"A Knight of Shadows" is composed of the twentieth and twenty-first episodes of Justice League. It first aired on September 20 and 27, 2002.
Plot
Part I
Prologue
In medieval England, Camelot is under siege by an army of demons, commanded by the sorceress Morgaine Le Faye. Inside the castle, a knight named Jason Blood secretly opens the gate, letting her forces in. She embraces him as her love, then gives him a poisonous kiss that cripples him. As chaos envelops the castle, Merlin looks down on Jason and remonstrates; for his selfish and misguided love, he has doomed Camelot. Merlin curses Jason with immortality and possession by the Demon Etrigan, never to rest until he has defeated Le Fay and atoned for his crime.
Modern Day
A feeble, elderly man is wheeled out of a rare book shop. While Batman is investigating, Jason approaches him; the two men have met before. Jason explains that Morgan is seeking the Philosopher's Stone, that Merlin hid from her: it will give her the ultimate power she needs to conquer the world and give the kingdom to her young son, Mordred.
Batman and Jason follow Le Fay's trail to a castle in Britain. She animates suits of armor and escapes. While fighting them, Jason throws off his mortal body and assumes his demon form.
Batman and Etrigan are joined by the rest of the League. J'onn suggests that he try to locate Le Fay telepathically. As he reaches out, Le Fay seizes his mind and feeds it with an illusion: he suddenly sees himself on Mars, before the war that destroyed it, and re-united with his lost wife and children. Then Etrigan breaks into the illusion and it dispels.
Working in parallel, both Le Fay and the League deduce two leads to the Stone: the archaeologists who excavated the castle several years ago.
Batman, J'onn, and Etrigan track down one, Henry Moss, who now teaches at a university. Along the way, Etrigan warns Batman that J'onn cannot be trusted now. Batman refuses to listen.
At the same time, Wonder Woman and Flash go to a costume party being thrown by the other archaeologist, Harv Hickman, now a wealthy magazine tycoon. At first their superhero costumes fail to impress the guards, but "Harv" immediately takes a shine to Diana(calling her a goddess because of her beauty and revealing armor, kissed her hand and let her in).
Morgaine appears in Moss's home, who turns out to be J'onn in disguise. Batman and Etrigan attack, but Morgaine retaliates, and hits J'onn with another vision of his family. J'onn hesitates, giving her the opening to seriously wound Batman and escape.
Part II
Batman awakes in the Watchtower's infirmary. Etrigan has left to join Wonder Woman, but J'onn is there, and apologizes, confessing that the need to see his family alive again is almost too much for him to resist.
At Hickman's party, Diana is inwardly repulsed by "Harv's" narrow, self-centered views, but plays up the role of a vacuous model-type to convince him to show her the Stone, which he confides is the source of his wealth and fame. Just then, Morgaine arrives. Diana grabs the Stone, and Morgaine transforms Hickman into a giant worm creature to attack her. Diana and Flash fight against the creature, but Etrigan arrives and tells Diana to run, getting the Stone as far away from Morgaine as possible, while he holds her off. Diana reluctantly obeys, while Flash evacuates the party guests. When Diana escapes, Morgaine's rage causes a magical blast powerful enough to vaporize the whole (mercifully empty) mansion. Hickman, returned to normal, stumbles out of the wreckage in his shorts, and faints.
The Stone is locked up in the Watchtower's secure vault, and Flash congratulates the team on a mission accomplished. Etrigan refuses to relax.
A short time later, the Watchtower's lights go out, and Morgaine's demonic soldiers appear. Etrigan, Batman, Flash, and Wonder Woman defeat them with difficulty. When the dust settles, they see that the Stone is gone, and J'onn has left the Watchtower in a Javelin.
Morgaine makes her new base in London, magically transforming a museum into a medieval castle. J'onn arrives, and is about to hand the Stone to her, when the League arrives via a magic portal opened by Etrigan. The League attacks, but are barely a match for Morgaine's magic, and Mordred soon reveals his own powers. Etrigan tries to overpower J'onn, who says that Morgaine has promised to use the Stone's power to resurrect all of Mars, including his family. Etrigan scorns this as a lie, but J'onn fights back with desperation, and manages to defeat the demon.
Morgaine and Mordred manage to hold the rest of the League at bay, and she calls J'onn to her. J'onn surveys the destruction of the room, and the state of his teammates. As Morgaine reaches out to take the Stone, he crushes it to powder. Shocked, she tells him he has given up his only chance for happiness. He says, "the price was too high." Morgaine withdraws with her son, assuring him that they have lost the battle, but not the war. The building returns to normal.
The League recover from the fight, and Jason has reverted to his human form. J'onn announces that he is resigning from the League, as his teammates can no longer rely on him. Unexpectedly, Jason is the one who urges him to remain, saying that J'onn, unlike himself, was ultimately able to resist Morgaine's temptation.
Jason takes his leave and walks off into the fog, cursed to keep seeking Morgaine until she is defeated. J'onn hopes that he will find peace one day.
Continuity
- Batman utters for the third time the line "Whatever it takes." The first time he said it was in Batman: Mask of the Phantasm. Then in the Batman Beyond episode "The Call." This seems to have become his mantra.
Background Information
Production Inconsistencies
- Jason Blood states that according to legend the Philosopher's Stone was a gem embedded in the hilt of the sword Excalibur and the source of its power. However, the stone is later shown to be a cubical rock that could not fit into the hilt of a sword.
- In Morgan's hallucination of Mars, the sun is the same size as it is on Earth. It should be smaller.
- If Morgaine's brooch warns her when Entrigan is near, then why doesn't it trigger when she arrives at the archaeologist's home. Etrigan was scouting in close proximity.
- When J'onn comes to Morgaine from the Javelin, the color of Mordred's hat keeps changing from yellow to purple.
- When Flash stores the Philosopher's Stone in the vault he seals it with a palm print scanner. However, he did it with his glove on. So, how could the scanner read his palm?
Trivia
- Superman, Hawkgirl, and Green Lantern do not appear.
- Harv Hickman is an obvious parody of Hugh Hefner.
- Michael Gough, the voice-over actor who plays Henry Moss, is not to be confused with the other Michael Gough, the British actor who played Alfred in the recent live-action Batman films.
- Morgaine's militia bear a strong resemblance to the Neo-Men ― a group of mindless soldiers which appeared in DC Comics' Camelot 3000 miniseries.
- Billy Zane who voiced Etrigan in The New Batman Adventures episode "The Demon Within," is replaced in this episode by Michael T. Weiss.
- At Harv Hickman's costume party there are several guests dressed as DC Comics characters. Those include:
- Batman
- Supergirl
- Maxie Zeus;
- An old-style Aquaman;
- Dr. Bedlam;
- Black Racer;
- Vykin the Black;
- Goody Rickels (a parody of Don Rickles);
- OMAC faceless agents;
- Harley Quinn;
- Devilance the Pursuer.
- Harv Hickman is transformed into a worm that bears a strong resemblance to "The Eater" from Kamandi #18.
- In the party the attendant dressed in a Batman costume is doing the Bat-Tutsi ― the dance made famous in the 1960's television series Batman starring Adam West.
- Morgaine's line "Youth is so wasted on the young" is a paraphrase of one of the most famous quotes by Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw.
- While trying to lure Harv who was transformed into a worm, Flash calls him "Cecil", which is a reference to Beany and Cecil, a 60's-70's cartoon series about a boy and his sea serpent.
Cast
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Kevin Conroy | Batman |
| Susan Eisenberg | Wonder Woman |
| Carl Lumbly | J'onn J'onzz |
| Michael Rosenbaum | The Flash |
| Cam Clarke | Paramedic |
| Olivia D'Abo | Morgaine Le Faye |
| Soren Fulton | Mordred |
| Michael Gough | Professor Henry Moss |
| Pam Grier | My'ri'a |
| Jim Meskimen | Knight |
| William Morgan Sheppard | Merlin |
| Dave Thomas | Harv Hickman |
| Michael T. Weiss | Jason Blood/Etrigan |
| Jim Wise | Bouncer |
Quotes
Wonder Woman: Flash is right. There's something unsettling about your friend. When he stares, it's like he's looking into my very soul. |
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