One of the Birds of Prey seems to have broken bad in the timeline of Future State, and they’ve become the last great criminal of Gotham City.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for the story “No Future No Past” from Future State: Dark Detective #1 by Matthew Rosenberg, Carmine Di Giandomenico, Antonio Fabela & Andworld Design, on sale now
The Future State-= era of the DC Universe has presented some unexpected transformations for classic characters. This has included former villains turning their aggressions towards a good cause — such as the Arkham Knight leading a band of former Gotham criminals against the Magistrate who controls Gotham City — while others have been recruited into their fold, such as Scarecrow and even Jason Todd.
And in Future State: Dark Detective #1, another unexpected Gotham hero seems to have broken bad, with Grifter revealing to Luke Fox that Huntress has become one of the “last and best” criminals Gotham has ever produced.
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With the Magistrate becoming bolder and more aggressive against masked figures now that Batman has been seemingly disappeared, Luke Fox — the former Batwing — decides it’s time for him to escape the city before his arrest causes chaos for the entire Fox family. To that end, he turns to Grifter, the mercenary that his father recruited to protect him and his loved ones following the chaos of “Joker War.” Although Grifter and Luke aren’t exactly on good terms, they work together to try and escape Magistrate custody. Grifter becomes especially helpful when he discovers that Fox is willing to pay him $50,000 if he can help ensure Luke’s exodus from the city, potentially giving Grifter an out as well.
To that end, Luke and Grifter work together and try to make their way through Gotham, staying ahead of the Magistrate and his forces. Making their way through the Narrows, the pair run afoul of the Black Mask Syndicate and barely escape. The two evade capture by sprinting into an abandoned bakery through a secret entrance, with Grifter revealing this is where they needed to come. Seeking the Queen of Clubs, Grifter reveals that secret contact, and someone he describes as one of the last great criminals of Gotham, is the Huntress. This is a bit of a swerve for the Huntress, who in the present day is still considered a hero despite her darker impulses from the rest of the Bat-Family.
After working with Spyral as a chief agent, the Post-Flashpoint version of Helena Bertinelli relocated to Gotham City and befriended Batgirl and Black Canary — becoming a member of their team, the Birds of Prey. Seeing her become one of the “best criminals” ever produced by Gotham doesn’t bode well for her future, and suggests at some point she must have turned her back on altruistic motives. What could have made her turn to a life of crime like that? While there’s a chance this might not be Helena — as she’s never directly identified — and instead could be someone else who assumed her masked identity to help with their own criminal enterprises, which would raise the question of who this Huntress could be and what could have happened to the original Huntress.
Regardless, it seems that Huntress has become a more fearsome figure in the Future State era of the DC Universe, and she’s someone that Grifter is quick to note shouldn’t be messed with if it can be avoided. But she may be the best chance either of them has going forward, as long as she doesn’t immediately take them down, given her sneaking up on the pair as the issue ends. Maybe along the way, there’ll be more hints about what happened to Huntress, and what turned the once heroic figure into a mainstay of Gotham’s new criminal underworld.
