Batman: The Animated Series

This episode sees the return of Ra's who has been believed dead (following the events of "The Demon's Quest" two-part episode). After Batman fails to stop Ra's from stealing a piece of papyrus from a museum, his first stop in solving this mystery is Gibraltar, where he meets up with Talia. The strong chemistry between the two of them is once again present, and their relationship reaches a new level when they both leave on a quest to find out the truth about Ra's return.



Most if not all of this episode is reminiscent of an Indiana Jones adventure, and Bruce and Talia do indeed form a good team, be it traveling around the world, solving riddles, looking for clues and fighting thugs.



Ra's master plan in this episode is acquiring the secrets of life and death from the Egyptian goddess Toth Kappera. This turns out to be harder than he thought, as the goddess actually tries herself feeding with his life essence and ultimately destroying him. Batman manages to save Ra's and plans to bring him to the authorities, but is once again betrayed by his beloved Talia who cannot leave her father like that and rescues him, leaving Batman stranded in the middle of the dessert. Another minor but impressive scene would have to be the character development Ubu is given throughout this story arc: at first (in "The Demon's Quest") he takes any opportunity to fight Batman, calling him "infidel" and so on, until this episode where Batman actually saves his life while the cave was falling apart. This leads Ubu to respect Batman (even if only a little) and throws him his water when he is left stranded in the dessert at the end of the episode.



This was a good episode, but looking back this was probably the weakest of the Ra's centric episodes this show had. But it is still a good, adventure-filled episode worth checking out.