So... Jason Todd might be immortal.
So, a long while back, I saw a theory floating around that Jason Todd (specifically the version from the New Earth continuity, we won’t get into Prime Earth, and New52 and Rebirth) is actually immortal.
I can’t find the theory now, google has failed me, but if I remember right, the gist of it was that Red Hood super fucking dies at the end Under The Hood.
Jason is hurt badly after Bruce gets him with a batarang, but it’s suggested this wasn’t fatal because Bruce’s whole thing was figuring out a way of stopping Jason from killing Joker without killing Jason.
However, Joker immediately blows up the building they’re in.
There’s this weird ripple of space sparkles, Bruce gets up, and immediately begins to mourn him, alongside various images of different Batmen across the multiverse… I guess, maybe.
Under The Hood was technically part of the Infinite Crisis event, so like everything else that happened in that block of time, we time jump a year after this (theoretically, some characters don’t appropriately age up, the perpetual teenagers that they are).
If you read this at the time, you probably assumed Joker just killed Jason in another explosion.
Jason returns in the Nightwing costume in Nightwing #118. If you remember my post about Conner Kent dying in place of Dick, I’ve been told this happened because they’d planned to have Jason become Nightwing after Dick’s death, but when Dick was spared, allegedly they already had art drawn of Jason as Nightwing, and I guess didn’t want to scrap it. I cannot confirm this as fact, though, I’m not sure where that information comes from.
So, clearly Jason didn’t die, so what happened? It’s kind of a weirdly written comic, so Nightwing is going to be no help explaining what happened, Dick asks no questions regarding where Jason’s been or how he’s back, character emotions and actions are all over the place, Jason turns into a grotesque blob monster for a bit (it… is explained, but its weird and confusing), it’s a whole thing.
If I remember right, the theory has to do with those space sparkles. They seem to be associated with the event of Superboy Prime punching the universe, the same event that un-killed Jason Todd.
As the theory goes, Jason cannot die - his death was unwritten, and cannot be re-written; he will always come back. So, Jason died at the end of Under The Hood, but reality won’t let him stay dead.
He’ll just come back - “reset” so to speak - as if he never died.
This is also a handy excuse for how he crawled out of his grave without dying again from lack of air.
So I read that theory, thought “oh that’s cool” and then proceeded to never think about it again. Until today.
So I was reading Battle for the Cowl, and I got to this bit in Dick and Jason’s fight where Jason yeets himself to what surely must be his death - Dick seems to think it is, at least, and Jason indicates that Dick doesn’t want Jason’s blood on his hands, so Jason must know this fall could kill him.
But just before letting go of the ledge, Jason tells Dick “I’ll be seeing you sooner than you think.”
And then I remembered this little line from Batman and Robin, after Jason’s returned again (in the fucking pill helmet outfit….), where Jason says - “shoot me, do it, I’ll come back.”
….I mean it seems like Immortal Jason Todd may have been the intent during this era. Possibly. There’s more evidence supporting it than I thought.
Sometimes you get things like this that are just a bit out of place, a bit odd, but build on each other and seem to be leading toward some big reveal or deeply explored concept… and then it just got dropped entirely or the universe rebooted, and you’re left wondering if it was ever really there at all.
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