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In the world of Batman Beyond, Bruce Wayne met his end before he ever learned the greatest secret of his successor, Terry McGinnis.
WARNING: The following article contains spoilers from “Wake” in Batman: Urban Legends #7 by Jackson Lanzing, Collin Kelly, Max Dunbar, Sebastian Cheng, Aditya Bidikar, on sale now.
The Bruce Wayne featured in the future world of Batman Beyond was recently murdered in Batman: Urban Legends #7 (by Jackson Lanzing, Collin Kelly, Max Dunbar, Sebastian Cheng, Aditya Bidikar), leaving Terry McGinnis to pick up the pieces and start again as the Dark Knight of the future. But Bruce passed on before learning perhaps the biggest secret of his life: That Terry McGinnis is actually his biological son. In fact, odds are strong that Terry doesn’t know this secret yet either. But there is a twisted irony to the World’s Greatest Detective dying before he could uncover one of the greatest secrets about his family. And in some ways, it also makes perfect sense.
Bruce was murdered by an AI that represented the collective networks of Gotham City. But in his final moments Bruce didn’t reveal that Terry was his son. This suggests that throughout his entire life, Bruce never uncovered the truth about his successor.
The truth about McGinnis was revealed in the Justice League Unlimited episode “Epilogue,” when an older Terry discovered that he was Bruce’s biological child. Knowing that Bruce was never with his mother at any point, but suspecting that his mentor had engineered his life, Terry went to the one person who might be able to answer his questions: Amanda Waller.
Waller revealed that Bruce had no knowledge of Terry’s connection to him until well after they first met. It was Waller who engineered the blood tie between him and Wayne, wanting to make sure that there was always a Batman to protect the world.
Waller found two people who were as close to Bruce’s parents genetically as possible. She then altered Warren McGinnis to ensure that it was Bruce’s DNA that would conceive Terry, not Warren’s. But Waller’s plans fell through after that and Terry was allowed to lead a normal happy life until his father was murdered.
This truth was only discovered years after Terry took up the mantle. Considering that Wayne never mentioned this when he realized he was dying, it stands to reason that Bruce never put two and two together before he was killed.
There is an irony to the World’s Greatest Detective missing a mystery that was right in front of him, but there is also a twisted logic to it. Bruce has never been one notice things when it comes to his family, and when he does, he usually is either slow to respond or does the wrong thing altogether. It’s possible that Bruce had a suspicion, but never acted upon it out of fear of the answer. In any case, the two never got the chance to really embrace their true relationship. But even if Bruce never knew the truth, it was obvious that Terry viewed the elderly Wayne as his surrogate father.
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