Deep Dive DC: Wes Looks at Meltdown

Unfortunately, I have start today’s article off on a bit of a somber note. As many of you know, I sometimes write these articles months in advance, which means even though by the time you read this, it will be January, on my end it is still mid-November, meaning that a few days ago, we learned that the great Kevin Conroy has sadly passed away at the age of 66. While Conroy was a man of many talents and accomplishments, I don’t think it’s unfair to say that he’ll be best remembered for voicing Batman in various projects, most notably the DCAU, for the better part of three decades, defining the character for multiple generations, including my own, in the process. For me, the man’s iconic baritone was my introduction to the Dark Knight and since then, every time I’ve read a Batman comic, it’s his voice that I hear in my head, and I’m sure that the same can be said of many others. I did not know the man personally, but I did have the great pleasure of meeting him a few years ago at a convention in Uncasville Connecticut, and I found him to be one of the warmest, friendliest and most gracious human beings you could ever meet. I’ll never forget how his eyes lit up with excitement when I pulled out my DVD of Mask of the Phantasm for him to sign. This was clearly a man who had a lot of love for the character that made him famous and the fans he garnered because of that. My heart goes out to Kevin’s friends, loved-ones, colleagues and fans during this time of mourning. I’m put in mind of Bruce Wayne’s words from Return of The Joker. “It’s not Batman that makes you worthwhile, it’s the other way around, never tell yourself anything different.” Kevin Conroy elevated an already iconic character to new heights, and for that, we will never forget him. Rest in Peace Mr. Conroy, and thanks for the memories.

That sad business out of the way, welcome back to Deep Dive DC Month and the last of our three part look at the DCAU Mr. Freeze. At the end of Freeze’s last appearance, the TV movie, Sub-Zero, Bruce Wayne had paid for Nora Fries’s treatment and she made a full recovery while Freeze himself was presumed dead. Freeze would resurface in an episode called Cold Comfort where we learn that Nora held out hope that her beloved husband would return to her, but when he never did, she moved on with her life. Some time after, Freeze returned to Gotham with the new MO of destroying the things that his victims love most. We then learn that the reason Freeze never went back to Nora after all he’d gone through to save her was that his own condition had deteriorated to the point where he was nothing more than a head in a glass jar a la Futurama, meaning he could never return to his wife. Because of this, Freeze wanted the whole world to feel his pain and despair, hence the whole “Destroy what you love most” thing. Batman and company managed to stop Freeze from destroying all of Gotham, but Freeze’s fate was left ambiguous until today’s outing, Freeze’s final DCAU appearance the Season 1 Batman Beyond episode, Metldown.

Our episode opens down by the docks where the new Batman, aka Terry McGinnis, is stopping a group of corporate thugs from dumping toxic waste in the Gotham river. Terry uses his suit’s invisibility setting to make quick work of the thugs, though maybe be a bit more careful with those canisters, that is radioactive waste after all. Once Terry knocks out the head good, he takes his phone and calls up his boss, Derek Powers, to taunt him, something that makes Powers so irritated that his skin starts falling off.

If I may go on a bit of a tangent here, I’d like to take a moment to talk about Powers. In my humble opinion, one of the things that kept Batman Beyond from reaching the same heights as its predecessor was that Terry’s Batman never really had a true nemesis. Oh, don’t get me wrong, the series showcased an impressive rogues gallery over the course of three seasons including the likes of Shriek, Stalker and Inque, but he never had that one bad guy who never really went away like his mentor had with The Joker. Only two villains in the series ever came close to that level, one ironically being The Joker himself, whose appearance we’ve already covered. The other was Powers here. Derek Powers was something of a low-rent Lex Luthor type who became the CEO of Wayne Enterprises in a hostile takeover sometime prior to the events of the series. Bruce still sits on the board of directors and Bruce uses that position to fight back against Powers using the company his family built to commit acts of evil as best he can, but he's clearly just a figurehead who powers keeps around for good PR. When it comes to running the actual business, it's Powers who is really calling the shots. Powers is also the man who arranged the assassination of Terry’s father, Warren McGinnis, a former Wayne Enterprises employee who uncovered evidence of Powers’ shady dealings. So, both Bruce and Terry have a pretty big axe to grind with this creep and would like nothing more than to see him rot in prison for the rest of his life. Unfortunately, Powers is good at covering his tracks and the police can never get any of the charges to stick. What Bruce and Terry don’t know is that during the events of the first episode, Powers was exposed to deadly radiation which gave him radioactive powers as well as a nifty glow-in-the-dark skeleton, and, later this very episode, he’ll be adopting the super-villain moniker of Blight. This guy was all set up to be the big bad for the series and had a lot going for him to that end, and yet, Terry had very few significant encounters with him and by the end of season one, he’d seemingly died and would not return for the remainder of the series. No idea why they didn’t make better use of this character but what you gonna do.

Anywho, having Radioactive superpowers is cool and all, but having to replace your own skin every twenty-four hours, not so much, so Powers is desperate to find a way to cure, or at least stabilize his condition. One of his scientists, Dr. Stephanie Lake, proposes cloning a new body Powers and transferring his neural patterns into it. Powers is intrigued, but Dr. Lake insists that they test the process first, and she just so happens to know the perfect test subject. Yes, it seems Freeze’s disembodied head has been in a cold storage locker in the bowels of Wayne Industries for the past several decades. Freeze laments the fact that his condition has effectively made him immortal, and yet, all he wants is to die. Stephanie offers Freeze a chance at a normal life and Freeze agrees to the procedure. Next thing he knows, Victor is waking up in the lab with a brand new body, one that can survive outside of sub-zero temperatures, much to the man’s elation.

Meanwhile, Bruce arrives to pick Terry up from school (Terry’s cover story is that he works as Bruce’s personal assistant so the richest man in town picking up from school is nothing that anyone would see as out of the ordinary) and the old man is looking grumpier than usual, which is saying something given the Bruce we see in this show. Apparently Victor Fries returning to the land of the living is all over the news. Powers, of course, spins the whole thing as a man who has long since paid his debt to society and now, thanks to the hardworking scientists at Wayne Tech, has been given a second chance at life. It seems many find Victor’s story inspiring and Bruce, not trusting his old enemy, is having none of it, insisting that Terry follow him to make sure he doesn’t stir up trouble.

Terry does as he’s told but doesn’t seem to believe that Victor is still the man he once was as Bruce does, especially after he saves a cat from an oncoming train. At the Gotham cemetery, Victor and Dr. Lake visit the grave where they buried Freeze’s old body, a gesture symbolic of Victor burying his old life. A masked man armed with a machine gun arrives and starts shooting at Victor, but Batman manages to take him down fast. Turns out this man is no criminal, just a man whose family was killed by Freeze back in the day and now seeks revenge. Batman suggests calling the police, but Victor insists that won’t be necessary, feeling he has done enough to this poor man. Victor instead expresses great sorrow for the pain he’s caused this man and begs his forgiveness, promising that he will do whatever is within his power to make reparations to all those he has wronged as the villainous Mr. Freeze.

True to his word, later that day, Victor appears on a talk show to announce the creation of the Nora Fries foundation, a charitable organization dedicated to aiding the families of his past victims. Turns out, before turning to a life of crime, Victor put his legitimate earnings into a blind trust and all these decades later it’s come to almost a half billion dollars. Bruce and Terry watch the broadcast and while Terry, having witnessed Victor’s actions at the graveyard, is convinced that he’s legitimately reformed, Bruce isn’t buying it. Really though, can you blame Bruce for being skeptical? Go back and watch the old show. Pretty much every major villain got an episode where they tried to go legit and every single time they were back to their evil ways by the end of the episode. Bruce is just playing the odds at this point.

After the interview, Victor begins sweating uncontrollably, a sign that his condition may be returning, something later confirmed by Dr. Lake once he returns to the lab for tests. Powers tries to salvage this project by ordering Dr. Lake to kill Victor so they can do an autopsy and see where they went wrong. Lake locks Victor in the lab and cranks the heat but Victor smashes the glass and escapes into the cold snowy night.

The following evening, Freeze returns to the lab, sporting a new and improved cryo-suit that he kept in storage at one of his old safe houses, and begins enacting his revenge on Powers and Dr. Lake. Freeze puts Powers on ice and brutally executes Lake who emits a blood-curdling scream of terror as she dies. Freeze intends to complete his revenge by blowing up the entire compound, which could wipe out the entire city block and cause the deaths of hundreds. Batman arrives and tries to talk some sense into Freeze, but by this point, he’s too far gone to listen. The two start mixing it up and while Terry holds his own, he still ends up getting frozen to the wall. It’s here when Powers arrives, having escaped his icy confinement using his radiation abilities, the same abilities he’s now using to beat the shit out of Freeze. Terry breaks free and starts fighting this new threat, who, as I said, chooses this moment to christen himself, Blight. Blight starts kicking Terry’s ass, and Bruce warns him that the suit isn’t designed to withstand such dangerous levels of radiation. Blight is about to land a killing blow when Freeze arrives to fire a concussive ice blast that sends the glowing skeleton man flying out of the building and into a frozen lake. Freeze has decided not to blow up the compound, but the building is still coming down. Batman tries to save Freeze, but Freeze refuses, instead opting to allow himself to die in the wreckage, finally ending his own suffering and the suffering he would cause others once and for all.

In a moment I find too amusing not to point out, Powers’ goons pick him up after he’s ejected from the compound and offer him, a man so hot with radiation that his skeleton is glowing like a Christmas tree, a blanket, in case he was cold. Powers looks at the two goons and tells them they’re both idiots. And our episode draws to a close with Bruce and Terry agreeing that, in the end, they were both right about the man known as Victor Fries. While he did live for revenge, he was still a man who tried to make things right and be the good man he once was.

This episode is still truly excellent, on par with Heart of Ice in my opinion. As I’ve said before, the show did not pit the new Batman against the classic rogue’s gallery as often as you might think. In fact, a later episode would subvert that expectation by teasing a confrontation between Terry and Bane, only for Terry to find that Bane was now an aging drug addict on life-support, so any time it did happen, it usually felt special. At this point in the series, Terry is still new to the being Batman so facing not only one of his mentor's old enemies, but also a brand new and more powerful threat served as a real trial by fire for the new dark knight. Freeze is also great in this episode, which much more of the great pathos that I felt was missing in SubZero. When he wakes up in his new body, you truly feel his elation and believe that he wants to finally put his dark past behind him, which makes it all the more tragic when his second chance at life is yanked away from him. Victor Fries was once a good man, a scientist who sought to use his research to save lives, particularly the life of the one he loved most. A man who knew only his own greed took everything from Victor and he became a cold-hearted creature hellbent on revenge. Even when Victor would attempt to find peace or was granted a second chance at life, his lust for vengeance would continue to plague him until he eventually lost sight of his original goal. He was a man who was doomed to tragedy, when all he wanted was to help the woman he loved. Kind of a downer when you think about it. Next week though, we’ll be discussing something decidedly more lighthearted as we look at a movie featuring one of the breakout characters of the DCAU, so join me next week as we take a look at, Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn!