DC Confirms the Scariest Bat-Family Member in the Saddest Way Possible
Contains spoilers for Knight Terrors: Nightwing 2! Almost every member of the Bat Family has a dark side in their past – but few have a past as dark as Cassandra Cain. Born to be a Weapon, Knight Terrors: Nightwing 2 makes it clear that her worst nightmare is not any villain in the DC Comics universe, but her own vision of herself. close. Knight of Terror : Nightwing 2 – by Becky Cloonan, Michael W. Conrad, Daniele Di Nicuolo and Adriano Lucas – find Cassandra, like most heroes and villains in the DC Universe, trapped in a nightmare thanks to the villain Insomnia. As every DC character must face their greatest fear, Cassandra Cain must face her own and there’s a heartbreaking reason for it.
Cassandra Is Trapped In Nightwing’s Nightmare Version Of Arkham
DC’s Knight Terrors event revolves around Insomnia’s efforts to find the Nightmare Stone – with plans that involve trapping heroes and villains in twisted nightmare versions of their reality , facing their worst fears. Some heroes are trapped in shared nightmares, like Red Hood and Tim Drake. As seen in Knight Terrors: Nightwing 2, Nightwing is trapped in a nightmare version of Arkham Asylum, along with Barbara Gordon, Stephanie Brown, and Cassandra Cain. Each of them must face their worst fears before they can come together, Barbara’s is the out-of-control Oracle, Stephanie’s is her evil father, but Cassandra Cain’s is herself.
Cassandra Cain Fears She’s A Monster At Her Core
Cassandra Cain is one of the most capable fighters on the planet, far beyond even Batman in ability, but she didn’t get to that point without hardship. Cassandra was trained by her father, David Cain, to be a literal weapon. She wasn’t trained to speak any language other than body language. She wasn’t trained to feel empathy or human emotion, only to kill. After she killed her first victim, she was able to read his body language and realized just what she had done. This moment of truly understanding death made her run from her father’s control, eventually coming into contact with the Bat-Family, in time joining them. The fact Cassandra’s fear wasn’t some villain or monster, but was instead herself, shows the traumatic effect her father’s training had on her.
One of the biggest elements of Cassandra’s character development over the years was her coming to terms with the fact that she isn’t just a weapon. While Cassandra Cain’s origin had her destined as a villain for Batman, she was able to overcome that and become a hero. Still, the fear of her past is always something she has to deal with. She was raised by her father to be a killer, she was literally born to be a killer, and overcoming that is her constant struggle.The question of her fate as an assassin turns out to be the most terrible thing Cassandra can think of, something she faces in Knight Terrors: Nightwing 2. Even though she has achieved amazingly heroic things, her fear of just being herself at birth is very real, very heartbreaking. There’s no doubt that Cassandra Cain is a hero, but unlike most members of the Bat-Family, Cass had cruel parents determined to turn her into a killer. This type of trauma is not something a person can easily overcome, which is why Cassandra Cain’s greatest fear is that she will become the monster she was created to be.