Suicide Squad Comic Reveals Scarecrow’s Fate After Batman: Arkham Knight

[Warning: This article contains spoilers for Suicide Squad: Kill Arkham Asylum #3.] Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League players might have revisited the Batman: Arkham games in The Batman Experience, but one rogue is reliving the horrors all over again: Dr. Jonathan Crane, a.k.a. Scarecrow. In 2015’s Batman: Arkham Knight, the fear-striking supervillain plunged Gotham City into a waking nightmare, terrorized its citizens, and ultimately unmasked Batman, exposing Bruce Wayne’s secret identity to the world. But the Dark Knight mastered fear itself… and then subjected Crane to a dose of his own fear toxins, scaring Crane into submission with frightful flashes of a demonic, red-eyed Bat Man.

This week’s Suicide Squad: Kill Arkham Asylum #3 — the official Kill the Justice League prequel comic set five years after Arkham Knight — reveals that Scarecrow has been insensible and incomprehensible ever since his final encounter with Batman. Once a prolific professor of psychology, Crane’s exposure to his fear toxin has reduced him to an inmate who babbles such incoherent phrases as “rodent…abyss…eternal…pancake” and “putty…shenanigans…aquamarine…perineum.”

“Scarecrow hasn’t been the same… not since Batman,” explains Arnold Wesker, the Ventriloquist, matter-of-factly. “When he got an off-the-charts dose of his own medicine. Fear toxin, that is.” With the lunatics running Arkham Asylum after A.R.G.U.S. Director Amanda Waller deactivated the security protocols — freeing Harley Quinn, Deadshot, Boomerang, King Shark, and dozens of Gotham’s most wanted, including Killer Croc, Clayface, and Man-Bat — the insane criminal formerly known as Dr. Harleen Quinzel insists she understands Dr. Crane’s nonsense.

In the chaos, the trio of Harley, Crane, and Wesker escape a rampaging Killer Croc, and the assassin Deathstroke shoots and kills the Gotham gangster known as Great White Shark (the second Batman villain to die in Kill Arkham Asylum). The riot turns into a raid as the inmates reclaim their gear and weapons, with Harley outfitting Crane in his “oh-so-fashionable burlap” Scarecrow costume in an attempt to fix his fractured psyche. 

Moments after Wesker reunites with his Scarface puppet, an armored Arkham Enhanced Defense Soldier from the Freeze-Fire Unit wielding a flamethrower and a freeze gun turns Ventriloquist and Scarface into ice statues that Harley shatters with a touch (bringing the series’ Arkham kill count to 3).

The flames trigger a PTSD response from the scaredy cat Scarecrow, who envisions Batman in the flames. Scarecrow, screaming “Bat death!,” flees in fear as Harley escapes Arkham Asylum alone. After all, to quote Crane: “Without fear, life is meaningless.”

Suicide Squad: Kill Arkham Asylum #3 (of 5) is now on sale from DC Comics.