Is the Huntress a member of the Batfamily?
This and other questions will be answered on today's episode of "Asks that will make for goddamn certain somebody is gonna yell at me no matter what I say!"
But been there, done that. Bring it on.
(An image of Huntress. Just the best look at her I could find)
So, to define our terms so I know at least my college professors won't be mad at me. At least not for that.
The Huntress is a superheroine, mostly known for her purple ensemble, her openly Christian iconography (most of her costumes include a visible gold crucifix which is rarer than you would think among superheroes in general much less American superheroes), and use of a specially designed crossbow as her main weapon. While she does all the wonderful things a superheroine does her main focus has always been on targeting organized crime. All superheroes battle organized crime to various degrees, one can argue that along with fascism, organized crime is one of the root enemies that gave birth to the modern superhero. But she has always paid special attention to taking out mob organizations.
"The Batfamily" is a much less helpful term, because it's not a technical term at all. It usually refers to the group of sidekicks, proteges, partners and allies that have sprung up around Gotham City's Batman. Unlike, say, the Justice League there is no official membership roster. If the Batman and his allies even recognize some sort of definite concept to that name we have no idea. We also have no idea what relationships the various members have to one another, who is within the "in group" of said relationships, nothing. The Gotham set have some of the most firmly sealed secret identities in the business, and they are VERY rarely in contact with the press or news media. And it's certainly not a publically facing organization that we have the ability to analyze from the outside. (Batman Incorporated IS a semi-publicly facing organization but the two groups are SIMILAR but not the SAME. I think. Maybe.).
Is Huntress an ally to Batman? Certainly. She's worked in and around Gotham for most of her career and has often been spotted working alongside Batman or more firmly established members of "the Batfamily". But like I stated above, we have no idea what "The Batfamily" is beyond a totally vibes based definition. One that might be instantly thrown off what the actual MEMBERS consider the definition. It could be entirely literal, that all members are related to one another directly. If that's the case then Huntress' membership or lack of membership comes entirely down to the woman's secret identity. Which we know nothing about.
Is she somebody's sister? Daughter? Mother? Wife? Some other 5th thing? Any combination of previous guesses? I don't know, most likely YOU don't know, the list of people who know is probably VERY limited and that's just one theory. Because we know nothing about Batman himself, much less how anyone could be connected to him. Are they all members of the same martial order? Bonded by some kind of demonic blood pact? Any other Bat-related conspiracy you might plug in here could change the calculus on a dime.
She doesn't wear the Bat Symbol but that could mean LITERALLY anything, technically Nightwing doesn't either and we're 99% sure he's the first Robin. If Nightwing doesn't count then NOBODY does. We are technically unsure if the Batman that exists now is the SAME Batman that existed at the beginning of his career. We can only generally assume that because of Occam's Razor giving us no reason to think he ISN'T but then again the only things we know about him at ALL is that he's a tall, white male with a strong chin. Which also fits the description of 85% of the people in his orbit.
The more I have written out this response the less I have become sure about anything. So I'm going to wrap up this unsatisfying historian's hedging my bets answer here before my brain starts asking me whether Superman is a member of the Batfamily because I would prefer to be able to sleep this evening.
