Warning! Contains Spoilers For Outsiders #3!
Bat-Family member Duke Thomas has seen the dark consequences of Batman failing the multiverse, and he’s decided to hunt down every Batman and destroy them to prevent the fate of his universe from befalling any others. In the process, he has become DC’s latest version of the Batman Who Laughs.
Outsiders #3 – written by Jackson Lanzing & Collin Kelly, with art by Robert Carey, Valentina Taddeo, and Tom Napolitano – features the terrifying return of Duke Thomas’ Final Knight. This story saw Luke Fox and Kate Kane on their darkest adventure in “Dimension Batman”, a realm where the consciousness of every Batman goes to train and discuss tactics with other versions of Batman.
The Outsiders’ visit to Dimension Batman takes a dark turn when the Final Knight appears and begins slaughtering the Batmen he encounters. Having been driven insane by the death of his universe, this version of Duke Thomas wants to eradicate all Batmen he can find.
Batman’s “Cursed Wheel” is the Best Idea the Comics Wasted
Batman has trained a lot of partners, but his secret “Cursed Wheel” program is one of his most brilliant and most forgotten training methods.
The Final Knight Invades “Dimension Batman” On A Quest For Vengeance
This version of Duke Thomas, known as the Final Knight, came from a universe where Batman failed to stop the villain Barbatos, who corrupted the Justice League and took over the world. Barbatos ended just about all life on Earth as “the Dragon of the End”. Together, Barbatos and his Dragons of the Bat destroyed every single reality in the Multiverse, with only Duke Thomas and a few others surviving. While Barbatos was eventually defeated, Duke saw firsthand the chaos and death that Batman could unleash if left unchecked. This caused Duke to seemingly go insane, and he’s begun hunting down alternate versions of Batman to prevent this from ever happening again.
Duke Thomas was able to craft a Batsuit out of the skin of the Final Dragon, allowing Duke to survive the destruction of his universe. He then traveled across several different Multiverses, on a quest to kill every Batman he encountered, for fear that eventually they would fall to Barbatos again. This makes Duke an extremely dangerous opponent for any Batman in any reality. This Duke wields the Parall-Axe, a weapon that is forged from the last Power Rings in his universe. Duke also has his own superpowers, allowing him control over both light and darkness. More criticially, he knows Bruce intimately from having trained with him. All of this makes Duke’s Final Knight a threat as large as the Batman Who Laughs was.
The Final Knight Is A Threat To The Idea Of Batman Itself
There have been many dark versions of Batman across the Multiverse, but rarely do the victims of these dark Batmen actually get to survive their encounters with him. The Last Knight saw the absolute worst version of Batman, one that failed to save the world and ended up leading to the death of an entire Multiverse. It’s not surprising that this version of Duke Thomas has seemingly gone mad in a quest to make sure that what happened to his world never happens to anything else. Batman has one of the greatest crime-fighting families in comic books, and now a version of one of his apprenticea is coming to end his life across all reality.
Outsiders #3 is on sale now from DC Comics!
Outsiders #3 | |
|---|---|
 |
|
