Among the numerous contributions the ground-breaking Batman: The Animated Series gave back to its source material was the complete rewriting and redefining of rogues' gallery staple Mr. Freeze. Writer Paul Dini recast the generic ice-themed villain as Dr. Victor Fries, a scientist driven to save his terminally ill wife, Nora, only for an accident to apparently take both of their lives. Surviving, the good doctor became vengeance-seeking Mr. Freeze, portrayed with a seething monotone by the late Michael Ansara.
On the strength of this Emmy-award winning reintroduction and a desire not to overuse the character, follow-up appearances were scant. A return late in B:TAS' original run lead into 1998's direct-to-video film Batman & Mr. Freeze: SubZero, which effectively closed the book on Mr. Freeze's arc. This led to the subsequent The New Batman Adventures incarnation reverting the character to an embittered one-note force of nature. A low point for one of the Dark Knight's most intriguingly human adversaries, this appearance -- intentionally or not -- would pave the way for Mr. Freeze's redemption on Batman Beyond, and the proper restoration of the character's rich tragedy and torment.
Following his DC Animated Universe debut in the Bruce Timm directed "Heart of Ice" -- the third episode of B:TAS to air -- a reappearance was avoided until "Deep Freeze," the series' third season finale and 80th episode broadcast. "Deep Freeze" revealed both Nora's survival and that Fries had effectively become immortal as a consequence of the accident that transformed him.
Later DTV SubZero ended with Nora cured and a grateful Freeze wandering into the sunset. He would return in The New Batman Adventures' "Cold Comfort," a 1997 episode airing before the release of SubZero. His driving motivation resolved in Subzero, writer Hilary J. Bader and director Dan Riba opted instead to show how Mr. Freeze would react to losing his raison d'être, with Nora having since married the doctor that saved her life.
Once the most human of Batman's rogues in the animated canon, Mr. Freeze now wrecked havoc and destruction amid a plot to encase Gotham City in ice. While seemingly ageless, cellular deterioration overtook his body, leaving Freeze little more than a head in a suit. The character derailment of "Cold Comfort," however, provided Freeze's final appearance in future-set Batman Beyond's "Meltdown" -- co-written by Bader and producer Alan Burnett and directed by Curt Geda -- with everything needed to restore the tragedy that so elegantly defined the character.
In the series set 40+ years in the future, Mr. Freeze became a test subject for a life-saving treatment to eventually be applied to Wayne-Powers CEO Derek Powers, then emitting dangerously high levels of radiation following a life-saving procedure. Given a cloned body and a fresh start, Victor Fries adjusted to life in Neo Gotham by visiting the grave where the remains of his original body had been buried. Trailing Fries, Batman successor Terry McGinnis stopped an assassination attempt, swiftly felling the attacker. Unmasked, the assassin was revealed to be an unassuming middle-aged man who simply wanted Fries to pay for destroying his life and family years earlier. The moment becomes all the more tragic due to the suggestion this occurred circa "Cold Comfort," and the man's family were fatally frozen in front of his eyes when he was a child.
As these things go, the redemption of Victor Fries did not last, the restoration process increasing his body temperature to dangerously high levels and forcing him to don an updated "freeze" suit. This encounter led to a fight between McGinnis, Powers and Mr. Freeze, with the latter left battered and tired in the middle of a Wayne-Powers facility on the verge of collapse. Ready to meet his end, Freeze replied to McGinnis' call to escape that, "You're the only one who cares." While "Cold Comfort" proved a step backward for the character, "Meltdown" literally and figuratively restored the humanity to Victor Fries, so say nothing of the positively gut-wrenching scene of the would-be assassin still reeling from the loss of his family years earlier.
Mr. Freeze would recur more frequently across the various DCAU tie-in comic titles, while Ansara would reprise the role once more for the 2001 video game Batman: Vengeance, set during the TNBA era. Despite making these few half-dozen appearances, Ansara's performance would inspire future cross-media adaptations of the character. Dini would bring his origin into DC Comics canon in 1997's Batman: Mr. Freeze one-shot, its permanence and importance to the character and canon surviving several reboots and alterations.
"Cold Comfort" is a necessary evil for the emotional depths of "Meltdown", and ultimately neither could exist in complete and satisfying form without the other. It still managed to offer an ending, albeit an appropriately sad one, to a character offered a new lease on life from an unexpected source.