Batman Beyond, Season 3 - Review

SPOILER WARNING

If you have not seen any of Batman Beyond, please leave the blog and return after you've watched it. Unless, of course, you just don't care, in which case, stick around and be spoiled. You choice.

Batman Beyond, Season 3 - Review

Characters:

• Terry McGinnis - Voice Provided by Will Friedle. Current Batman.
• Bruce Wayne - Voice Provided by Kevin Conroy. Former Batman
• Max - Voice Provided by Cree Summer. Terry's best friend.
• Inque - Voice Provided by Shannon Kenny. Villain. Amorphous black body.
• Barbara Gordon - Voice Provided by Stockard Channing. Gotham City Police Commissioner. Former Batgirl.
• Talia al Ghul - Voice Provided by Olivia Hussey. Bruce's old girlfriend. Daughter of Ras al Ghul.
• Dana Tan - Voice Provided by Lauren Tom. Terry's girlfriend.
• Charlie "Big Time" Bigelow - Voice Provided by Stephen Baldwin. Villain. An old friend of Terry's.

Review:

I know that episodes of cartoons are largely made to be played in pretty much any order the networks see fit. For the most part, that doesn't bug me in the slightest. However, watching this last Season of Batman Beyond and knowing it was the last made the last couple episodes really odd... which I will talk about later in this review. For now, I've got some other points about the Season.

I like how the Royal Flush Gang ended up, though I wasn't happy they appeared again to start with. I'm not entirely sure I liked how King and Queen were having issues, but it worked to get them in jail. It was nice to see Paxton Powers again. I'm glad they did something with him after the big pile of nothing from last Season. I do not like that there wasn't anything done after that and I'm disappointed Derek Powers didn't show up again, seeing as they sort of teased that last Season.

Inque's pair of appearances really killed her coolness from the last few. It was nice that both she and Terry learned new moves since their last encounter, but I didn't think it needed a sign post. I also didn't like that Inque had a daughter. That particular storyline is ridiculously played out. It'd have been slightly more interesting if the daughter had been Dana. She really needed something more to do than be the whiny, largely absentee girlfriend. As for Inque's second appearance... I didn't bat and eye until I remembered her daughter was supposed to have killed her. Not that that's really a giant obstacle, given the universe, but still. Even a line from Terry about it would have been nice.

And now for my favorite episode of the Season: "Out of the Past." I honestly had not expected Talia al Ghul to show up. I'd been expecting Selena Kyle or Dick Grayson. However, Talia was a nice blast from the past. I liked that Terry got to do her exposition, rather than Talia or Bruce. I loved, loved, loved the opening sequence. It was surprisingly hilarious. I would totally go see "Batman: The Musical." I didn't like the further Bruce/Barbara stuff. It makes me gag. I thought the twist of the episode was really interesting, especially because of the Damian Wayne hint there.

The Justice League Unlimited crossover was interesting, to say the least. Superman clearly had a different voice actor from the Justice League, which bugged me. I had no interest in any of the other heroes so them being put in peril did nothing for me. I also wasn't really impressed with the villain of the two-parter. They looked like a much more flexible purple Starmie. I did like that Terry had to fight the JLU, it was nice to see him hold his own, especially against Supes, with minimal help from Bruce.

Okay, now to the end of the Season. We got some crap about Kobra, the only good part of which was Alexis Denisof's voice. Then we got a cautionary tale about taking off the cowl and then Zeta was back for the final episode. Oh, and the Jokers reappeared after being mysteriously absent for the entire Season. It was really odd and didn't feel like the end of a Season, let alone the end of a Series. I'm not really sure how I feel about it, to be honest.

Overall, Season 3 was pretty solid. It had a good mix of good and bad episodes. All the characters were developed well and there were nice nods to the past. I really enjoyed it.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• Max finally got to be more than Terry's tech support.
• The Big Time storyline would have been stronger if the flashbacks had appeared earlier.
• I've never liked DC's obsession with talking gorillas and I really didn't like that they just sort of recreated that mess in Gotham.
• Terry's suit got messed up in almost every episode. I affectionately called this Season "The Season of the Ripped Up Batsuit."

Housekeeping

As I said in my Once Upon a Time review yesterday, same night reviews will be extremely rare, so today you got this thing I should have done last week. However, stay tuned tomorrow for my review of tonight's Sleepy Hollow episode.

Love ya, Jessie