During a time-travel adventure, Batman Beyond reveals Bruce Wayne’s suspicious new role in turning Terry McGinnis into the hero of DC’s future.
WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Batman Beyond #49, by Dan Jurgens, Paul Pelletier, Norm Rapmund, Chris Sotomayor, and Travis Lanham, available now.
Time travel is usually messy, and Terry McGinnis just learned that lesson the hard way. In Batman Beyond #49, the Caped Crusader of the future unknowingly has a chance to change his life forever by stopping his tragic origin story from happening in the first place. However, Bruce Wayne has other plans to ensure the rise of his eventual successor.
After Bruce Wayne seemingly went mad as the result of a villain’s telepathic implant and seemingly killed Terry’s brother, Batman Beyond went back into the past to correct the timeline by defeating the telepathic villain Blanque before he could warp Bruce Wayne’s mind. But in reality, Bruce really tricked Terry into going back into the past to ensure that the greatest tragedy of his life plays out, assuring his transformation into Batman Beyond. As a result of all this, Batman becomes the catalyst, if not the responsible party, for the murder of Terry’s father, the future hero’s foundational heartbreak.
In this adventure through time, McGinnis has the rare opportunity to meet a younger version father, Warren, who was killed when Terry was a teenager. Though this meeting is quite emotional, the primary focus remains Batman Beyond’s avoidance of the present-day Dark Knight because any interaction would damage the time stream. But as it turns out, Terry’s hectic time-travel experience has been orchestrated by Wayne himself.
On the surface, Blanque fills the role of a typical villain in this story. Batman, his successor and Booster Gold all battle the powerful Superman foe throughout the issue. Ultimately, Terry’s heroism in the fight inspires Warren’s later valor when — as an adult — he confronted his boss about illegal weapons research. Warren’s bravery was costly, as his boss ordered his murder to cover up their crimes. This injustice motivates Terry to become Batman, and this time-travel tale adds a tragic twist to this origin.
As Wayne reveals, he later read Warren’s journal and learned that the Dark Knight was his role model in his decision to confront his employer. However, Wayne and Booster Gold realize that Warren really met Batman Beyond, so manufacture a sequence of events to make this interaction happen, completing a chronal loop of cause and effect.
Terry’s trip to the past offered him the chance to alter his tragic backstory. He could have warned his father of his looming death and potentially saved his life in the process. However, the timeline had to remain the same because this exact sequence put Terry on the road to becoming Batman. Wayne refuses to allow anyone to change the timeline and focuses on the importance of endurance. “We must recognize that the tragedies we’d like to erase are the ones that we have to endure,” Wayne says, knowing first-hand that he couldn’t save his parents from their fates either. Through the efforts of Wayne and Gold, they have guaranteed that Batman will live on, as they successfully protected the timestream.