okay so little meta elaboration on that post from yesterday: Cass being Batman would complete her character arc and show her character growth, whereas Damian being Batman would do nothing but ruin his mental health and put his character development in reverse and here’s why.
Cass and Damian are characters who fascinate me endlessly because their backstories are so similar, yet both their backstories and they themselves are so very different from each other. Cass and Damian were both trained to be deadly assassins, pushed beyond their limits from a very young age, and basically knew nothing but fighting for a very long time.
The main difference between Cass and Damian is that Cass was dehumanized, told that she was nothing, that she was unimportant and only existed in order to kill. Damian, on the other hand, was told that he better, more important than almost everyone else, and that he would be even greater one day. Cass was raised with limited/nonexistent human contact, which led to her not forming any real human connections until a very late age, whereas Damian was raised to place in incredible importance on family.
Both of these, however, were ultimately toxic. The emphasis on family that Damian grew up with was an inherently toxic one; he was taught that, because of his family and parents, he was inherently superior to other people. His entire self-worth and destiny was very much tied to his family and eventually following in his family’s footsteps. Cass’s isolation from other people was also harmful to her, both for, well, obvious reasons, and because it was done specifically to deny her agency and humanity; it was a manipulation tactic to make her dependent on Cain and to make her more pliable for his needs/wishes.
Both Cass and Damian’s character arcs are ultimately about reclaiming your destiny. However, in Damian’s case, picking up the Batman mantle would do the exact opposite of that. If Damian were to pick up the Batman mantle, he would ultimately be doing exactly what he’d always been told he’d be doing: following in his family’s footsteps, albeit it in a different way than originally planned. For Damian, it would be a much better conclusion for his character arc if he ends up creating his own hero persona (or even better, hanging up the mantle entirely, but DC is never gonna go for that), to signify that he is more than his family’s legacy; he is his own person, and reclaiming his destiny, for him, is about finding out who that person is, exactly. So simply taking up his father’s mantle would be, well, bad writing.
For Cass, on the other hand, taking up the mantle of Batman is exactly what her character development needs. Taking up the Batman mantle would signify two things that are absolutely intrinsic to her character arc: 1) that she’s a hero, that she made herself a hero despite all the odds that were stacked against her, and that she’s never planning to quit, and 2) that she’s now found a family. Taking up Batman’s mantle would be taking up a legacy; it would mean that Bruce and/or the rest of the batfam trusts her enough to keep such a vital legend going. Becoming Batman would forever make her a staple in both the batfam (and therefore the Wayne family) and in the crime-fighting community; it would mean that she’s no longer alone, and that she’s made it as a hero. It would be the natural conclusion to her character arc.
So yeah tl;dr if DC even so much as tries to pretend Damian would take up the Batman mantle instead of Cass I’m personally gonna riot.
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