Batman: Caped Cursader

[Thebestoftherest]

Kinda wish they brought back Detective Yin.

[CharlesPhipps]

I find this a cheap excuse. Everything is alternate universe these days and the message I take from that is: Don't get invested, because it will be changed in a few years and everything you learned and liked will be invalidated.

Are you invested in the Lord of the Rings? Well there's only three books and there's never going to be any more. The thing with alternate continuities is they have the benefit of a beginning, middle, and an end. Batman: The Animated Series is a single continuity that ends with Bruce Wayne's story ending. He becomes a bitter old man who, nevertheless, has a happy ending thanks to Terry bringing him out of his shell but still spends most of his life alienated from the people he loves most.

Batman Begins Bruce Wayne retires after defeating Talia Al Ghul and spends the rest of his life with Catwoman.

Rocksteady Batman ends up being killed by the Suicid...okay, bad example.

But the existence of alternate continuities means that there's ways of making stories have coherency and change and plot that allows the stories to function on their own.

That will never happen with the comic books.

A continuity is not some thing that needs to go on forever but a way of establishing a story's stakes.

To quote the High Priest of the Snake God, Alan Moore, the bad movie adaptations of his work can't hurt his stories because they're still on the shelf of his wall.

They could have made Oswalda the heretofore unknown daughter/sister/cousin of Oswald (and still might) but this is an alternate universe and they have the freedom to do whatever they want in it. I have the freedom to watch or not watch it too.