Batwoman Reveals What Happened to Lucius Fox in “I’ll Be Judge, I’ll Be Jury”

On The CW‘s Batwoman, some of Gotham’s notable major players are missing by the time viewers are introduced to Kate Kane (Ruby Rose). The hero Batman as well as the wealthy Bruce Wayne are the two whose absence is most sharply noticed, as both have been gone from Gotham for years, but they aren’t the only missing figures in the classic, crime-ridden DC Comics location. Lucius Fox is also notably absent, though his son Luke (Camrus Johnson) has become Kate’s ally and assistant as Batwoman. Tonight, we finally find out the heartbreaking reason Lucius hasn’t been around in “I’ll Be Judge, I’ll Be Jury”.

Spoilers for tonight’s episode of Batwoman, “I’ll Be Judge, I’ll Be Jury,” below.

The episode opens with the murder of Assistant District Attorney Stanton and instead of calling the Crows, the police reach out to Batwoman for help. It’s a serious situation, but not just because it’s the first time the city’s actual law enforcement has called on Batwoman for help. The deceased ADA is important to Luke as he was the man who put his father’s murderer behind bars. It turns out that Lucius Fox was murdered the night of Luke’s high school graduation. As he tells it, they were celebrating Luke’s admission to MIT when they ran out of ice, prompting his father to go out to get more. He never came home, and Luke was called upon by the police to identify his father’s body.

It’s a sad fate for the character and it’s one that actually came as a surprise to Johnson. The actor explained in a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly that he was fully surprised about this twist in his character’s story as compared to the comic books.

“[I was] fully surprised because in the comic books, Luke is keeping his job and so many secrets from his dad; his relationship with Lucius is so important to the Luke Fox that I read in the comic,” Johnson said. “So to start this show off with Lucius being dead is very interesting because there’s a whole different side of the Luke Fox that I knew. It makes a brand-new Luke Fox because his icon, the dad he loved so much and wishes that he could protect, and the person that was his link to Bruce Wayne and Batman in the beginning, [is] not even there anymore. It was a total surprise to me, and I’m sure it’s now a total surprise to the fans to be able to see why Luke is where he is and why Lucius isn’t around.”

However, just because Lucius is gone in Batwoman, doesn’t mean that pieces of him — or at least portrayals of the character in other media — are. Johnson went on to explain that he drew on other takes on Lucius in his own creation of Luke.

“I actually did Of course I watched Morgan Freeman’s Lucius Fox, the most famous Lucius Fox,” Johnson said. “I also watched a lot of Lucius Foxes in the animated projects. I believe it was Batman: Bad Blood. Watching Lucius in that was very interesting.”

“What I liked about Luke is, because I want him to grow over the show, I didn’t want him to feel as stoic as Lucius yet,” he continued. “He has so much more time to grow and get better at his job and really be the Lucius to Kate as he was to Batman. There’s always a similar heart to every Lucius that I’ve seen. I wanted Luke to have a very similar heart, but I wanted him to have a lot more energy, talk faster, and be a lot more nervous because he’s not his dad and he’s trying to fill this space and be the man in the chair behind the computer. He’s struggling and he will be struggling for some time because he’s new to this. So I like picturing Lucius as an end goal.”

Batwoman airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on the CW.