EPISODE NUMBERS: 44, Production Code 405

PLOT SUMMARY:

Batman is making his final log in his battle journal. He relates how a plague has transformed all of Gotham City’s residents into zombies. As he waits to activate an explosive charge, zombie Robin and Batgirl attack him. Batman drops the remote and throws them off, then thinks back to what happened 48 hours ago.

Bruce is rehearsing a speech he will be giving and then Hugo Strange asks for a meeting with him. Batman visits him at Arkham and Strange says he will be unleashing a virus that transforms into living zombies that infect everyone else they attack. He warns that if the antidote (that he’s already taken) isn’t administered in 48 hours, the effects become permanent. He shatters the antidote in front of them and Batman and Robin don filters as the virus is unleashed and the Arkham zombie-guards come at them. The heroes escape and take to the streets, collecting air samples and notifying Alfred while calling for Batgirl. The virus has already dissipated after doing its damage. Batman and Robin arrive at the Bat-Signal but Gordon and his men are zombies as well.

Robin and Batman fight them off and Batgirl arrives… but she’s infected as well. She attacks Robin while Batman fights the others. They escape and return to the Batcave to analyze a hair sample, but the infected Alfred attacks them. Batman gasses him unconscious and they wonder how Alfred was infected in the sealed Batcave.

On the second day, Batman finds no match and they go back to see Hugo Strange. Strange offers the antidote in return for Batman revealing his secret. Batman figures out there’s more antidote and wants to know where it is, while Batgirl attacks the watching Robin. Strange reveals the antidote is at police headquarters and Batman is forced to leave without Robin. He goes to the evidence room and gets the antidote, but doesn’t know how to distribute it. Batgirl and Robin have tracked him via the Batmobile’s GPS and close in. They fight aboard the moving Batmobile and Batman tries to offer them the antidote, but they jump off rather than be cured.

With seventeen hours left, Batman then goes to a backup “Batcave” and works feverishly for the next sixteen hours to duplicate the antidote. He then distributes it in explosive charges across the city, set to release with an activation signal via Batwave sent from higher ground. Batgirl and Robin find and attack him before he can activate the signal, as we’re back at the beginning of the episode.

Batman grabs the Batwave but is forced off the building where Gordon and the other zombies attack him and prepare to dose him with the venom. Zombie-Robin mutters something about “Mess with head.” Batman breaks free and returns back up to the highest building, but then starts to connect things together, realizing that he and Robin were exposed and Strange too readily told him where to find the “antidote.” Batman realizes that what he has is the virus, and Strange has been running a scheme on him. He gives up the Batwave remote and Batgirl doses him with a spray… that stops him from seeing everyone as zombies due to the hallucinogenic gas Strange gave him when he destroyed the “antidote“. Batgirl captured Robin and they synthesized an antidote.

Later, Bruce prepares to give his speech and wonders if he could ever endanger others. Alfred reassures him and Bruce goes out to give his speech.

WRITTEN BY: Joseph Kuhr

DIRECTED BY: Anthony Chun

CAST:
Rino Romano (Bruce Wayne / Batman)
Evan Sabara (Dick Grayson / Robin)
Danielle Judovits (Barbara Gordon / Batgirl) Mitch Pileggi (Commissioner Gordon)
Alastair Duncan (Alfred Pennyworth)
Richard Green (Dr. Hugo Strange)

QUOTES:
(Batman finally sees everyone as their normal selves)
Batgirl: You okay?
Batman: That depends. Were you a zombie ten seconds ago?

INTERESTING NOTES:
- In the Golden Age of Batman, Professor Strange was a mad scientist who kidnapped homeless people and injected them with a drug that turned them into mindless zombies.

- At one point in the episode, Batman plants a bomb of "antidote" behind a sign that reads "Noigog Chemicals". Noigog is mentioned by Hugo Strange at the beginning of a previous episode, "Gotham's Ultimate Criminal Mastermind".

SCREEN GRABS: