The Huntress is one of DC Comics’ most popular characters, who is associated with Batman, the Justice Society, the Justice League, and the Birds of Prey. She’s also a character who has existed as two different people across her near 50-year history:
Helena Wayne between 1977 and 1986 and as
Helena Bertinelli from 1989 to the present.
Although DC has consistently kept the Huntress as Helena Bertinelli for the last 35+ years, fans have never forgotten the original Helena Wayne incarnation that was unceremoniously killed off and erased from canon in 1985’s Crisis on Infinite Earths. In fact, that erasure from canon remains an open wound that’s been haemorrhaging for the last 40 years with no response from DC Comics, and no one understands why. At least not beyond the usual rhetoric that “Bruce Wayne can’t be happy because it ruins Batman” – an argument that no longer flies in a DC continuity where Bruce has had a biological son for the last 20 years and that son hasn’t “ruined” Batman.
The decision to keep the original Huntress erased from canon makes even less sense in an era where DC has committed to restoring all eras of its publication history, including its pre-Crisis multiverse history. Since the original Huntress is from Earth-2 and tailor-made to function independently of the Earth-0 versions of Batman and Catwoman, fans are understandably asking, “What’s the holdup?” At best, DC Comics has acknowledged for the last 20 years that the pre-Crisis Huntress did exist once but has made no effort to restore her into the main DC canon.
What has happened instead has been a consistent pattern of simply creating a new version of Helena Wayne to replace the original one that died in Crisis. The first one that appeared came out of the events of 2007’s 52, which created a new Earth-2 based upon the pre-Crisis original. But that Huntress only appeared a small handful of times in Geoff Johns’ second JSA run, most notably during his 2008 storyline, Thy Kingdom Come. The second one that appeared was the New 52 version of Helena Wayne from Earth-2, and that version benefitted from the Flashpoint reboot to enjoy a 7-year publication history.
After
Geoff Johns mass-retconned DC’s New 52 era with DC Universe Rebirth, fans understandably expected to see the original Huntress restored. Fans especially got their hopes up when they saw the pre-Crisis Huntress featured in the JSA double-page spread in 2021’s
Stargirl: Spring Break Special. When solicitations for Johns’ third JSA run showed the Huntress on the covers, expectations were high that the original Earth-2 Helena Wayne was making her long-overdue comeback. But as the preview pages of
The New Golden Age one-shot quickly revealed, this wasn’t the beloved pre-Crisis Huntress but a third “new” version of the character.
Fans were once more let down by the decision to create a new replacement for the pre-Crisis Huntress, but that wasn’t the only problem. By reinventing the pre-Crisis Huntress as the time-displaced possible future daughter of the Earth-0 Batman and Catwoman, Johns unwittingly fuelled another false expectation that would quickly disappoint another section of DC fans: Batman and Catwoman finally having a child in the main DC canon. Whilst original Huntress fans know better than to expect DC to bend the knee on Batman and Catwoman having a daughter at all on Earth-0, there were fans who understandably thought this could still be the case.
This has led to debates about whether or not the Future Huntress is truly the main Earth-0 version of Helena Wayne or is simply an alternate Hypertime version of the original Earth-2 Huntress. Of course, the canonicity of DC characters can no longer be measured in terms of them being native to Earth-0, given how often DC revises its own canon. (We’re looking at you, Power Girl). However, the question of whether a possible future character could be considered the main version of that character on Earth-0 can be measured by two other canon-defining factors. The first one to look at is whether the classic version of the character already exists on Earth-0 with their original history intact or restored. This is the status quo for many Earth-0 characters.
The second one to look at is whether or not the possible future character has a strong enough presence in main DCU storylines and events to significantly impact the DCU’s history. Helena Bertinelli does check this box despite being a radical post-Crisis reimagining of Helena Wayne with a mafia origin. Whilst the Future Huntress doesn’t need to satisfy both status quos, she does need to satisfy at least one to be considered the main version of Helena Wayne on Earth-0 and not an alternate version of the original Huntress from Hypertime. So how does she measure up? Let’s find out.
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