This year marks 20 years since Batman Beyond first showed up on television, and to celebrate, the cast of the beloved series revealed at SDCC 2019 that the show is getting a Blu-ray remastered re-release. Bruce Timm, Andrea Romano, Best Batman Kevin Conroy, and Best Spider-Man Will Friedle made the announcement during the show’s 20th-anniversary panel (via Polygon).
The limited-edition set includes all the original episodes (41 of the 52 are remastered, with the other 11 episodes just being upconverted because of damaged originals); a chrome Batman Beyond Funko Pop for some reason; several new featurettes; lenticular art cards; and Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, the most messed up hour and a half of kids television since those Hasbro monsters murdered Optimus. They also revealed that the show will be hitting the DC Universe streaming service shortly, though I believe that will be its second time on the platform.
If you’ve never watched Batman Beyond before, this re-release is definitely a good excuse to watch one of the best superhero shows ever produced by DC Animation. The show tells the story of Gotham’s future as the original Batman is at the end of his crimefighting career. Bruce Wayne is too old to even pilot his cybernetic Batsuit around Gotham when Terry McGinnis stumbles onto Wayne Manor while running from a gang of Jokerz. Batman saves him, but collapses from the strain, leading to Terry stumbling across the Batcave and deciding to take up the mantle.
The show follows Terry as he gets used to being Batman; Bruce as he gets used to being grumpy old Oracle; and us, as we get used to a Batman laced with tons of Spider-Man coding. A later development in Justice League Unlimited, in the episode “Epilogue,” also revealed that Terry was Bruce’s secret son after Amanda Waller had stolen the Dark Knight’s DNA years earlier. (Just go with it).
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Timm actually revealed during the panel that this JLU story was actually meant for a second straight-to-video Batman Beyond movie had Return of the Joker been more successful. This movie would have seen the return of Catwoman as an older woman styled as if “Anne Bancroft was Catwoman in her prime.” In this version of the story, Catwoman would have been the person who stole Bruce’s DNA to create Terry.
None of this ever came to pass, of course, as Terry was left to learn of his fate on another show in 2005 after Batman Beyond ended its two-year run in 2001. While we’re left to wonder what could have been, at least we have this shiny, new collection to celebrate what was.
The Batman Beyond Blu-ray collection hits stores on Oct. 29.
Read and download the Den of Geek SDCC 2019 Special Edition Magazine right here!