You can skip this episode. No, really. There's nothing here. It's not terribly interesting visually. Curare brings absolutely nothing as a character to the story. Bruce is out of town. Terry doesn't develop in any meaningful ways. The closest we get to an emotional beat is Max being pretty freaked out after an encounter. This is one of the rare episodes in this series that I'd actually say is not just optional but you can probably just skip it entirely.

Batman Beyond: Final Cut

When last we met Curare, Batman had stopped her from assassinating Mr. Barbara Gordon, Babs' District Attorney husband. In doing so, he doomed her to death--the Society of Assassins punishes failure with death. Now, though, Curare has singlehandedly killed most of the Society with just two remaining members left. One of them eats it in the opening of the episode, leaving the guy breathing but in a permanent vegetative state.

I will say, this is one of the things I love about Batman as a cartoon aimed at young teens. When we're writing for adults, they usually take the easy route--someone loses a head or the vast majority of their blood. Batman cartoons have to go through the network censors, though, and so they have to get more creative. Instead of getting the (violent, bloody) release of death, this guy is now trapped in his own body. Can he still think? Is he conscious? Is he a breathing husk? How long will they keep him on life support? Curare didn't kill him but instead did something that becomes more upsetting the longer you think about it.

Now back to crapping on this episode. The remaining Society member plants a bomb in Gotham and uses that as leverage to get Batman to protect him from Curare. Max inserts herself into the situation and the guy ends up dead anyway, so they have to defeat Curare in addition to finding and defusing the bomb before it explodes.

Curare is the biggest problem here. 'One-dimensional' doesn't feel like a flat enough word to describe what a boring character she is. DC Comics has so many cool assassins from Deathstroke to the Al Ghul family to the Court of Owls' Talons that have so much more going for them. The Talons are flat in their own way, but they're connected to the Court of Owls. The Society of Assassins is a knock-off of the League of Assassins, and this episode effectively puts an end to their story. Curare doesn't speak a word and barely even grunts. We don't know why she dresses like an extremely problematic Prince of Persia character, why her--and only her--skin is blue, why she doesn't talk, or anything like that.

There's room for a fascinating character in Curare. She's a medieval character in a cyberpunk world. Is the blue skin the result of experimentation by the Society? Was it a horrible Marvel superhero origin-style accident? Was it something forced upon her by the same culture that had her dressing like a Middle Eastern harem girl? Was she born mute, or was that part of the same accident that made her into a Murder Smurf? Why does she adhere to dressing like she does and using a scimitar in a world with flying cars and lasers? How does she feel about all of this? What does she do when she's not murdering? Is she just murdering because she's bored, or is she protecting someone?

Instead of even considering or bringing up any of those questions, though, Batman Beyond seems to imagine her as someone who just spends all of their time assassinating people, and then sitting in a dark room waiting until the next assassination is supposed to happen. She might as well be a robot. She could've been a robot!

The other opportunity the show doesn't seem to know what to do with is Max's addiction to excitement. They touch on it here, but only briefly. Max decides to toss the guy's hotel room, and Curare shows up. When Terry finds her, she's crying in the bathtub and saying how scared she was. But by the time the episode ends, she's already just mega-stoked to do more detective stuff.

Yeah, it's a kids' show, but they're just leaving all of these cool ideas on the table. Harley Quinn could've been a forgettable character, but they gave her an iconic design and a couple of memorable gimmicks, and then started evolving the character. Curare could've been a Talia Al Ghul for a new generation, and Max could've been a new Oracle with all of the pathos and complexity of Barbara Gordon.

Instead, we get this forgettable episode about a forgettable character with the staying power of a piece of wet cardboard and a character stuck on an endless cycle of unaddressed excitement-seeking behavior. So yeah--skip this one.