The following article contains spoilers from Justice Society of America #3, on sale now from DC Comics.
When Helena Wayne made her debut in Geoff Johns' and Mikel Janín's Justice Society of America as the future daughter of Earth-0's Batman and Catwoman, she was already off to a bad start. Not only was this a significant change that was bound to complicate Wayne's relationships and place within the Justice Society, but it especially presented a huge problem for Wayne to originate her own identity as the Huntress in a world where Helena Bertinelli chronologically comes first. In Justice Society of America #3 (by Geoff Johns, Mikel Janín, Jerry Ordway, Jordie Bellaire, John Kalisz, and Rob Leigh) the other shoe finally dropped, effectively validating why changing her origin was a colossal mistake in the first place.
In Justice Society of America #3, Wayne finds herself in the present-day DCU and encounters Khalid Nassour's Doctor Fate and Detective Chimp. When she introduces herself as the Huntress, they're both immediately confused since the only Huntress they know is Helena Bertinelli. When they ask her if Bertinelli is her mother, Wayne reveals she's a "family friend" who inspired her to become the Huntress, but that her mother was actually Catwoman. This change does more than rob Helena Wayne of the very identity she originated a decade before Helena Bertinelli made her debut. It ignores Bertinelli's own character development. Worse yet, by completely disregarding the Huntress' history, writer Geoff Johns is setting up this version of Helena Wayne for failure by further convoluting her timeline in a way that's bound to confuse and validate wrong opinions about her character.
Justice Society is Erasing Helena Wayne's Conceptual Originality
Before Helena Bertinelli entered the picture in 1989, Helena Wayne made her debut in 1977 as the daughter of the Golden Age Batman and Catwoman who resided on Earth-2. Her original parentage did two things for Helena Wayne: first, it provided a direct link to the Justice Society and cemented her place as one of the team's original legacy heroes alongside Power Girl and Robin. Making her the daughter of Earth-0's Batman and Catwoman not only removes this direct link to DC's Golden Age history, but it especially robs Helena Wayne of her status as an original legacy heroine. The second reason Helena Wayne benefited from having the Golden Age Batman and Catwoman as her parents is that it tied directly to her motivations for becoming the Huntress.
Since the Golden Age Bruce Wayne had a much smaller support system on Earth-2 -- having only one Robin and his butler Alfred -- he had a stronger incentive to put his life as Batman behind him and marry. The same was true of the Golden Age Selina Kyle, who found herself wanting to start a new chapter in her life. Bruce and Selina realized they wanted the same thing at the same time in The Brave and the Bold #197 (by Alan Brennert and Joe Staton), which factored into their decision to marry and have children. After Helena was born, Bruce and Selina chose to raise her as a normal child away from their costumed lives. Helena growing up in a healthy, loving environment was what made her mother's tragic death the traumatic event that catapulted her into becoming the Huntress.
As detailed in the Wonder Woman #307 story "Side Effects" (by Joey Cavalieri and Michael Hernandez), Helena feared for her parent's lives when she learned about their costumed pasts. The moment that fear was validated, Helena committed to hunting down the former henchman that took her mother's life. When her father died a year later in the hands of another criminal who plotted revenge, this cemented her decision to continue hunting criminals as the Huntress. Given Helena Wayne's own motivations for being the Huntress, there's no reason for Helena Bertinelli to factor into that decision apart from haphazardly fixing the paradox that comes with making Wayne the daughter of Earth-0's Batman and Catwoman.
The Second Huntress Owes Her Existence to Helena Wayne
The other problem that comes with making Helena Bertinelli the "family friend" who inspired Earth-0's Helena Wayne to become the Huntress is that it completely disregards the history of both characters. Apart from removing Wayne as the originator of the Huntress identity, it also ignores the fact Helena Bertinelli was created as a consequence of 1985's Crisis on Infinite Earths by Marv Wolfman and George Pérez. Before Crisis made a cosmic mess of DC's canon by attempting to merge an entire multiverse into a single Earth, Helena Wayne was the Justice Society's breakout character. Not only did she front her own solo stories in the pages of Batman Family and Wonder Woman, but she was a fan-favorite character in Justice Society and Justice League crossovers.
Wayne's popularity also made her a cofounding member of the Justice Society's first legacy team Infinity, Inc., and was a major character in Roy Thomas' Earth-2 event America vs the Justice Society. Around this same timeframe, DC was already making plans to give Helena Wayne her own Huntress ongoing, which was officially announced in Wonder Woman #321. Unfortunately, these plans didn't materialize until 1989 due to the Crisis reboot and were only made possible after Helena Wayne was reworked with a new origin as Helena Bertinelli. Compared to the version of the character fans are more familiar with, the Helena Bertinelli from the 1989 Huntress series by Joey Cavalieri and Joe Staton was actually closer in characterization to her original Earth-2 incarnation and even called back to her past life as Helena Wayne.
Justice Society of America Convolutes The Huntress' Canon
It wasn't until Bertinelli was better integrated into the larger DCU in the early 1990s that she started being developed into the character who constantly clashed with Batman over their respective methods for carrying out justice. Similarly, Bertinelli was never close friends with Catwoman, having only teamed up with her twice in her entire publication history, possibly three times if Huntress: Year One (by Ivory Madison and Cliff Richards) is considered canon.
Bertinelli ultimately found her family with the Birds of Prey, which makes the decision to establish her as a "family friend" of the Waynes a complete contradiction of her actual character development. This is true even in the current continuity where she's still not close to either Bruce or Selina. All in all, nothing positive is coming out of the changes being made to Helena Wayne's origin and how Bertinelli now fits into that. At best, this complete convolution of canon presents a stronger case for why Wayne needs her original pre-Crisis history reinstated: it actually keeps things simple without robbing her of her agency, identity, and conceptual originality.