What a bizarre ending to a massive industry failure. With its final update, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League abruptly wrapped up its theoretically multi-year storyline with some short animated cutscenes with one main reveal: The Justice League never actually died at the hands of the team, they were all clones that Braniac had made and unleashed on Metropolis.
That includes, yes, Arkhamverse Batman, who was previously executed by Harley Quinn in a hugely controversial plot turn. He shows up in the finale to punch out Braniac during the reveal that the entire JLA was still alive. Well, other than Wonder Woman, who actually died and now has a statue in the city in her honor. And also Arkhamverse Robin, it seems. Yeah it’s sort of wrecked things anyway.
Despite what some may believe, this was not some last-minute face-saving turn by Rocksteady to try to resurrect Arkham Batman for a future project that may actually exist now, according to rumors. The clone thing was actually the plan for Suicide Squad along, and there was plenty of evidence for this even in the main game with some of the moments involving Green Lantern and The Flash specifically. As the story continued to unfold, anyone actually paying attention, which was almost no one, knew that this clone angle was coming. Plus it was, you know, datamined.
The question was whether Batman would show up in any meaningful capacity in the story and he did not. Just in this animated cutscene for a few seconds, confirming he’s alive. I previously wondered if the departed Kevin Conroy had recorded any lines for Batman’s return, but if that did happen, they were not used here, which was probably for the best.
Despite the reveal the JLA is alive, this has really ruined the entire Arkhamverse, dead Batman or not. It feels like the best plan here would be to dismiss the entire events of this game as happening in some “Elseworld” that was not the main Arkhamverse timeline so we can pretend it never existed if we do go back to that world.
Last we heard (via some insider reporting), there is indeed going to be another game in the Arkham series after this, as Rocksteady returns to the thing it was actually doing well. I supposed this doesn’t need to be thrown into the multiverse as it could just be like “welp, back to Gotham!” and ignore most of the events of the game anyway. And maybe Robin isn’t really dead etc. etc. But any way you slice it, this was a total mess.
So no, Rocksteady did not pull a last minute “it was all a dream!” moment, as this genuinely was planned from the start. That does not make it a good plot, but the groundwork was indeed laid before Suicide Squad was a huge failure.
It’s back to Batman, most likely, and I think everyone, including Rocksteady, would be wise to forget this detour ever happened.
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