Thirty-five years later, Bobby Vance, Robert's grandson, re-activates the dormant program and is convinced to connect it to the rest of the global network. It begins infiltrating various computer systems, causing random power outages and equipment failures. One of these affects the elevator where Dana and Terry were sharing a romantic moment; after getting them out, Terry hurries to Wayne Manor to check on Bruce and deal with the situation.
Batman heads to the main power plant and shuts it off after getting past the automated defenses. A beam hits him, but does no obvious damage...at first. Later, the Batsuit starts acting as if it has a mind of its own. It does; Vance's program has taken it over, and marches it into the water to drown Terry and end his attempts to interfere. Bruce hits the Batsuit kill switch to freeze it in place, and then arrives in the Batmobile to rescue Terry just in time as the tide rolls in.
Back in the Batcave, Bruce and Terry prepare to reset the suit's programming, but before they can do so, it manages to override the kill switch and walks off by itself. When they realize what happened, Terry insists on going after it, despite Bruce's attempts to dissuade him. Equipped only with one of Bruce's old utility belts and Nightwing's old mask to conceal his identity, he heads out.
Batsuit!Vance heads to the Vance Enterprises building and abducts Bobby. He wires Bobby up to a machine designed to overwrite his mind with Vance's own, thus giving him a new body. Terry moves in, fighting a desperate battle against the much stronger and tougher Batsuit. However, he prevails by using a power cable to take advantage of the suit's vulnerability to electrical overload.
A present-day news report describes Bobby's decision to sell the company and let his grandfather rest in peace. In the Batcave, Bruce declares that even with the suit out of commission, Batman isn't.
Tropes:
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: It's unclear whether or not this trope applies; the Vance program's ruthlessness may be an effect of the original upload, revival into a strange world after 35 years, or simply the old man's original personality.
- And I Must Scream: Terry losing control of the Batsuit. The AI eventually resorts to trying to drown Terry while he's still paralyzed.
- Animated Armor: The Vance AI taking control of the Batsuit.
- Brain Uploading: Robert Vance's original plan was to live on as a computer simulation.
- Break Out the Museum Piece: Terry goes up against the hacked Batsuit wearing Nightwing's Domino Mask and armed with Bruce's old utility belt.
- Brought Down to Badass: Terry proves that he can win even without the Batsuit, by going up against the Batsuit.
- Call-Back:
- The reporter in the prologue appears to be Summer Gleason.
- Bruce once again uses the Batsuit's failsafe. This time, however, it was to rescue Terry.
- Terry not only uses the utility belt Bruce used during his time as Batman, but wears Nightwing's mask as well.
- Clothes Make the Superman: Even though that may be the case in regards to Batman, Terry is still awesome enough to beat the Batsuit.
- Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Robert Vance uploaded himself into the company computer. The first thing he did upon awakening 35 years later was flip out and jack the city network. Terry espouses a view based on this trope:Batman: You really think you're Robert Vance, don't you? But he was flesh, and you're just binary. They don't go together!
- Digitized Hacker: Robert Vance, a computer mogul who had his brain digitized and eventually went mad after he was shut down for decades. His first item of business after he's rebooted and hooked up to the 'net: Flex his digital muscles by wreaking havoc in the city. Second order: Commandeer Terry's computerized suit to kidnap his grandson and download himself into the younger body.
- Distant Prologue: The report of Robert Vance's death, 35 years before the rest of the story.
- Dying Vocal Change: The Vance program's voice audibly regresses into infancy as he's slowly erased.
- Everything Is Online: The entire city of Gotham appears to be in chaos as the Robert Vance program runs rampant.
- Familial Body Snatcher: The Vance program tries to acquire a new body by overwriting Bobby's mind.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: Terry first experiences the symptoms of Vance's infiltration when he steps in a puddle. As soon as Vance assumes full control a few seconds later, he tries to kill Terry by walking into the ocean and letting the water drown him.
- Foreshadowing:
- At the beginning of the episode, Terry smashes open a panel on a malfunctioning elevator to switch it over to manual controls, mentioning that it's how elevators used to work. By the end of the episode, he'll also be forced to Break Out the Museum Piece to defeat his fancy technological Batsuit after a dangerous enemy takes it over.
- Bruce was also forced to shut down the Bat Computer to prevent Vance from infiltrating it, forcing Terry to manually open the door outside, joking about how it was how it had to be done back when the Robins were around. This not only foreshadows the same thing, but that Vance will be able to get into other Bat technology, like the Batsuit.
- Inadequate Inheritor: Bobby Vance knows he's Unfit for Greatness, which is why, after his father's death, he reactivates his grandfather's Virtual Ghost. His grandfather clearly agrees, considering the next thing he does is set a plan in motion that'll end in stealing Bobby's body and destroying his mind so Robert can take control of the family company again.
- Just Between You and Me: Vance indulges in some Evil Gloating while drowning Terry, explaining his plot is to steal a new body for himself and boasting that he's figured out how to do it and just needs his lab. In his tentative defense, he tells him this while actively killing him rather than just holding him hostage, and he only fails due to an unknown unknown: Bruce figuring out something's up, and both having and activating a killswitch on the Batsuit.
- Kind Hearted Cat Lover: Vance first becomes aware of Terry when a cat wanders into the power plant amidst his sneaking in invisibly, and he shoos it away before it can be killed by the plant's jacked security systems.
- Last Words: As the Batsuit overloads and the Vance program disintegrates, he babbles through random memories while regressing from adult to adolescent to child and finally infancy in a manner reminiscent of HAL's "Daisy, Daisy" last words in 2001: A Space Odyssey, ending with what was presumably the real Robert Vance's first words.Robert Vance: Five hundred megs! A thousand kilobytes! Pi "R" squared! Two plus two equals four. Me first! I wanna play. One potato... two potato... Ma... Mama... Ma-ma!
- Mind-Reformat Death: This is Vance's objective: to overwrite his consciousness over that of his grandson, sending him to "wherever deleted programs go."
- Virtual Ghost: Robert Vance does this to himself so that he can advise his company from beyond the grave. He also suggests this might've been a ruse, and he might've been planning to steal a new body from beyond death from the start.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: While Terry is willing to kill people in extreme circumstances, he shows zero hesitation in destroying the Vance program.
- When I Was Your Age...:
- Bruce shuts down the Batcave systems to prevent Vance's program from infiltrating them, requiring a reversion to lower-tech methods:
Bruce: I had to shut down the computer when Vance's program tried to get in. If you want out of the cave, you're going to have to do it the old-fashioned way.
(he points to a big steel door with a manual winch)
Terry: You're kidding.
Bruce: (smirks) None of the Robins ever complained.- More darkly, Vance points out to his descendent that he was only 35 when he started the company, which is implied to be part of why he's so contemptuous of his descendent.
