When the Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League video game was released earlier this year, the response from fans was not good. It turns out that Task Force X brutally killing their favourite heroes wasn't something they wanted from DC, and it being the late Kevin Conroy's final time playing Batman only served to heighten the backlash.
We'd later learn that Conroy had recorded dialogue for Warner Bros. Animation's Crisis on Infinite Earths trilogy and, in a sequence which sees us visit various alternate realities, the Dark Knight faces his greatest foe (Mark Hamill's Joker) one final time.
"I care Joker...about Gotham. About justice. And, if it has to end, at least I go out like this...being Batman!"
Despite his role in the Multiversal movie being brief, it served as one hell of a tribute to the beloved Batman: The Animated Series star who sadly died in 2022 after battling cancer.
Earlier this week, we spoke with longtime DC Animated Universe executive producer Butch Lukic about Crisis on Infinite Earths - Part Three. We asked about the threequel being Conroy's final time playing Batman and, while it was intended as a send-off, he confirmed that no one knew at the time this would be the actor's final performance.
"Originally, we obviously knew we were going to get Kevin to do Batman for this scene. We didn't know at the time and I'm not sure if he knew because it was a year away from when he passed away. We were making jokes about it at the time saying, 'This is your last Batman animated, blah, blah, blah,' and he was laughing and making jokes about it too."
"In hindsight, it wasn't intended to be his final performance of the character but it turned out to be that way, sadly. The lines he did were only two lines really but he wanted to stick around and do the lines for the other Batman just for fun [Laughs]. He was having a good time with it, but we don't know if he was sick then or it happened later."
"Unfortunately, it wasn't intended to be his last performance but sadly now it is."
As for Mark Hamill's return as The Joker (a role he retired from several years ago), it turns out that the mere mention of Conroy being part of Crisis on Infinite Earths - Part Three was all they needed to convince him to play the Clown Prince of Crime again.
"Once we told Hamill...we told him, 'Look, Kevin is doing it' and he always called us if Kevin was doing even just a couple of lines. He said, 'As long as Kevin is doing it, I'm all in,' and that was that. Even though he did state a couple years before that he'd retired from The Joker, he did want to do this one. Again, he didn't know anything as far as what Kevin's outcome was going to be. He was just doing it because it was a good end statement to Batman: The Animated Series for both of them."
We lost a true legend when Conroy passed, but regardless of how you feel about this three-part adaptation of Crisis, it's fair to say the threequel sends his Batman out on a high note. Stay tuned for more from our interviews soon.
Crisis on Infinite Earths - Part Three is now available on Digital and arrives on 4K UHD in limited edition SteelBook packaging and Blu-ray on July 23.