Showdown

"Showdown" is the eighty-second episode of Batman: The Animated Series. It originally aired on September 12, 1995.

Plot

Agents of the Society of Shadows infiltrate a retirement home and kidnap one of the elderly residents. They are interrupted by Batman & Robin, but manage to escape with their captive.

Investigating the captive's room, Batman finds a tape on a chair. They return to the Batmobile and determine where the kidnappers are heading. They play the tape and hear Ra's al Ghul telling them a story:

In the year 1883, when a Transcontinental Railroad is about to be completed, elderly bounty hunter Jonah Hex visits the nearby town of Devil's Hole. Making the acquaintance of a local barmaid, he tells her he is hunting for a fugitive outlaw, Arkady Duvall. She recognizes him immediately and says he has been driven out of town after beating up some of the local women. She has no idea where he is now, but when Hex asks if there's been any strange activity in the area, she mentions strange sounds and lights coming from a local mountain, and rumors of a dragon.

She leads him to the mountain, and then he sends her back. Sneaking inside the mountain, he finds an impromptu factory, and an enormous airship held up by zeppelins. He sees Duvall, acting as an overseer of the workmen. Duvall whips one of the men and is immediately reprimanded by Ra's, who is in command. Ra's gives a speech, saying that he will use the airship, christened "The Phoenix", to destroy the railroad, then move east to Washington and take over the United States government, halting its destruction of the Western environment.

Hex is discovered and captured and brought before Duvall. Hex says he's there to collect the bounty and pay back an "insult to a lady" friend of Hex's back east. Duvall snorts and orders Hex executed, but Ra's appears and counteracts him again, ordering Hex locked up instead to be questioned later.

As the airship departs, Hex escapes his cell and runs after it, managing to catch a trailing line and climb aboard. At the inauguration ceremony for the railroad, the governor is about to drive the final spike. Still, a volley of cannonballs from the Phoenix destroys the waiting locomotive and much of the town. As the people scatter, Ra's orders another volley.

Hex reveals himself and pursues Duvall. As he climbs into the ship's rigging, the captain frantically tells his men to stop firing, as the zeppelins holding up the ship are full of hydrogen gas and a stray shot could cause an explosion. Hex faces off with Duvall, with Duvall wielding a saber and Hex a bowie knife. Amid their furious duel, Hex points a howitzer up toward the zeppelins, and fires, igniting the hydrogen. The ship loses altitude and begins to burn. Ra's escapes the ship in a personal glider, telling the rest of the men to save themselves but to abandon Duvall to his fate.

The ship crashes, throwing both Hex and Duvall off. Duvall begs for his life, but Hex tells him he has no interest in killing him – instead, he'll deliver him alive to the law as it will be too much trouble dragging a dead body back east. He finds his hat and remarks ruefully, "I'm gettin' too old for this".

In the present, Batman & Robin catch up with Ra's at the airport, where he reveals the identity of his elderly captive...Duvall.

Ra's explains that Duvall is his son, though Ra's realized even before the Phoenix incident that he was too cruel and unstable to be his heir. After Hex brought him back east, Duvall was sentenced to 50 years of hard labor, with no one but Ra's expecting him to live out those years. Exposure to the Lazarus Pit as a young man allowed him to live out his sentence. After his sentence was complete, Duvall wandered away with the privations he experienced having shattered his mind. He is now more than 100 years old, but he is now far too feeble for even the Pit to restore him. Ra's had lost track of him until he learned Duvall turned up in the retirement home and asks them to let him go, so he can do what he can for his son in the little time he has left. Batman agrees, knowing that they will meet again one day.

Continuity

• In "The Demon's Quest", Ra's says he has no sons, which is why he wants Batman to be his heir; here, he specifically states that he had lost track of Arkady until he turned up in that rest home.
• Jonah Hex appears again in the Justice League Unlimited episode "The Once and Future Thing Part One: Weird Western Tales."

Background information

Home video releases

• Batman: The Animated Series, Volume Three (DVD)
• Batman: The Complete Animated Series (DVD)
• Batman: The Complete Animated Series (Blu-ray)
• Son of Batman (Blu-Ray bonus)

Production notes

• According to Kevin Altieri, this episode came about as a result of a conversation with Paul Dini. Other names brought up in that conversation included: Sgt. Rock, Enemy Ace, Dial H for Hero, Hawkman, and The Demon.^[1]
• This episode is heavily influenced by The Flashman Papers, with the character of Arkady Duvall being based largely on the titular character. His appearance is based on descriptions of the character from the books, and his voice actor, Malcolm McDowell, was cast specifically due to his role as Flashman in the film adaptation of Royal Flash.^[1]
• When writing this episode, Joe R. Lansdale told Bruce Timm that he wanted to re-invent Jonah Hex. "I want to make him an East-Texan. I want to make him a Confederate. I didn't want to make him necessarily somebody that saw all the wrongs of confederacy, although I do personally. I wanted him somewhere caught as a man of his time, and yet a man evolving out of that time. And then I wanted to bring in the supernatural element, and I wanted him to be not some guy that came from a family where the people had money. I wanted him to be the kind of dirt poor people I knew as I grew up, and I felt I could give that a more realistic view. And I also wanted to show that his evolving views on things were changing that had turned into a form of cynicism in some cases, satire in others, and just a raw dark sense of humor."^[2]
• Joe Lansdale has cited Jules Verne's Master of the World as an inspiration on this episode.^[2]
• Kevin Altieri has stated that there was an extra one-minute sequence cut from this episode due to run time.^[1]
• Altieri also mentioned that in the original script, there was dialogue cut in the scene where Jonah Hex gets imprisoned, and the guard would say, "sweet dreams, Hex" with Hex replying "don't mind if I'll be dreaming about your mother, do ya?"^[1]

Trivia

• First appearance of Malcolm McDowell in the DCAU. He would go on to voice the Superman villain Metallo.
• This was Elizabeth Montgomery's last acting role before her death on May 18, 1995. This episode was first broadcast almost four months after her death. Montgomery was famous for her role as Samantha Stephens in the 1960s sitcom Bewitched. Her long-time partner, Robert Foxworth, who married her shortly before her death, would later voice Emil Hamilton on Justice League Unlimited.
• The territorial governor is voiced by Patrick Leahy, the Democratic Senator from Vermont from 1975 to 2023 and the former chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. Leahy is a huge fan of the Batman comics, and also has small cameo appearances in the live-action films Batman Forever, Batman and Robin, The Dark Knight, and The Dark Knight Rises.
• David Warner and Malcolm McDowell appeared together in the film Time After Time, in which H.G. Wells (McDowell) travels from Victorian England to modern-day San Francisco, in pursuit of Jack the Ripper (Warner).
• There are two possible references to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade:
  • Hex makes reference to himself being like a "bad penny".
  • Although Hex loses his hat, it somehow returns to him at the end of the episode.
• The Phoenix is floated with hydrogen gas, which was the only gas used in airships until the early 1900s, and suffered from the disadvantage of being highly flammable. Helium, the non-flammable alternative, was first discovered in 1868 (15 years before the episode takes place), but the process of producing it was not discovered until the 1890s. Because the United States had a monopoly on helium production during the early years, hydrogen continued to be used in German airships until the 1950s, including the infamous Hindenburg, which caught fire and exploded in 1937.
• Hydrogen burns with an almost invisible flame and, because it's lighter than air, rapidly rises. If a cannonball did burst a cell and ignite the gas, the cell in the blimp would quickly collapse and the flames would head up.
• The first Transcontinental Railroad was completed in 1869, with the "golden spike" being ceremonially driven by Leland Stanford at Promontory, Utah. That railroad connected Sacramento, California, with Omaha, Nebraska.
• The second Transcontinental Railroad was the Southern Pacific Railroad, connecting Los Angeles, California to Santa Fe, New Mexico; Atchison, Kansas; and New Orleans, Louisiana; with completion milestones in 1881, 1882, and 1883 (the year the episode takes place). There was a ceremonial "spike-driving" in 1883, but it took place in Texas rather than Utah, and the spikes were silver, not gold.
• The third independent Transcontinental Railroad, the Northern Pacific Railway was also completed in 1883, linking Chicago, Illinois, with Seattle, Washington.
• Duvall mentions being a Heidelberg fencing champion. Academic fencing was a craze in the late 1800s, especially at German universities like Heidelberg. Any scars, or "smites", resulting from the fight would be seen as a badge of honor, and it appears Duvall suffered one, too, on his right cheek.

Cast

Quotes

Barmaid: You a bounty hunter? Jonah Hex: Just to pay for my piano lessons.

Sheriff: Well, well. Jonah Hex, his own bad self. Been here five minutes and you ain't killed nobody nor set nothin' on fire. Slippin', ain't you? Jonah Hex: I'm still a little bushed. Sheriff: Fact is, you look a little past it, Hex. Not tired, just all used up. Jonah Hex: Well, when I get pushed, I can still shoot a fly out from between its wings. Provided the light's right, of course, and it's a big plump fly.

Barmaid: Good luck, Jonah Hex. Jonah Hex: Right nice sentiment, ma'am. But I never cotton much to luck. I like to make my own.

Duvall: You're either a liar or a fool. Jonah Hex: I've been known to be foolish, but ain't nobody calls me a liar and goes to bed happy.

Duvall: You! I don't believe it! Jonah Hex: Guess I'm just a bad penny. Duvall: Why are you doing this? Jonah Hex: Because I don't like you, or your kind.

Jonah Hex: Now, let's you and me dance. Duvall: You cannot defeat me. I am a Heidelberg fencing champion. Jonah Hex: My heart's all a-flutter.

Duvall: I'll chop you to pieces! Jonah Hex: Talk, talk, talk.

Duvall: Let me live, please! Jonah Hex: I will. Only because it's too much trouble to hull your stinkin' carcass back east.

Jonah Hex: (Picking up his hat.) I'm gettin' too old for this.

Batman: You left Duvall to his fate a century ago. Why come back for him now? Ra's: Did you really think, detective, that in my six-hundred years of life, I have sired only one offspring? Even before the Phoenix debacle, I had come to realize that Arkady was too unbalanced and cruel to wisely rule my empire. Batman: But you couldn't forget about him. Ra's: What father can ever forget his son?

Ra's: Come now, Detective, I've still a few good years left. We will cross swords another day, but for now...let me take my boy home.

References