SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers for Justice League #27, by Bryan Hitch and Fernando Pasarin, on sale now.


The current story-arc in Justice League has brought together the current incarnation of the team with a Justice League of the future, this one comprised of their children. The future Leaguers have traveled back in time to find their parents and get their help with an evil overlord that has taken over their Earth, but first there’s a lot of explaining that needs doing and most of the team has to get their heads around the fact that they’re going to have kids -- in some cases, with other members of their team!

Young Justice

The biggest question mark of the future Justice League was Hunter Prince, the leader of the group who wears Wonder Woman’s sigil and tiara (as an armband), but also Superman’s cape. The easy speculation was that he was the son of both Diana and Clark, but this issue reveals an even more heartbreaking origin for him. After he was born, to Wonder Woman, the Amazonian princess supposedly abandoned him because he wasn’t female, and as such was not an Amazon. It fell to Clark and Lois to raise Hunter as their own, and as a brother to Jon, their biological son. In this issue, we not only see Hunter’s barely-contained resentment towards his mother, but Wonder Woman’s shock that she would do such a thing to a child.

Hunter-Prince-Wonder-Woman

The Flash and Green Lantern Jessica Cruz get a big shock when they find out half of the team is comprised of their children, together. Bryan Hitch has been teasing a Flash/Green Lantern romance since the start of his Justice League run, but events in Barry Allen’s own book have prevented any real forward momentum on that front. Here, we find out that in this possible future Barry and Jessica have three kids. Nora Allen AKA Cruise is a speedster like her father, while Jenny and Jason inherited power over the entire emotional spectrum, though they sometimes struggle to control it when they feel heightened emotions themselves.

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Of all the Justice League members, Jessica probably takes the news the best. Barry wonders what it means for his future with Iris — especially in light of having recently seen a possible future where he and Iris sire Don and Dawn Allen, The Tornado Twins — but Jessica embraces her possible future children with an adorable awkwardness after hearing their story and the fate of their world. Cyborg is similarly embracing of his future son Cube, and marvels at his offspring’s integrated Mother Box biology (Cube's mother is a Mother Box, it appears), while Mera admires her daughter Serenity’s toughness and forthrightness.

Justice-League-27-Children

Unfortunately, not everyone’s future turns out for the best; after all the team does come from a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Hunter mentions in passing that he was raised alongside Jon and eventually joined the Super Sons, but hints that something happened to both Jon and Damian Wayne before stopping himself. When Simon Baz notices he’s the only one that doesn’t have a kid among the group, Jason breaks the news to him that in their, future Simon killed Sinestro -- and took over the Yellow Lantern Corps.

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How The Future Dies

As the Justice League is coming to terms with the fact that they have children, they learn about the horrifying reality from which they come. Cube relays the information through archival footage taken throughout the years, showing that the kids were all born roughly around the same time and grew up as best friends. Their parents taught them how to use their powers and they were a team of kid superheroes, often spending time hanging out and enjoying their youth on the Justice League Watchtower, until a great war came and everything changed.

The details aren’t explored too deeply, but it seems a number of the Justice League’s greatest enemies came together — possibly to form a new Secret Society of Supervillains — and went to war with the Justice League. It’s a similar premise to that of Mark Millar and Steve McNiven’s “Old Man Logan,” where the villains finally get on the same page and take the fight to the heroes of the Marvel Universe in a way they’d never attempted before. Here, in order to keep the children safe, they were kept hidden on Mount Olympus following the disappearance of the gods but tragically, their parents never came back for them. They grew up alone, but together, and eventually ventured out into what remained of the world.

Although the children did what they could to make life better for the survivors of the war, a dangerous new villain named Sovereign arrived and claimed Mount Olympus as her own. In the future of these children, Sovereign rules the world, and they spend their entire lives working to stay one step ahead of her.

While it seems Sovereign is a new character, it’s possible that underneath her blank featureless mask that she ends up being a character we'll recognize. It could well be an as-yet unmentioned Justice Leaguer child, or perhaps one of the League themselves. Hitch has already set the tone for a future Wonder Woman who is colder and more isolated than her present-day incarnation, and it would make sense for a future evil Wonder Woman to rule from atop Mount Olympus, but Sovereign’s identity — if it is anyone we already know — remains to be seen.

Justice League #27 had one final surprise for its readers before the issue ended; during the arrival of the future League, Batman has been busy elsewhere. In this issue, we see him investigating The Kindred from Hitch’s first arc of this volume of Justice League but he’s quickly ambushed behind by an old friend… of sorts. The final reveal of the issue is that Curry — the future Aquaman with implanted Cyborg technology — made the leap back time with the children, and has already taken out Batman. If anyone knows what happened to the Justice League of the future, it’s got to be him, but he doesn’t seem inclined to share that information and both the modern day and future Justice Leagues won’t be too happy to see him in this time period.

This is Bryan Hitch’s final arc of Justice League before departing the series for new projects, and it seems that a lot of his themes of time travel, destiny and free will are coming together for the grand finale. With only a handful of issues to go before he departs the book, there’s still a lot of mysteries up in the air to be answered, but perhaps the biggest one is: will the Justice League’s children endure as characters beyond this one story?