‘Young Justice: Outsiders’ Teases ‘The Killing Joke’ Is Canon

Now that Young Justice has finally returned, fans are picking a part the newest episodes on DC Universe to see what new characters will appear and what major events are hinted at from comic book lore.

The latest episode of the series reveals who Nightwing is working with to dismantle the meta-human trafficking rings around the world, and it has some major implications for one of the most iconic Batman stories of all time.

Warning: Spoilers for Young Justice: Outsiders below.

In the first episode of the series, Dick Grayson goes undercover in Russia to rescue a group of teens who have been kidnapped. He’s aided by Oracle, and the voice actress for the character makes it clear that Young Justice is following suit of DC Comics canon in transitioning Barbara Gordon out of her Batgirl identity.

This is confirmed in the latest episode, where we see Barbara Gordon as Oracle for the first time. Comic fans won’t be surprised to learn that she’s confined to a wheelchair.

If this isn’t ringing any bells for you, it’s probably because you’re not familiar with Alan Moore and Brian Bolland’s seminal Batman graphic novel The Killing Joke. Released in the ’80s, the storyline shows the Joker shooting Barbara at point blank, causing significant damage to her spine and effectively ending her career as Batgirl

She later becomes Oracle in the pages of Suicide Squad, and she would aid the Batman family for decades before multiple retcons would put her back under the cape and cowl.

Seeing the Young Justice version of Barbara Gordon in a wheel chair has a lot of implications, especially because of the use of time jumps and the creative team using major DC Comics storylines as points of reference.

Executive Producer Brandon Vietti spoke with ComicBook.com about how the series uses time jumps and major comic book milestones in their storytelling, and how they balance these references alongside actually showing how they happened.

“We try to incorporate some of those to honor the characters that we’re working with and in some ways we get to have fun working with those milestone moments in the show and kind of putting our own Young Justice, Earth-16 spin on that milestone,” said Vietti. “Or, in other cases, we’ll just put that milestone out there without explanation, knowing that this is a great opportunity for our fans to kind of dig deeper into the DC Universe and discover more about these characters that they’re being introduced to through our show.”

New episodes of Young Justice: Outsiders premiere Fridays on DC Universe.