Batman’s End

A catechism: Who is Batman? He is Bruce Wayne. Who is Bruce Wayne? A billionaire fighting crime under a secret identity. Why does he fight? In memory of his parents, murdered in an alleyway mugging when he was a child. How did he react? He swore by the spirits of his parents to avenge their deaths by spending the rest of his life warring on all criminals. How did this event and oath change him? He became dark, obsessed, dour. How will his quest end? Only with his death or exhaustion. Will another replace him when he dies? No—Bruce Wayne's origin, history, talents and resources are unique; others may imitate, but none can replace him.

Another catechism: Who is Bruce Wayne? He is Batman. Who is Batman? A vigilante crime fighter, a haunter of the urban night. Why does he fight? For justice; for virtue; for Gotham City and all who inhabit it. How does he fight? With force, but without fatal violence; he apprehends, but he does not punish; he rescues all who need rescuing, even criminals. How will his task end? It will not end: crime and injustice are forever. Will another replace him when he dies? Perhaps, perhaps not; if injustice is forever, then so too should be the hero who fights it.

Complementary catechisms, but concluding with inconsistent dogmas. And before Batman Beyond extended Wayne's life and career into an unimagined future, the question about the survival of the Batman persona would have had only speculative interest. But with mortality beckoning and a putative heir in the waiting, it acquires new force. Does "Batman" end with Wayne, or does he continue through the efforts of Terry McGinnis? Is Batman merely an extension of Bruce Wayne, or in creating Batman has Wayne inaugurated a hero that transcends himself and any individual? And the choice is Wayne's to make. He can make Batman immortal by surrendering the cowl and sundering himself; or he can assert his own indivisibility, his own peculiar claim upon his life and work, by taking it with him. Until the moment of his own ending, he can also choose Batman's.

How fitting and necessary that Wayne should be defining himself even in the twilight of his life, for self-creation through the exercise of choice has always been the essence of his character. He has no superpowers, either intrinsically (like Superman) or gained through accident (like Spider-Man). He made himself into what he is, initially through a deliberate reaction to his parent's death, and then through the long training to fit himself to his chosen task. The choices he has made at each step have been the conscious acts of the person making the choices, and the person making those conscious choices has been shaped by the choices previously made. And so it stands even at dusk. To anticipate his decision here—whether it is Batman or merely Bruce Wayne who dies of old age—is to implicitly endorse one catechism or the other, for those catechisms describe different individuals who may make different choices. As Otto Friedrich observed, it is a long-standing conceit in fiction that the manner of a character's death in some way reveal the meaning or purpose of his life; to speak of a man's "end" may be to commit a pun—to refer both to his demise and to the goal to which his life had led and which finally reveals the person that he is. So it is that the catechisms' beginnings lead inexorably to their conclusions: Who is Batman? becomes What is his proper "end"?

Here is one common explanation of who Batman is and how he became that way: The decisive change in Bruce Wayne's life occurred the night his parents were murdered: that was the instant he became Batman; everything else merely followed. Strictly speaking, it is impossible that matters should be this way, for when and how did that boy choose to fight through non-fatal means, and to cooperate rather than compete with the authorities? Those were important choices too, for they mark a fundamental difference between Bruce Wayne and, say, Victor Fries. But grant the answer its essential point, that beneath the cape and cowl is a boy with his dreams of vengeance and recovery, however displaced.

Now, if that crisis in the alley marks the moment he stopped developing, we should recognize the consequences: This is a character perpetually on the edge, both morally and psychologically, for his actions at bottom have only an emotional basis and are only as stable as those emotions. Neither he nor we can ever be sure of either his sanity or his rectitude, or that he can properly be distinguished from the criminals and villains he fights, for the differences between him and them can only be a matter of degree and not of kind. Furthermore, his is a life that can only end