When Batman Gets Old: A History of ‘Get Off My Lawn’ Bruce Waynes
By With Titans: Season 2 featuring an elder Bruce Wayne, here’s a look at the Caped Crusader as an “Old Bruce Wayne.”
Titans has returned to DC Universe for its second season, and with these 13 new episodes comes Game of Thrones star Iain Glen as Bruce Wayne and Esai Morales as Deathstroke – along with new team members Superboy, Aqualad, and Jericho. (Read our Titans Season 2 premiere review.)
Sure, we “saw” Bruce Wayne as Batman back in Season 1, but he was always deliberately obscured and portrayed by stuntmen. Now, in Season 2, Dick Grayson’s estranged father figure and former crime-fighting partner is arriving in person, and to celebrate we’re taking a look at the most notable times in comics, movies, and TV when Bruce Wayne was – er – seasoned. The cantankerous “old man” Bruce Wayne, if you will.
Most often in the Bat-verse we’re either following Bruce in the present era or flashing back to his origins for different spins and takes on his path to vigilantism. But at times we have jumped ahead to see Bruce as a grizzled veteran as well. To see where his life choices have led him. Does he become a crazed, isolated madman or is he actually capable of developing a life outside of the Cape and Cowl ?
While Titans: Season 2 will feature Dick Grayson trying to reunite the Titans after facing Trigon, it will also give form and shape to Bruce Wayne, a man who’s had a monumental effect on Dick’s emotional journey. Iain Glen’s debonaire Bruce looks to be the commonly agreed-upon psychological endgame for Batman in his autumnal years: a man who’s devoted so much of his life to being Batman that all of his actual interpersonal relationships, with real people, are in shambles. And after playing poor Jorah Mormont on Game of Thrones for nearly a decade, Glen now gets to be the one neglecting those who love him. It’s only fair.
