How The Question Stayed in The Justice League After Attempting to Murder Lex Luthor

or

Who Sent The Question to do His Dirty Work













The "Justice League" and "Justice League Unlimited" series that aired on Cartoon Network in the early aughts served as a fantastic close to the DC Animated Universe created by Bruce Timm and Paul Dini. "Unlimited" was often more adult themed than a lot of people, including the fans, expected. Until "Young Justice," it served as the finest body of animated work that DC and Warner Bros have ever put out. Sorry, New 52 Justice League and Batman films; you certainly have potential and I do enjoy the storylines you're choosing to pursue, but often the quality of the story is sacrificed for extended fight scenes. YES, those fight scenes look beautiful, but there is some balancing work that needs to be done before these films are on par with their ancestors from the previous decade.





And with that, we'll address the elephant in the room: "Unlimited" has been over for quite awhile at this point, and I acknowledge that many people will not find any relevance in this article as a consequence. And that's okay. But I was rewatching it on Netflix and I can't let this train of thought go. So if you don't have the time in your busy lives to ponder about the drama behind the scenes of what was already a superlative drama, I do not begrudge you for reading no further. But for realsies, if you clicked on one of those "Look how badly these once-cute child tv stars have aged!" articles any time in the last month, you probably have more free time than you give yourself credit for.



While I think "Unlimited" was an amazing series, I'm mainly talking about season one. Season two had... potential... but they chose to just make it a season-long slug fest between lesser known heroes and villains. I see what they were trying to do, but it just didn't carry the same punch as the overarching storyline of season one: namely, the government pissing themselves over how powerful the League had become and making some pretty dark choices in an effort to protect themselves and the world from the League's perceived threat.





Well, let's not mince words: that sentence should read "Superman's perceived threat."





The whole season is really about the aftermath of key players realizing that, in an alternate universe, Lex Luthor had been elected president and, as a result of his inevitable abuse of power (namely killing The Flash), Superman killed him. Subsequently, the "Justice Lords" of that alternate universe took over the world. The Lords clashed with The League, The League triumphed, but not without Luthor's help.





The other Luthor. "Our" Luthor. The alive one.





So because Lex ends up saving the day one entire time, he gets a full pardon from our president and goes about his merry way. In the end of that particular episode, he makes mention that he's decided running LexCorp has become boring and that he's been giving some thought to politics. You know, politics? The thing "other" Luthor got into that started the whole mess in the first place? Thus hitting the audience in the face with a brick with a note attached to it that says, "Foreshadowing!"





Anyway. So "Unlimited" kicks off, and throughout the course of the season, it becomes increasingly apparent that, since the government and key military figures know all about The Justice Lord debacle and what kicked it off, they are none too trusting of the Justice League or, in particular, Superman. So Project Cadmus is started to clone an army of government-controlled super people in order to combat the threat of the Justice League. Among said army are a less shitty version of The Wonder Twins, a Native American with the ability to increase his size, a Chinese guy with wind powers and a black dude with electricity powers who speaks like he's got one of those really bad robot voice modulators from the early nineties. Side note: what is it about giving black men electricity powers all the time? Come to think of it, that guy's costume, while it had many major differences, had the same color scheme as Black Lightning, a character who apparently Timm and Dini just couldn't be arsed to include into the League's roster. "Unlimited," you say? Liars! Charlatans!





But all that's just the backdrop. The REAL story is that, throughout the season, Luthor DOES run for president, bankrolls Cadmus (and thus has a guiding hand on the tiller throughout) and hatches a scheme to transfer his brain into an android that will, eventually, give him godlike power. Superman's freaking out over Luthor's race for presidency for the obvious reason of "Hey, my archenemy might end up running the free world," but more importantly because he's afraid that he may be tempted to go down the same path as his Justice Lord counterpart.





And it starts to show.





Throughout the season, the Big Three, Wonder Woman, Batman, and Superman, start to veer away from their roles as heroes and come into their roles as generals. Superman, perhaps, a little TOO much. And while you can see that Superman recognizes it, certain events and circumstances seem to keep conspiring to keep him on a path that will lead to the worst possible scenario: a superhuman arms race that will eventually destroy the world. For all his power, Superman can't seem to break away from what appears to be Fate.





But who better to beat unbeatable odds than Batman?





At the end of the episode where the Ultimen (Cadmus' superhuman clone team) make their first appearance, Batman sees a threat in Amanda Waller, director of Cadmus and founder of The Suicide Squad (which they had to call Task Force X because Cartoon Network and children and blah, blah, blah). So Waller just KNOWS Batman is Bruce Wayne RIGHT off the bat (heh). That understandably freaks the dark knight out. In a later episode, "The Doomsday Sanction," Batman and Waller have a face-to-face encounter where Batman sneaks into her bathroom to confront her. Look, I realize you're the Goddamn Batman and being terrifying to your enemies is just what you DO, but seriously, dude, her bathroom? Rapey much?





So it's in this encounter that Waller lays it all out on the line for Batman: "The government's afraid of the League, so they created Project Cadmus to stop the League if it ever comes to that, and right now all signs are pointing towards 'it's going to come to that,' so nanny-nanny boo-boo, stick your head in doo-doo."





Batman is obviously shaken by the whole thing and talks to the other core members of the League about Waller, Cadmus and Luthor. They begin to suspect that Luthor is bankrolling Cadmus, and since Luthor is just Luthor, it's obvious to Batman and Superman that he is trying to manipulate events to resemble those in the Justice Lords' universe; only this time, he'll come out on top.





Batman isn't so much worried about Luthor winning or even surviving the coming battle; but he IS worried about Luthor killing Flash, Superman killing Luthor, and setting off a chain of events that brings about the end of the world. And you see the evidence of his worry in the look on his face at the end of that episode:













What to do?





In that same episode, "The Doomsday Sanction," Batman mentions that he's got The Question looking into finding a concrete link between Cadmus and Luthor. He says that "if anyone can find the link between them, it's Question."





Now Question's a pretty amazing detective. But he's not the World's Greatest Detective. The odds are that Batman had not only deduced this link but also had concrete evidence. So why set up a redundancy?



Well, in that same sentence where he says Question's the man for the job, Batman also admits that he's "wound a bit tight." And when you watch Question throughout the series, it becomes pretty apparent he is a no-pulled-punches nut job. I mean he's smart as anything and he's usually right, but as precise as his detection methods are, his fighting techniques and brutality are equally blunt. He's a scalpel one minute and a sledgehammer the next. In a lot of ways, the only thing separating him from Batman seem to be a degree of extremism that Batman simply doesn't possess.





Question does eventually find the link, by the way. More than that, he stumbles onto the knowledge of the Justice Lord debacle, the whole thing with "President Luthor" and Superman going rogue. He then posits that it's not an alternate reality; instead it's a kind of timeloop. Question believes that though the circumstances aren't exactly the same, Luthor WILL become President of the United States, WILL kill Flash, and WILL be killed by Superman, and again... end of the world.





AND HERE'S WHERE SHIT GETS REAL, YA'LL:





Question decides that the only way to prevent Superman from going down the dark path and triggering the apocalypse is to make it impossible for Superman to kill Luthor; by killing Luthor himself. When he breaks into Lex's office, he lays out his reasoning:



"If I am to save the world, your existence must come to an end."

"You're going to kill me so that Superman can't."

"I'm a well-known crackpot. The League's reputation will survive my actions. And Superman's legacy will remain intact."





Question is of course foiled by the fact that, up until that point, unbeknownst to ANYONE, Luthor had developed super strength. He tosses Question around like a ragdoll, has him tortured, the whole nine. Eventually, while things go right up to the very KNIFE EDGE of oblivion, Superman manages to defeat Luthor without killing him, stating that while he sometimes wishes he were, he is simply "not that man."





It's a great series and if you haven't watched it, you should. But here's the weird part:





In season two, Question is still a member of the Justice League despite the fact that he is literally guilty of attempted murder. Earlier in season one, Huntress attempts murder and is kicked out of the League. So why did Question skate when Huntress didn't?





And the only thing I could think of was that, when Hawkgirl was almost kicked out, the League voted whether or not to keep her in. So is it possible that the League also voted on Question? Is it possible that Superman, recognizing how close he had come to the edge of darkness and that Question had, in all seriousness, attempted to spare him from that fate, felt like he owed the faceless vigilante? Possibly. Probably, even.





But I think the truth is darker.





I believe that Batman purposely intended for Question to kill Luthor.





Batman had the evidence. He might not have said so, but it's Batman. He's always got the evidence. He assigned a guy that he KNEW would discover the truth and that he KNEW was wound a bit too tight. A guy whose disposition towards brutality and moral shades of grey was well-known. Batman couldn't allow Superman to kill Luthor or it would end the world. Likewise, Batman couldn't do it either: he was too high-profile at that point, and his murdering Lex might end up with a similar result. Even if it didn't end the world, it would certainly end HIS world and he had too many people relying on him to end up dead or in jail; namely the Bat Family and Gotham.





So I believe Bruce Wayne made a conscious decision to sacrifice The Question in order to save the world. And when his plan failed, Batman voted to keep Question in the League because HE owed him even more than Superman did.





Like I said, this is a series that has long since been put to bed, and I might be exhibiting some of the very signs of apophenia as The Question himself... but I would LOVE to talk to Timm and Dini about this theory.



