Batman is known for its expansive rogues gallery, including many characters players will be hoping to see return in WB Games Montreal’s upcoming Gotham Knights. These villains range from famous faces like the Joker, Poison Ivy, and Two-Face, to the silly and often sidelined characters like Calendar Man, Clock King, and Polka-Dot Man.
There is one strange villain, however, who could fit perfectly into the plot of Gotham Knights as revealed so far. His name is Owlman, he comes from an alternate universe, he killed the entire Wayne family, and he’s Batman’s older brother.
Owlman debuted in the Earth-3 DC universe. He was born the eldest child of the Wayne family, and was named Thomas Wayne Jr. Believing that his parents were squandering their wealth on philanthropy, he hatched a plan to have them murdered. After trying and failing to convince his younger brother Bruce to go along with him, he killed Bruce while Alfred murdered the pair’s parents.
In the wake of his family’s deaths, Thomas Wayne Jr rose to power as one of Gotham’s most brutal crime lords. He took on the moniker of Owlman — so named by his comic book creators because owls hunt bats in real life. Like Bruce Wayne in the main timeline, Owlman also found Dick Grayson at Haly’s Circus. In Earth-3, however, Owlman was the cause of Dick’s parents’ deaths, using the tragedy as an opportunity to adopt Dick as a replacement for Bruce. Instead of becoming Robin, Earth-3’s Dick Grayson became known as Talon. Talon would die while killing the Joker, who was also Owlman’s nemesis in his universe.
In later stories, Owlman attempted to cross over to Prime Earth. When he finally succeeded, he found out that Prime Earth had a Dick Grayson all of its own, who at this point had become the superhero known as Nightwing. Although Owlman was eventually killed, the entirety of Earth-3 was later brought back to life, making his return possible.
There are a few reasons why Owlman could appear in Gotham Knights, as well as some reasons why he would be a great fit. The main villains of Gotham Knights have been revealed to be The Court of Owls, which uses assassins named Talons who are trained at Haley’s circus. Needless to say, Owlman would fit right into that dynamic, and could even be considered an alternate version of The Court of Owls himself.
Furthermore, the death of Bruce Wayne could make the re-emergence of Owlman as a dark alternate version of Batman very interesting. Owlman is haunted by his murder of Bruce across the iterations of the character. It would be interesting to see how he reacts to the revelation that Bruce is also dead in the alternate universe he has arrived in.
It’s also clear that Gotham Knights will not be shying away from the more extreme aspects of the DC universe. While some iterations of the Batman stories have shied away from elements like aliens, multiverses and so on, this does not appear to be the case in Gotham Knights. Robin’s special ability involves using a short-range teleport via the Justice League Watchtower. This could certainly imply the existence of alien characters like Martian Manhunter in Gotham Knights, and by extension could allow for the introduction of characters from across the DC multiverse.
Owlman could be a great, and fantastically weird, addition to the Court of Owls. He’d also uniquely function as a one-off appearance as part of Gotham Knights “villain crime” events. Either way, seeing a strange warped version of the Dark Knight return after Bruce Wayne’s death could be a great twist on the character, as well as a strong way for Gotham Knights to distinguish itself from the Arkham series.
Gotham Knights is set to release on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series S/X in 2022.
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