his father Warren, Terry disobeys his curfew one night to meet
up with his girlfriend Dana Tan, only to incur the wrath of a group of the Jokerz gang harassing
them.
A high-speed motorcycle chase between Terry and the Jokerz leads them to the grounds of
Wayne Manor, where they run into the elderly Bruce Wayne.
Bruce and Terry fend off the Jokerz side-by-side, but the exertion aggravates Bruce's heart
condition.
Terry helps Bruce back to the manor and, while exploring the mansion, stumbles upon the entrance
to the Batcave, only to be chased out by a recovered and angered Bruce.
Terry returns home to discover that his father has been murdered, apparently by the vengeful
Jokerz.
Soon after, though, he discovers that his father had stumbled onto information about
the production of illegal chemical weapons by the merged Wayne-Powers and that the man
actually responsible for his father's murder is Mr. Fixx, Powers' personal assistant and
bodyguard.
Terry goes to Bruce for help, but Bruce refuses, feeling he is too old and too weak to be of
any use.
Terry subsequently steals the Batsuit, intending to bring Powers to justice.
Bruce initially opposes all of Terry's efforts and vehemently demands he return the suit,
but Terry convinces Bruce to let him take on the Batman mantle, partially by drawing
on the fact they both lost a parent to criminals, and subsequently defeats Mr. Fixx.
During the battle, Powers is exposed to the chemical and forced to flee into hiding to
receive treatment, which subsequently mutates him into a radiation-emitting entity, Blight,
though he uses artificial skin to hide the accident.
Realizing that crime and corruption are running rampant in Gotham without Batman's presence,
Bruce offers Terry the chance to assume the role of Batman.
Terry's Batman soon develops his own rogues gallery, with both new villains as well as
some of his mentor's old foes.
Terry also makes allies in Neo-Gotham, such as the 17-year-old computer genius Maxine
"Max" Gibson, who discovers Batman's secret identity and helps Terry with everything from
computer hacking to babysitting, and police commissioner Barbara Gordon, the former Batgirl
who is unhappy about another person following in Bruce's dark and dangerous steps.
Main cast
Crossovers In the third season of Batman Beyond, a two-part
story entitled "The Call" featured the futuristic Justice League, a springboard for Bruce Timm's
next series Justice League.
The setting and characters of Batman Beyond were also briefly revived in 2004 for an episode
of Static Shock in which Static is accidentally transported 40 years into the future.
Justice League Unlimited revisited the world of Batman Beyond twice in 2005, first in The
Once and Future Thing part 2, which featured Batman, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern being
transported 50 years into the future to stop a time-travelling villain with the help of
the future Justice League.
The second time occurred during the second season finale, where Terry McGinnis's true
origin is learned in a story meant to be the de facto series finale for Batman Beyond.
Series finale The Justice League Unlimited episode "Epilogue",
the unofficial series finale, reveals that Bruce Wayne is actually Terry's biological
father.
The story, set fifteen years after Terry became the new Batman, grows out of Bruce's kidneys
failing and doctors needing a tissue donor to clone him new ones.
When Terry shows a perfect histocompatible match with Bruce, he becomes suspicious and
has a DNA test run on himself, which shows half of his DNA, is from Bruce.
Terry accuses Bruce of orchestrating the whole thing, possibly using old Cadmus nanotechnology
to rewrite his genes to match Bruce's; similar to what the Joker did to Tim Drake.
Terry tracks down government agent Amanda Waller, who reveals his origins to him.
She explains through flashbacks that, even though she trusted and respected Batman, she
was aware of him growing older and slower.
Finding the idea of a world without Batman unacceptable, Waller used her Cadmus connections
to gather the technology for "Project Batman Beyond", whose goal was to literally create
a new Batman, starting with a collected sample of Bruce's DNA.
After finding a young Neo-Gotham couple, the McGinnis', with psychological profiles nearly
identical to those of Bruce's parents, a nanotech solution was injected into Warren McGinnis
to rewrite his reproductive material into an exact copy of Bruce's.
The result was, a little over a year later, Mary McGinnis giving birth to Terry, a child
biologically the son of his mother and Bruce.
When Terry was 8 years old, Waller employed an elderly Andrea Beaumont 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 Batman would never resort to
murder to achieve his goals.
Waller eventually conceded that Beaumont had been right and made no further attempts to
push Terry into becoming Batman, which indirectly resulted in Terry's brother Matt being born
later.
Nine years afterward, Warren McGinnis would be murdered by criminals and Terry meets Bruce,
resulting Terry to become Bruce's successor.
Waller reminds Terry that he is Bruce's son, not his clone, and that despite his genetics;
he still has free will and makes his own choice in becoming Batman.
Whether Bruce was the genetic father of Matt McGinnis as well was not clearly established
in-story, as nothing was stated as to the longevity of the alterations made to Warren
McGinnis; however, the series' creators have said that this is the case.
Spinoff Batman Beyond spun off an animated series
called The Zeta Project, featuring a revamped version of the synthoid Zeta from the Batman
Beyond episode "Zeta."
Batman would guest-star in the episode "Shadows."
The supervillain Stalker was to have appeared in The Zeta Project episode "Taffy Time,"
but did not make it.
The second season episode "Ro's Gift" has an appearance made by the Brain Trust from
the Batman Beyond episode "Mind Games."
Terry McGinnis/Batman was originally slated to appear in this episode as well, but was
cut since Bruce Timm and company were working on Justice League.
Media Comics
Soundtrack Released on August 31, 1999, the soundtrack
to Batman Beyond features many of the same composers who worked on the previous animated
Batman shows.
The music style is more industrial, to tie in with the show's futuristic cyberpunk style
genre.
Toys In 2000, Burger King had Batman Beyond toys
in their kids' meals.
Video game Terry McGinnis's first appearance in a video
game is in the Nintendo 64, PlayStation, and Game Boy Color video game Batman Beyond: Return
of the Joker.
Terry McGinnis's advanced batsuit appears as an alternate costume in Justice League
Heroes and as downloadable content in Batman: Arkham City and Injustice: Gods Among Us.
Films A direct-to-video feature film, Batman Beyond:
Return of the Joker, was released on December 12, 2000.
The original release was censored for elements of violence and death, though a second, uncensored
version was later released.
Among the live-action films proposed between the critical failure of Batman & Robin and
the reboot of the Batman franchise was a live-action Batman Beyond feature, to be written by Paul
Dini.
In August 2000, Warner Bros. announced that it was developing a live action film adaptation
of the TV series Batman Beyond with Boaz Yakin attached to co-write and direct.
The TV series' creators, Paul Dini and Alan Burnett, were hired to write a screenplay
for the feature film, with author Neal Stephenson consulting the duo.
By July 2001, a first draft was turned in to the studio, and the writers were waiting
to see if a rewrite would be needed.
The studio, also exploring other takes of Batman in development, eventually placed Batman
Beyond on hold in August 2001.
Animation In the last scene of the Batman: The Brave
and the Bold episode "Night of the Batmen!"
when Aquaman, Captain Marvel, Green Arrow, and Plastic Man dress like Batman to protect
Gotham City while Batman himself is incapacitated.
At the end various other incarnations of Batman come out of a wormhole to help, including
Batman Beyond's Batman.
In April 2014, a Batman Beyond short by Darwyn Cooke premiered at WonderCon.
The short, which saw Conroy and Friedle reprise their roles from the show, sees Terry battle
a Batman robot in the Batcave, resembling the design from The New Batman Adventures,
with help from Bruce and the Batmobile.
Once defeated, Bruce and Terry look out to see and prepare to fight seven additional
invading robots resembling the designs from Beware the Batman, The Batman, Batman: The
Brave and the Bold, The Dark Knight Returns, Batman, Batman, and the original design by
Bill Finger.
Release Season releases
Individual releases Note: The audio commentaries for both the
edited and uncut versions of Return of the Joker were provided by the same contributors,
however both versions are slightly different from each other.
Reception While the idea of Batman Beyond seemed as
if it was "not a proper continuation of the legacy of the Dark Knight", it gathered acclaim
after its release.
The show was nominated for four Daytime Emmy Awards, two of which it won in 2001 for Outstanding
Special Class Animated Program and Outstanding Music Direction and Composition.
In addition, the show was nominated for five Annie Awards and won two of those nominations
in 1999 and 2001.
In 2009, IGN.com named Batman Beyond the 40th best animated television series of all time.
In 2014, WatchMojo.com ranked Batman Beyond as the eighth best cartoon to have gotten
cancelled.
Less favorable comments came from animation producer, Greg Weisman, who said that while
the series was well made, it felt more like a Spider-Man series and less like Batman.
See also Batman
Batman: The Animated Series The New Batman Adventures
Kids' WB References
External links Official website
Batman Beyond at the Big Cartoon DataBase Batman Beyond at the Internet Movie Database
Batman Beyond at TV.com Batman Beyond on the DC Animated Universe
Wiki, an external wiki Batman Beyond at The World's Finest