Does Batman really die in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League?
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is clear about his intentions from the start. Your mission, which you have no choice but to accept as a member of Task Force X, is to kill the Justice League. Kill the Flash. Kill Green Lantern. Kill Superman. And yes, kill the Batman.
But despite the clarity of the new Suicide Squad game’s title, it still seems a little hard to believe. Kill Batman? Kill it? Kill the star of Rocksteady’s trilogy of beloved, best-selling Batman: Arkham games? Surely this has to be a Batman from an alternate universe, right? Some kind of hoax?!
Sorry but no.
(Warning: The following contains spoilers for Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League And Batman: Arkham Knight.)
The narrative basis of Kill the Justice League is that alien bad boy Brainiac has come to Earth with plans to conquer it. Not only does Brainiac mutate the population of Metropolis into his soldiers, he also gets major help from (most of) the Justice League after brainwashing and manipulating them. With Brainiac’s plan working, government agency ARGUS enlists criminals from Arkham Asylum and Belle Reve prison to quell the alien uprising. Captain Boomerang, Deadshot, Harley Quinn and Killer Shark get super powerful gadgets and lots of weapons to help them take on the competition.
Second to last on their list is Batman, the same Batman who faked his death five years earlier Batman: Arkham Knight. There is a whole in-game museum called The Batman Experience Kill the Justice League that explains why Batman gave up the ruse of his death and joined Superman in Metropolis. That museum also offers a brief summary of the events of Arkham Asylum And Arkham citywith exhibits dedicated to each of Batman’s main villains.
Batman has a big presence throughout Kill the Justice League. You use his radio communication with Brainiac, so you hear the late, old voice actor Kevin Conroy voicing an evil, Brainiac-possessed Batman throughout the game. And at one point you watch a long holographic shot of Batman/Bruce Wayne, ostensibly left for Robin, to explain how to take down the Justice League to everyone watching, including Batman himself.
Rocksteady makes it explicitly clear that this game’s Batman has turned to evil under Brainiac’s spell, and that the only solution is death. That’s something the only other uncompromising member of the Justice League – Wonder Woman – tries hard to avoid. But the suicide squad? They have no qualms about killing Batman.
So, a little after the halfway point of the game, after Task Force They take Batman’s broken but still breathing body to Lex Luthor, who is studying the Caped Crusader’s modified genetics, and then they shoot old Bats in the head. Harley Quinn does the deed. Of course not to see Batman’s brains are graphically blown out, but it’s clear to everyone involved that Batman is dead.
That being said, Kill the Justice League is also a game about multiverses, or as DC likes to call them, Elseworlds. Just as a new, younger Joker comes to town, there could be another Batman in the game’s multiverse, though the game doesn’t explicitly hint at that. Of course, we shouldn’t forget that this all has its roots in comic book storytelling, where no one stays dead forever.
However, Rocksteady having Harley shoot Batman in the head feels like a metaphorical milestone for the studio. It completed its Batman: Arkham trilogy in 2015 and seems to have left that franchise behind completely. For all intents and purposes, we should consider the Batman of Rocksteady’s Arkhamverse dead for now.
To drive that point further, Kill the Justice League even ends with a tribute to Batman’s late voice actor. Daily Planet reporter Lois Lane delivers a post-game eulogy for Batman (but, somewhat strangely, none of the league’s other fallen heroes), ending with the message “Thanks, Kevin.” It’s a melancholic ending, but it underlines the finality of Batman’s fate in this universe.
Whether there’s another Batman waiting in the wings, as hinted by the secret ending of Arkham Knight, remains to be seen. We’ll see where Kill the Justice LeagueElseworlds go from here.