Batman: Arkham Asylum, Batman: Arkham City and Batman: Arkham Knight represent the greatest trilogy of Batman video games ever made. From 2009-2015, these games were the cornerstones in a universe watched and experienced firsthand by millions. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, developed by Arkham studio Rocksteady Games and set within the same universe, drops Amanda Waller’s crack team of…well, the only villains she could get her hands on into an alien war-torn Metropolis. But while we may be a fair distance away from Arkham, a return to the world of these games presents an opportunity to do some catching up. Beyond the appeal of teaming up with our friends on an unholy mission to slay our icons, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League also exists to answer a tantalizing narrative question: whatever happened to the characters from the Batman: Arkham Trilogy?
WARNING: What follows will feature major spoilers for all four of these video games. If you’d rather find out the answers to these questions firsthand, well…play Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO…HARLEY QUINN?
In Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, it’s been more than five years since a Harley at large was apprehended by Batman in Arkham Knight. As far as we know, she’s been locked up ever since. As a member of the Suicide Squad, Harley is enjoying her time in the sun for the first time in a very long while…under boss Amanda Waller’s very specific constraints.
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO… DEADSHOT?
Minutes into the opening of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, Captain Boomerang asks the question that many Arkham Trilogy players have been asking since this game’s first teaser trailer: “Aren’t you white?”
Sure enough, the Deadshot we know from the Arkham video games, who makes an informal cameo in this series as part of an exhibit in Metropolis explaining the events of the trilogy, is an entirely different Floyd Lawton. The Deadshot who we play as in Suicide Squad is, we eventually learn, the Arkham universe’s original Deadshot, but he retired from the mercenary life some time before the Arkham games began to raise his daughter Zoe. In retirement, Deadshot’s counterpart from the neighboring Earth-2 was warped to the Arkham world by that world’s Lex Luthor and took up his old moniker as no one around was actively using it at the time. That Earth-2 Deadshot is the one we fight as Batman in the Arkham games. Unfortunately for Floyd Lawton of Earth-1, Deadshot of Earth-2’s activities brought superhero attention back on him after years of dormancy, and he was ultimately captured and separated from his daughter by Green Lantern.
Allegedly, the Earth-2 Deadshot died some time after Amanda Waller was seen recruiting him at the end of Batman: Arkham City…but our own Earth-1 Deadshot isn’t so sure.
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO…BATMAN?
Since staging his death at the end of Batman: Arkham Knight, our hero spent some time utilizing the Scarecrow’s gas to adopt the new persona of “The Demon Bat,” warping himself into something inhuman in the minds of his enemies as the knowledge of his identity as Bruce Wayne became public. Descending further into madness and loneliness, our boy Bruce found a second chance at life when he was approached by the members of the Justice League to join their ranks. We get to know this post-Arkham Batman a little better as we explore the Hall of Justice in Metropolis, where Batman seems happier and better adjusted than he ever was before, adopting the Justice League as his new family as they fought together for a common cause.
Unfortunately, that all came to an end the day Brainiac invaded Metropolis and overwrote Batman’s mind as general of his Terminaut forces. Before he was taken, Batman left a message for his true family—Nightwing, Oracle, Robin, Red Hood and his other allies—in one of his hidden Batcaves beneath Gotham on how to defeat the Justice League…and him. It’s the Suicide Squad who follow through on Batman’s plans, taking on the Demon Bat and putting him out of his misery in Centennial Park. After the credits on Kill the Justice League roll, Lois Lane delivers a stirring eulogy for Batman, capturing our feelings on not just this incarnation of the character, but the legendary artist Kevin Conroy who returned one more time to voice him in this game before he passed.
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO…ROBIN?
In the epilogue to Batman: Arkham Knight, Batman’s crimefighting partner Tim Drake is betrothed to Barbara Gordon and poised to assume his mentor’s legacy as the protector of Gotham. Evidence in the satellite Batcave hidden beneath Metropolis seems to indicate that before the Suicide Squad made it there, Robin confronted the Brainiac-controlled Batman and lost. But you know what they say. No body, no death.
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO…COMMISSIONER GORDON?
After seeing Gotham through the crises of Arkham Asylum, Arkham Knight and Arkham City, James Gordon was duly elected the city’s mayor—a position he continues to hold to this day.
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO…AARON CASH?
Arkham Asylum security guard Aaron Cash has been part of the Arkham series since the very beginning, most memorable for having lost a hand to Killer Croc. In Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, we rediscover Cash as he’s moved himself up to ARGUS, now reporting directly to Amanda Waller as a member of her rank and file.
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO…THE PENGUIN?
After too many tussles with the Dark Knight, the Penguin removed himself from the Demon Bat’s city and rebranded himself as a super-weapon arms dealer hiding in plain sight from the Justice League as kingpin of the Metropolis underworld. By the time of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, so entrenched is the Penguin in the underground network of Metropolis that he’s one of the few remaining humans in the city still hiding out and staying alive when the Squad recovers him as a resource—putting his arms network to work for them. Like it or not, Oswald Cobblepot finds himself enlisted as part of the support team to the Suicide Squad. WHATEVER HAPPENED TO…THE RIDDLER?
Batman’s most enigmatic and persistent foe through the Arkham series remains at large, following his enemy to Metropolis. A bit sore that Waller didn’t think to ask him to solve the puzzle of killing the Justice League, Eddie Nygma co-opts the explosive implants in the Squad’s heads to force them to meet his challenges as he once challenged Batman. As if dealing with the Justice League wasn’t enough of a headache. Poor guy just wants someone to play with.
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO…POISON IVY?
One of the most tragic, memorable scenes of Batman: Arkham Knight is the heroic sacrifice of Poison Ivy, giving her life to save a Gotham City blanketed in Scarecrow’s fear gas. But, as we discover in Kill the Justice League, a part of Poison Ivy survived—sporing into the form of a young girl with all the heart and evil brilliance of her forebear, but none of her memories. She just goes by “Ivy” now, and she’s here to do whatever she can to help the Suicide Squad kill the Justice League. In this case, that mostly entails augmentations to their weaponry through biological warfare.
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO…MR. ZSASZ?
One of the first villains you confront as Batman in the Arkham series, Victor Zsasz meets his final end in the first issue of Suicide Squad: Kill Arkham Asylum, when after one threat too many, new inmate King Shark bites his head clean off. We’re likely to discover the fates of some other favorites as this comic book miniseries bridging Arkham Knight to Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League continues.
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO…THE JOKER?
Still dead. Batman’s greatest nemesis perished from a deadly virus at the end of Batman: Arkham City, but still managed to haunt him throughout Arkham Knight. But that doesn’t necessarily mean we’ve seen the last of him. As Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League introduces the Squad to the concept of the multiverse, upcoming content in future seasons of the game promise a return for the Joker…though, perhaps, not the one we know. You’ll have to keep playing as the story continues to find out more.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is now available on PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC.
Alex Jaffe is the author of our monthly "Ask the Question" column and writes about TV, movies, comics and superhero history for DC.com. Follow him on Bluesky at @AlexJaffe and find him in the DC Community as HubCityQuestion.
NOTE: The views and opinions expressed in this feature are solely those of Alex Jaffe and do not necessarily reflect those of DC or Warner Bros. Discovery, nor should they be read as confirmation or denial of future DC plans.
