Batman: Arkham - Everything You Need To Know About The Court Of Owls

3. They Have Ties To The Dark Multiverse

The Court of Owls have a sinister purpose, but what if their truer, more secretive purpose was actually even more sinister than that?

A couple of years after they departed the main Batman title, Snyder and Capullo embarked on another adventure together in Dark Nights: Metal, a comic that can only be described as bonkers (but also in the best way imaginable).

The comic pitted the Dark Knight and DC's heroes against a newly conceived 'Dark Multiverse', a parallel series of alternate realities that ran opposite DC's conventional multiverse. The main difference, though, is that every alternate reality featured a world engulfed by horrifying versions of DC's traditionally heroic protagonists, with Batman at its centre. Eventually, said evil Batmen (led by Judge Death lookalike 'the Batman Who Laughs'), invade the main DC reality and wreak havoc, and it turns out the Court were involved from the start.

Metal introduced a new revelation in that the Court secretly worshipped the bat god known as Barbatos, and their end goal was to infect someone from the House of Wayne with Dark Multiverse material so that they could rule alongside them. They get killed by the Batman Who Laughs' Robins for their troubles shortly thereafter, thus heralding the end of their obsession with Batman, but their brief cameo in the comic re-contextualises their entire purpose thereafter.

The Arkham series has thus far strayed away from DC's more cosmic elements, but they've embraced the supernatural from the off. Could now be the time for Barbatos to enter too? Only time will tell.