I HAVE RETURNED WITH A POSSIBLY CONTROVERSIAL BATFAM TOPIC TO DISCUSS
please don’t kill me, internet….
Okay, so as some of you might know, I’m writing my own AU timeline/tv show for Batman and all the other DC characters, and I’m going along writing Duke Thomas’ story, right? Trying to find all the ways his story interweaves with the others, etc. One big happy narrative.
I’ve hit a point where I have choice to make, and whatever I choose will have radical consequences.
Here it is. I’m considering writing it so that Duke’s parents recover and he can go home to live with them. The reason why I’m worried people will be upset is because Duke has, in time, become a much beloved member of the Bat Family, adopted by Bruce, and so on. I don’t want to disappoint people, I don’t want to seem like I’m excluding him, it’s just that I had a realisation while writing my story the other day.
Every batkid teaches Bruce a different lesson. Dick taught him how to love again, Jason taught him not to be careless, Tim taught him how to deal with his anger and darkness, Cass taught him the value of taking care of one’s emotions (even if those emotions are the kind that still rarely see the light of day, heheh), Damian helped him to better understand his own convictions and worldviews and what right verses wrong really means and he also taught him a lot of patience, and then there’s Duke.
Being at the tail end of most of the well-known adventures isn’t doing his character a ton of favours, and I was struggling for a while to come up with personality traits and character arc stuff that made sense for him and that were compelling, besides him just being “the normal one,” but then… it hit me… him being the “normal” one isn’t totally a bad thing. Don’t misunderstand, Duke is NOT normal, not by a long shot, I know he’s got that Bat Crazy in him, lol, BUT… with him being the newest member, and him coming from a relatively normal background—no rich parents, no abusive father, no assassin cult childhood, etc—he was by and large a relatively normal kid, and that perspective could actually be really beneficial to the rest of the BatFam. They all could stand to be grounded from time to time, especially after years of battling earth-threatening villains by this point. Duke kinda helps them reconnect to why they started being vigilantes in the first place, you know what I mean? And so, the cherry on top, the logical conclusion I’m seeing in my little writer’s brain is: after all the years of fighting together, Duke finally finds a cure for his parents, and they take some time to rehabilitate, and then he gets to go back home to them. After all these years, after so many of the BatKids lost their parents, or have a complicated story with their parents, finally Duke gets a happy ending.
I dunno, it just feels so cathartic, especially since this would be around the time of the grand finale of the tv show. Now, I still imagine Duke being a crime fighter, the bat boys still regard him as a brother, he’s always welcome at the Manor, all that good stuff, but in my heart of hearts, I’m feeling the urge to give him that sense of peace of knowing that he did it. He saved his parents. Bruce helped him save his parents. Wouldn’t that be just perfect, not just for Duke but for Bruce as well? So that in the end, what Duke teaches Bruce is that there’s hope?
Someone tell me I’m not crazy. Also, bring nachos, I’m hungry.