Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is a game that lives up to its name, but the how of Task Force X’s mission to save Metropolis has left fans of Rocksteady Studios polarized. One such death in the game has been heavily criticized, but it might not be lights out just yet for a pivotal character in the Arkhamverse.
Spoilers for Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League below.
If you’ve played the game or read any of the online discourse, you’ll know that Batman’s fate in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is particularly grim. The Suicide Squad succeeds in taking down Batman in his Metropolis lair, and after allowing an Elseworlds Lex Luthor to run some experiments on him, the Dark Knight is summarily executed by Harley Quinn so that Superman can be lured out of Brainiac’s mothership.
It’s a shocking end to Batman, but one that might be kind of undone soon. A new video from Batman Arkham Videos has gathered up clues left behind in Metropolis, as players can hunt down 12 calendars spread across the city. Each one of these calendars has a specific date attached to them, and the December calendar in particular has a bat symbol on its highlighted day. This clue is also found in the park where the the Caped Crusader was gunned down, and as Batman Arkham Videos pointed out, converting the dates into letters based on the day of the month spells out the hidden message “He will return.”
This seems like a clear indicator that Batman will return. Bullets to the head are a temporary problem at best in comic books, and Rocksteady has left several clues in Suicide Squad hinting at how Batman might not be dead after all. Brainiac has demonstrated the ability to clone bodies and transplant superpowers into his soldiers, so the Batman Harley Quinn murdered in cold blood might have been a clone after all.
Even if the original Arkhamverse Batman is dead and buried, Suicide Squad can still pull another incarnation from the multiverse, as each season of the game will explore another parallel dimension in the war against Brainiac and his alternate forms. Datamining has also reportedly revealed who’ll be joining the squad next, as after the Joker arrives in March, it’s claimed that Mrs Freeze (Nora Fries instead of Victor), Deadshot’s daughter Zoe Lawton AKA Lawless, and Deathstroke will be added to the game in future seasons.
The Arkhamverse Batman is against using guns–unless they’re strapped to his Batmobile–but there is a Batman who is a fan of firearms, the Grim Knight. Allied with the Batman Who Laughs and his army of evil Batmen in the DC Universe, this Batman embraced lethal force and has no issue using extreme force in his war on crime–something that could make him a perfect fit for the Suicide Squad.
The game is out now for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC, but reviews haven’t been too kind to Rocksteady’s new Arkhamverse title. “Rocksteady’s first game in nearly a decade can’t shake the superhero-as-a-service genre’s ubiquitous feeling that it exists to keep players mindlessly engaged,” Mark Delaney wrote in GameSpot’s Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League review.
