Grant Walker. A near carbon-copy of the greatest Walt Disney, but he has nothing of good on him like our beloved Disney....
Hello guys! Today, here's my thirtieth PE proposal, and it's about Grant Walker, the main antagonist of the Batman: The Animated Series episode. As you may guess, I make this proposal about a "snowy-themed villain" in the wake of Christmas' Eve.
WHO IS HE? / WHAT HAS HE DONE?[]
After a giant robot kidnaps Mr. Freeze, Batman and Robin ask former GothCorp employee Karl Rossum if he can help them, leading Rossum to mention that the robot belongs to the company of the famous Grant Walker, a renowned theme park mogul for whom he had worked on the past as part of his Visioneers. It turns out that Walker is behind Mr. Freeze's abduction and reveals to him that he wants to reproduce the condition he suffers on him so he can become practically immortal. Freeze dismisses the stupid request and tries to leave, but Walker convinces him upon showing that he saved his wife Nora Fries from dying as previously believed. Thus, Freeze agrees to Walker's demands but before explaining him his plan to freeze Gotham City and then the world with a huge freezing gun, Walker orders his scientists to eliminate Batman and Robin, who survive the attempt.
As later shown, Walker intends to gather many people into Oceania, his newest theme park, so he can freeze Gotham City and then the world because there's many crime, violence, corruption etc. so they can become the only survivors of the Earth and live under his rule. As such, after Batman and Robin are subdued, Walker has them watch how he is transformed into the second Mr. Freeze. Having fulfilled his part of the deal, Freeze asks to be alone with his wife as the countdown to freeze Gotham City starts. However, Freeze has a change of heart after Batman convinces him to not make Nora hate him upon awaking and releases the Dynamic Duo to stop Walker. Not wanting his goal to fail, Walker tries to murder Freeze by crushing his glass helmet, but Freeze ultimately defeats him and freezes him to the freezing gun and initiates a countdown to destroy Oceania, requesting all the people present there to escape fro their lives. At the end, Oceania is destroyed and Walker sinks frozen in a piece of ice to remain stuck there albeit immortal as he desired, much to his horror.
Just to add, Grant Walker later returns in the Batman Adventures comic book, where he escapes and, having become insane, kidnaps a bunch of Wayne Enterprises employees to find a cure to his condition. However, according to deleted material meant to the comic line before its cancellation, Walker is ultimately killed by a robotic döppelganger of Mr. Freeze.
WHAT'S THE WORK?[]
Batman: The Animated Series is an animated television show based on the Batman character from DC Comics. It aired from 1992 to 1995. Inspired by the Batman movies made by Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher, the series follows the adventures of Batman and Robin, the two heroes of Gotham City who always fight against villains who threaten the city with their nefarious plans. Behind The Simpsons, the series is today considered the second greatest show of all time.
MORAL EVENT HORIZON[]
Although being essentially a one-shot antagonist and never making any other appearances in the show, Grant Walker stands out much like the Sewer King as one of those one-shot villains who make a significant appearance for the level of their evilness. Walker is a greedy a delusion theme park mogul who desires to transform the whole world into a theme park according to his vision even if that means freezing all the planet. Every PE villain must have crossed the Moral Event Horizon to be PE, and Walker definitely crosses it when he sends a group of torpedoes to eliminate the Dynamic Duo, demonstrating that he only cares for what he wants and will not let anyone interfere.
HEINOUS STANDARDS/MITIGATING FACTORS?[]
Despite being one of the one-shot villains of the show, Grant Walker is a greedy and megalomaniac man who desires things to be like he wants. Being able to hide his true monstrous nature under the facade of a kind, grandfatherly man, Grant Walker seems to be like a man who builds theme parks to make people happy, but in reality, Walker is a delusional and sick man who desires immortality at all costs under the belief that he has still too much work to do as his ultimate desire is to make Oceania, his latest theme park, the sole survivor city on the Earth, which he plans to freeze as whole in order for only him and a group of people to survive and become their leader in a so-called "utopia".
Upon revealing the plans he has for Oceania, this of course demonstrates how heartless and ruthless Grant Walker really is under the pretext that there are pure people who don't deserve to live in a society full of crime, violence and corruption and thus they are the only ones who deserve to survive without caring on the welfare and/or the lives of the others outside Oceania, deeming them responsible for all those detractors, disregarding the lives of even his workers and admirers, who likely go through his plan due not wanting to die frozen outside. That said, he reminds me a lot to Avon Hertz from Grand Theft Auto Online with his genocidal plans. He even doesn't want any people to interfere on his plans, as shown when he orders a group of torpedoes against Batman and Robin for being intruders, and that line implies that he would have done the same thing even if they were innocent people or the coast guard. He even kidnaps the Dynamic Duo later to show them how he achieves his goal without them being able to prevent so.
As previously said, Walker desires to be immortal at all costs, even if that means kidnapping Mr. Freeze and heartlessly coercing the tragic villain into aiding him upon revealing that he has his wife Nora still alive, telling him that he will allow him to be back with her if he aids him, further showing his manipulative nature. Walker's obsession even goes the point he refuses to understand that Freeze's "immortality" isn't great but a torment. Coupled with his greediness, Walker shows that he will do whatever he needs to maintain his immortality when he tries to coldly murder Freeze with a piece of iron for trying to stop him. This effectively cements as a deranged control freak who desires the things to be done like he wants and will do whatever he needs in order to do so. Taking into account what a reviewer of World's Finest Online noted, Freeze and Walker stood in deliberate contrast to each other, as Freeze claims to be dead to emotions, but his compassion leads him to try to talk out Walker from suffering his condition and saving the innocent lives from Oceania's destruction, whereas Walker seems to be an outwardly warm, paternalistic figure who is really dead to emotions, coldly planning to commit mass murder just to create his own fantasy of a perfect world, thus making his transformation into another Mr. Freeze more appropriate to his inner self in comparison to Freeze's.
VERDICT[]
Taking all of this into account, I would say yes about considering Grant Walker to be approved as PE.