World's Greatest Detective?

[BeyondGotham]

I am one of the BIGGEST Batman fans around...

I am trying to figure out...how in the world, can the WORLD'S GREATEST DECTETIVE not know that he has a daughter?

[jammer-a]

there's a really basic answer to that.

there were no clues.

if catwoman was careful enough about it, went away at the right times, stayed away the correct amount of time, it could indeed be hidden even from batman. PARTICULARLY if selena was the only one who knew to begin with.

besides, do we REALLY know he didn't know?

[fin]

How could The World's Greatest Detective not know he had a daughter??
Remember the outcome from "Son of the Bat" by Mike Barr?? Not to mention "Kingdom Come"?? He doesn't know he has a son either.

[Empress Vader]

Here's my question, did he not know Selina had a child or did he know Selina had a kid and just not know it was his (she seemed to be living openly in New Gotham, I don't know how he could not know Helena existed at all?).

[BeyondGotham]

He had to have known about the baby. But perhaps he trusted Selina so much that when she said Helena was not his..he belived her..but still...

[Hecate]

Yes, this point definitely needs some explaining. Though I did notice on the WB site collector cards thingy that Helena's birthplace was Paris so obviously Selina got out of town for a while.

[darke2099]

giving the writers some fore-credit, i don't doubt that it will be explained as we go along somewhere... its very rare for something as big as that to only get half explained... wait and see chickadees.

[Empress Vader]

I noticed it said Helena was born in Paris too, though I'm not exactly sure how that will link up in the future.

[Helena Kyle]

Yup Hecate, good point. Selina obviously went out of town to have Helena which would explain why he wouldn't know about her...

[TheOracle]

Slightly off topic here, but I read something online about How the Huntress from the comics actually existed pre crisis and post crisis (not that I'm entriley sure what the "crisis" was...)

http://www.theclocktower.net/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=242

I knew I read it somewhere... it was on here. LOL!

Basically saying how one Huntress DC created was the daughter of Batman and Cat woman, and the other being Helena Bartinelli, the surviving member of one of Gothams most prominent crime family's.... I feel silly now...

[Psychic Oracle]

Here's another point: if Batman didn't know about Helena, how did Barbara? In the ::unaired:: pilot, when Barbara hears that Selena Kyle was killed, she instantly calls out "Helena".

And in both versions, Barbara talked about Batman as Helena's father... and that he didn't even know that she existed. So, how did Barbara know? Would Catwoman have told Batgirl about her pregnancy and the birth of Batman's kid?

[TheOracle]

Why would Catwoman trust someone who would no sooner turn her in than go running to The Bat about the pregnancy. Batman and Catwoman's relationship was very much a Love/hate one. TBH, If I was Selena I wouldn't have trust Babs.

[JorelSon]

We're just gonna have to agree to suspend our disbelief on this one. Just like I have given up on trying to figure out why Batman would abandon Gotham after two people he cared about were hurt/killed. That is, after all, how he even came to be! I know that the WB is now saying that he DIDN'T run out, but the fact remains that he left. I just have to keep reminding myself that they needed to come up with some reason for why Bats isn't around.

[TheOracle]

He wouldn't just up and leave. Maybe he went back to Shiva or someone to try and get his thoughts in order... First his parents, then jason Todd... Death is something he has to deal with... I've been told that he supposedly comes back end of season one. I have nothing to back this up, but it would be nice... Just hope they get someone who can feel the shoes of Keaton seeing as kilmer and Clooney failed miserably.

[HarleyQuinn]

Yes! Batman = keaton. No exceptions. :P

But I was also thinking about all this last night. As to why he left if he said "I made a promise to my parents that I would rid the city of the evil that took their lives".

I guess he got tired of it? That's hard to believe. Hopefully there's gonna be some sort of verbal flashback on that, the same way Oracle informed Dinah that day at the docks.

:)

[TheOracle]

It's all very odd.It doesn't make sense for Gotham's Self-induced protector to just up and leave! They should cover this, and soon. Put us out of our miseries!

[Hecate]

I believe they will answer this over the course of the series--why he left. I did notice Helena telling Harley all she wanted from her father was for him to find the man who killed her mother and kill him so that may be part of the explanation--he's out looking for the killer.
The reasons why Selina would not tell Bruce about a baby are still vague so far other than that one comment about her mother "protecting" her from her father's aggressive hobby. I don't know why Barbara would know if Bruce didn't but I don't think she would necessarily have to be afraid of being turned in by Batgirl. She could very well have reformed--does it just all the time in the comics and most definitely in the pre-Crisis period the Huntress is from--which I think is very likely. There's nothing far-fetched about thinking she and Barbara could have become good friends especially since she was in contact with both Helena and her mother since Helena was young.

[Catwoman101]

That's funny,
I always thought the greatest detective of all time was Sherlock Holmes.
Hmmmm I guess I was mistaken yet again. LOL

What I want to know is how Batgirl knew Hellen was Batman's kid? Did Helen tell her? And if she knew why didn't she tell Batman?

[Empress Vader]

If we can interpret anything from Helena's dress/actions in that brief scene pre-mom's death, we can assume up until the time mom was killed, Helena was a perfectly normal teenage girl. I wonder if she even knew mommy was catwoman. Perhaps there was some reform there that somehow involved Babs. That's the only reason I can think of that Babs would know Bats and Cats had a baby and she wouldn't tell Batman about it (especially since they are driving home how much she idolized him).

A lot of things seems to imply Batman wasn't gone seconds after the tragedy. One, Helena seems to have had a conversation with him about getting revenge. Two, Helena seems to be legally able to access wayne money whenever she sees fit, so that means since Bruce didn't know about her before, he had to arrange it so she was his legal heir. Three, if I'm not mistaken, Barbara did say he left a few months later, so there may have been a lot we didn't see when we time-jumped from that night to "7 years later".

I don't know, they have room to explain it, I hope they will.

[AndyPandy88]

IMO, I believe that when Selina Kyle found out about her pregnancy she decided it was time to leave. She may have left for many years, before returning about a year before her own death with Helena. Batgirl must have known about Selina's past, and discovered that a Selina Kyle was expected to arrive in New Gotham (Barbara is a hacker, of course). Batman may have been out of town, so Batgirl must have taken it upon herself to interrogate Selina about her return.

Selina would reveal that Helena was Batman's daughter, but that Batgirl should never reveal it to Bruce. In return of this knowledge, Batgirl would have to give up her identity to Selina. This happened, and so therefore everything keeps spinning. Barbara would check up on the Kyles once in a while to make sure all was fine. This also slowly developed a bond that made sure both of them would never reveal the other's secret.

If Bruce was to even believe that Helena was his own, Barbara would suddenly come up with a way to deny any truth. Like hiding Helena's true age or something.

Anyway, I think the way Batman is conceived as the World's Greatest Detective is that he acts like he knows everything, and he DOES know a lot, but plays on so a lot of the characters confess the truth.

[TheOracle]

In Kingdom come, he knew Diana, Wonder Woman, was pregnant.

[Hecate]

From what I pick up so far I'd lean more toward Barbara knowing Selena from way back and probably knew when she and Bruce were involved and the baby at that time. Again, Helena says she's known Barbara since she was a "little kid." It's very likely she worked with them in some capacity as Catwoman. I can't see her pressuring or blackmailing Barbara to be quiet--that doesn't fit with what's been revealed so far. Despite her idolizing Batman he can be very "difficult" (Selina may have had a good reason for leaving) so she might still have gone along with it. Then again Selina might have been passing her off as someone else's child to both Bruce and Barbara. Barbara may have only known her as Selina's little girl until after her death. She might have found out the same time Bruce did. Perhaps we've been incorrectly assuming Barbara knew.

[Cassandra Cain]

I agree. I would say that Babs probably knew her as Selina Kyle's daughter.

I'll have to check my tapes on this, but does it ever actually say that Bruce didn't know Helena was his daughter until Selina's death? Because it's possible that it came out before her death at some point, at which point Babs would know about it, so that when Catwoman is killed she would have felt obligated to take in Bruce's daughter in his stead.

And doesn't Alfred make some comment to Dinah about Helena as a little girl?

As for Batman being able to leave Gotham...if you look at the comics, Bruce Wayne had this downward spiral thing going on as more and more people close to him were hurt / killed, so much that he almost lost the part of him that was Bruce Wayne. So what I imagine in my mind is that he was sent over the edge by these two incidences, and, blaming himself, leaves Gotham in order to protect those close to him from himself.

[jhowlett]

well actually in the comics (pre-crisis) he didn't get tired of protecting Gotham. What happened was batman made a deal with catwoman that if she helps him in this mission (forgot what it was) that he clear her name and let her go straight and they did and she did, while in the mission they opened up to each other. Selina quit being catwoman and married bruce wayne. They had a daughter Helena, Selina became an adventurer. One day she found out that someone was trying to frame her so she (as catwoman) and batman tried to stop them but in the process Selina got killed in front of batman and he couldn't save her. Batman felt that he failed 'coz how can he protect a city if he can't even protect the ones he loves which is why he burned his batsuit right there and went into exile.

When Helena heard this she did a 'bruce wayne' herself an avenge her mother's death. Thus Helena Wayne aka Huntress I was born. She died while saving the earth in crisis-of-infinite-earths.

*****

Now I guess judging from her story...the producers took some points from the comic and did some twist of there own. So I hope this answers questions about how could batman do this...well how could he not?

here are points i think they took from the comic...

Selina Kyle the adventurer = Maybe they took this as a reason why Helena was born in Paris.

Selina went straigth = maybe why she opened up to barbs

Bruce went in exile = maybe the reason was the same as this one that he felt that he failed...

Besides in this rate Bruce will be about 49 - 50 years old. If the wb do try and guest bruce then I also agree that they bring back Michael Keaton "the true onscreen BATMAN".

[Cassandra Cain]

I wasn't talking pre-crisis Batman, and I didn't mean he got tired of protecting Gotham. I just meant that we recently saw in the comics led me to believe it would be possible for him to leave Gotham, if he thought it would keep people close to him safe. Just theorizing :)