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The Justice League Dark’s newest character, the psychic Randhir Singh, just saved himself from a grim fate by preserving his literal inner child.
WARNING: The following article contains spoilers from “Drowned Secrets” in Justice League #66, available now from DC.
The Justice League Dark has been desperately trying to save the world from the dark sorcerer Merlin, who recently returned after being missing for years. The team has added some new members to their ranks. Two new characters are also working to help the team without having officially joined–though it looks like they will join the team’s roster before this conflict with Merlin comes to a head.
One of them, Elnara Roshtu, is the Thirteenth Knight of the Round Table. She vigilantly guarded Excalibur for centuries until she was betrayed by Merlin, who then stole the sword. The other is a powerful psychic, Randhir Singh, who Elnara just saved from a fate worse than death. But Randhir also took steps to save himself, and in the process, quite literally saved his inner child in the Justice League Dark story “Drowned Secrets” by Ram V, Sumit Kumar, Romulo Fajardo Jr. and Rob Leigh, featured in Justice League #66.
Elnara survived Merlin’s attempted betrayal to kill her. She awoke in a hospital bed where a voice began speaking in her mind. She then escaped the hospital and boarded a plane to Gotham. The voice belonged to an old man who was aware of Merlin’s betrayal and his theft of Excalibur. Following the man’s directions, she came upon an old church where she met Batman. The two teamed up against a magic-wielding cult, and afterward, Elnara found the old man who had been speaking to her, bound to a chair in the back of the church with high-tech machines wired into his brain.
This was Randhir Singh, a powerful psychic. Batman deduced that a spell had fractured Randhir’s mind, causing him to simultaneously have roughly a hundred separate dreams, each experienced by a different part of his consciousness. These dreams were then projected onto reality by the machines he was hooked up to.
With help from Batman and some magic, Elnara entered into Randhir’s mind, following the psychic’s voice through multiple turbulent dreams until she came to a single fortified tower being besieged by many versions of the old man. She fought her way through to the front gate of the tower. Within, she found the true Randhir, who took the form of a small child.
Elnara escorted Randhir through his splintered dreams, killing other versions of himself. But as he explained it, these were “just rogue fragments” that had grown into “paler, flatter versions of [him]” since breaking away. The cult that Elnara and Batman encountered had captured Randhir Singh on behalf of Merlin. He had considered just accepting this new fate trapped within his own mind. However, that would require him to kill his inner child, since “there is no room for curiosity and innocence when you live locked within the bounds of your own knowing.” That childlike sense of wonder was worth preserving, even if it cost him most of the other aspects of his identity.
The two escaped the dreams, but Randhir awoke into the body of an old man. He had the pain of an entire lifetime, but the mind of a small child. This was tragic, but it also allowed him to preserve the most vital part of his true self — the one that had been at the core of his identity from before he took his first steps. Now, Randhir Singh will accompany Elnara Roshtu as they walk into certain danger to stop Merlin.
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