Hey, Give Us More 'Batman Beyond'
Batman Beyond is one of those things which "only true 90s kids" remember, like Dunkaroos or posting jokes on social media without your mom commenting and asking to explain it. The series only ran from 1999-2001, but it has since achieved a cult following, not least of which because it was a great show (ranking as the 4th best Batman show of all time on IMDB), and great shows that are short-lived tend to develop a cult of fans who want to see more. (See Arrested Development, Pushing Daisies, Firefly, etc.)
So it came as a very welcome surprise when, at IGN Fan Fest last weekend, Andrea Romano, the voice and casting director of Batman Beyond, asked fans to campaign for the show's revival. Said Romano:
"It will depend on the fans asking, and asking, and asking for it until Warner Bros. would be foolish not to. So they have to begin a campaign of sorts and just let Warner Bros. know that that's what they want. Because we would like to make it, it would be great fun – we're all still around, we're all still available, everybody's still doing beautiful work. So yes please, and thank you."
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It's an incredible idea, and I hope that (to paraphrase the sage philosopher, Poe Dameron) this will be the spark that lights the fire that burns the coal that powers the engine that churns the wheels towards getting this show on the air. (It was something like that.) I mean, Hollywood has tried reviving everything else. Why not give something a chance that fans actually want?
It's fitting, too, because the setting of Batman Beyond has aged into our current time. Yes, the series is mostly in 2039 as we follow the new Batman, Terry McGinnis in Neo-Gotham, but the pilot starts us off in 2019 as we see an aging Bruce Wayne debuting his futuristic Batsuit before hanging up the cape and cowl to retire from Batman-ing for good.
A revival allows us to give the now much nearer future of 2039 a more informed perspective. For example, at the time, a gang of marauders worshipping the Joker might have seemed like the type of outlandish villain you'd only see in a cartoon ...
But that's basically just describing Jared Leto's cult. Or any fan of Todd Phillips, really. Okay, that was a joke, but I do think our current dystopian life would make the even more dystopian future of Batman Beyond all the better. I don't want to give any spoilers for the current series (definitely go back and watch it), but I'll just say that Terry McGinnis was never allowed to fully stand outside of the shadow of Bruce Wayne, and I think that's the natural progression fans of the series were looking for. So we'd go back, and we'd do that. And we'd make all the steam in this steampunk fiction steamier and all the punk punkier, and, instead of shoving Fuller House down our throats, we'd have a show that 90s kids actually want to watch. We just have to go out and ask for it.
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Top Image: Warner Bros.
