Sick of being tossed around as Batbatos’ plaything, Bruce Wayne realises the importance of the Bird Tribe and how he’s always surrounded himself with birds — in the form of the Robins — to remind him who he is and where he is. It’s at this point in the story that Bruce’s granddaughter Janet becomes cross with her grandfather for changing the story, and reveals herself to be a demon of some sort. Following the sinister voice calling out to him across the multiple timelines he’s simultaneously trapped in, Bruce sees his younger self in the reflection of the window in his study and realises that he’s face to face with Barbatos. Barbatos tells Bruce that he created Batman, he wrote his story and has always been right here, at the window. The window is of great significance to the Batman mythos, as it was the bat which crashed through that window that urged Bruce Wayne to become Batman. Grant Morrison hinted that the bat which crashed through the window was a manifestation of Barabatos, but here Snyder and his collaborators confirm it.

Barbatos first saw Bruce Wayne when Darkseid cast him back into time — referencing Grant Morrison’s The Return of Bruce Wayne another Barbatos story — and spent millennia preparing the world for his chosen avatar. He created Batman through Gotham, and as Bruce finds out by punching through the window into the Dark Multiverse itself, Barbatos created Batman to create an army of unstable doppelgangers in The Dark Knights. Barbatos forces Bruce Wayne to confront the reality of being Batman and that the decision to put on the cape and cowl led to this moment, right now. Showing him images of the Dark Knights clashing with the Justice League and winning, Batman does the unthinkable. He submits. Batman never gives up, but seeing him yell in pain that he doesn’t want to see, he doesn’t want to know, he gives up, is incredibly powerful and shocking.

Barbatos grants Bruce’s wish, placing him back in the form of his elder self, Janet Wayne back on his lap, we’re faced with the possibility that we don’t know how many times Bruce has been through this cycle. How many times has Batman been forced through all of that, thinking that he was winning only to be broken and forced to submit to Barbatos? It’s a kind of defeat Batman has never endured before, which raises the stakes higher than they’ve ever been and makes Dark Nights: Metal a truly unique Batman story.