Kill the Justice League Undid the Half About Killing the Justice League

One of many boldest strikes Rocksteady made when it unveiled its Suicide Squad game after years of rumors was its subtitle: this was going to be a sport about you, as gamers, combating and being pressured to slaughter DC’s most interesting heroes, earlier than Braniac might puppet them into being his personal lethal occupation drive. Then Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League truly got here out, and just about nobody was glad. Now, weeks earlier than its first anniversary, the live-service sport goes out with… effectively, probably not a bang, and barely even a whimper.

The bottom model of Kill the Justice League climaxed with the demise of Superman and Surprise Lady alike, because the titular workforce braced themselves for Brainiac’s defeat and the belief that there have been dozens upon dozens of alternate realities with their very own Braniacs underneath menace for them to save lots of, organising the sport’s live-service construction for months to come back. However then Kill the Justice League confronted a important drubbing and dire gross sales, leaving Rocksteady scrambling to supply fixes alongside its deliberate rollout of future content material—content material that got here to an finish this week with the sport’s eighth and remaining main replace, simply two weeks earlier than the sport would have a good time its first anniversary. That may already be not-great if Kill the Justice League caught any sort of touchdown, however as a substitute, its remaining story content material revealed that the entire thing had been sort of a pointless hoodwink.

The story content material of this week’s eighth episode ends with the defeat of the ultimate Braniac variant within the multiverse at Taskforce X’s palms… with slightly further assist from Superman and Batman, who it turned out hadn’t been killed in the course of the occasions of the primary sport. As a substitute, these deaths—which sparked a sea of controversy on the time, when it was believed that Kevin Conroy’s portrayal of Batman in Kill the Justice League could be his remaining posthumously launched efficiency because the Darkish Knight—have been that of clones.

On the one hand, gamers who truly caught round shouldn’t be shocked—earlier updates had seen Harley, Captain Boomerang, King Shark, and Deadshot already liberate Inexperienced Lantern and Flash from Braniac’s clutches after their very own obvious deaths, touring to alternate worlds and placing them in stasis, so the revelation that Batman and Superman have been additionally clones is just not that shocking. And but, it implies that gamers who’ve stood by Kill the Justice League at its lowest factors have been rewarded with the belief that they by no means truly acquired to, effectively, kill the Justice League. The one casualty by the top of all that is truly Surprise Lady, who had averted Braniac’s thoughts management within the preliminary sport, solely to be killed by (the newly revealed as a clone) Superman.

And so, Suicide Squad ends with Taskforce X and the Justice League going their separate methods: the League staying behind to atone for “their” crimes by monitoring the multiverse to complete off any lingering Braniac threats, and the Suicide Squad, free of Amanda Waller’s embedded explosives, discovering their very own tiny pocket of the multiverse to go have a good time and hand around in. However to finish all of it this fashion—an animated slideshow cutscene and an off-the-cuff, flippant rationalization from Harley Quinn through voice over that covers the clone reveal in half a line—speaks to only what a depressing conclusion this all turned out to be, for what was meant to be the long-awaited way forward for the Batman Arkham universe.

At the very least there’s some heroes alive now that they’ll all stick with it with, if that future ever arrives?

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