9 TV Shows That Wrapped Up In Ridiculously Bizarre Ways

8. Batman Beyond

Every once in a while, a dumb idea from a TV executive can result in a good show and Batman Beyond is one example. Executive producer Paul Dini had to make a show about Batman in high school, but instead of doing the predictable (making Bruce Wayne a teenage crime fighter), Dini made Bruce Wayne an old man mentoring a teenager named Terry McGinnis to be the new Batman. While the show had an open-ended finale when it ended, Justice League Unlimited's second season finale is really the proper finale to the Batman Beyond series. Taking place over a decade after Beyond ended, the appropriately titled Epilogue revolves around Terry discovering that he is Bruce Wayne's biological son and how it happened. In the end, it turns out that a conspiracy of ex-government employees used nanomachines to replace Mr. McGinnis's DNA in his sperm with Bruce Wayne's. This conspiracy was also about to kill Mr. and Mrs. McGinnis so Terry would go through the same trauma as Bruce and turn into Batman (somehow), which didn't happen because everyone involved agreed that Batman wouldn't do that. Epilogue is genuinely bizarre and ridiculous in the grand tradition of comic books. The whole scheme to create a new Batman in Terry is not only convoluted and ethically bankrupt, but it doesn't seem like it would've resulted in Terry becoming Batman anyway. Bruce Wayne being an embittered hermit and the McGinnises being solidly middle class people are two obvious road blocks to the plan. It seems like it would've been easier to just grab some kid orphaned by violence, train him to fight people, and give him a Batman costume. It does explain why Terry's hair is black instead of brown or orange, like his parents, and how the Joker came back in Return of the Joker, but those are minor moments of lucidity in this insanity. Then there's the creepy implication that the only good Batman is Bruce Wayne or someone directly descended from him. But let's face it, the comics do that too and it's just as ridiculous there, so we just have to deal with it.