The original Batman Beyond series showed fans the future of Gotham City, but one thing it didn’t show was the fate of Catwoman, Bruce Wayne’s greatest love. As it turns out, that’s because she was originally going to be part of one of the biggest twists in Terry McGinnis’s entire story.
The successor to Bruce Wayne’s legacy, Terry McGinnis’s life started off simple enough: a child of Neo-Gotham who saw his father killed, setting him on a path to the Batcave. But Terry’s origins eventually became a LOT more complicated, learning that he was the biological son of Bruce Wayne–unbeknownst to his own parents. Long before his mother became pregnant, Terry McGinnis was conceived as part of a top secret project to create the son of Batman. And now, Batman Beyond’s creators have revealed that Catwoman was originally the villainous mastermind behind the entire plot.
It’s a shocking bit of news, especially considering the fact that it was never explored in the series itself. But as Batman: The Animated Series and Batman Beyond co-creator Bruce Timm revealed during the show’s “20th Anniversary” panel during SDCC 2019, that’s only because the movie centering on the storyline was scrapped. Where the Return of The Joker feature is now seen as one Beyond’s greatest stories, it didn’t sell well enough to green-light the sequel–which Timm is no longer worried about spoiling:
Timm went on to explain that the question of Terry’s true origins was eventually changed and re-purposed, later included in a single episode of Justice League Unlimited. In that episode, titled “Epilogue,” Terry McGinnis uncovers the Cadmus genetic tampering explained above, with Amanda Waller the mastermind behind the entire program instead.
“Catwoman was going to be our leading villain in the second movie… She was the one who cloned Bruce Wayne to create Terry, but that was going to be our big surprise in our next movie.”
In that version Waller’s plan was based solely on altruism, growing to accept that the world needs Batman more than any hero. Thus, she launched her plan to override the genetic material being carried by Terry’s father with Bruce’s DNA instead. Presumably those motivations would have changed if Selina Kyle, the “villain” of the story according to Timm, was the one to drop the truth on Terry and Bruce. Since a villain wouldn’t want to create a hero, fans need to ask: did Selina have her own plans for Terry, the son of Batman?
Regardless of how the story turned out, it’s a clever addition to the true origin of Terry McGinnis. Had it been pursued, the story would raise question marks, or at least two potential interpretations of both Terry’s father AND mother. While Batman had no input in the creation or raising of Terry McGinnis, he is technically his biological father. And while Catwoman may not have carried Terry herself, it would only have been through her actions that Terry was created in the first place. Son of the Bat in blood, son of the Cat in spirit.
But as fans know, this Batman Beyond feature film twist was never to be. Instead fans will have to subsist on the theoretical son of Batman and Catwoman introduced in DC Comics… which is better than nothing.
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