BATMAN BEYOND Voice Actor Will Friedle Explains Why He Won’t Return as Terry McGinnis - “I Don’t Know If I Could Do It Again”
Fans hoping to see Will Friedle return as the voice of Terry McGinnis in a Batman Beyond project might want to temper their expectations. At a recent panel at Animate! Columbus 2025, Friedle made it clear that revisiting the role without the late Kevin Conroy by his side just doesn’t feel right.
“If you asked me that question three years ago, the answer would be, 'Oh my god, yes. Get me in front of the microphone right now.'
“Now that Kevin's gone, I don't know if I could do it again. I think they would need to recast both roles. Being Terry and not having him answer as Bruce, I don't think I could do it.”
Friedle’s comments echo a similar sentiment shared by Mark Hamill, who officially retired from voicing the Joker in 2023. When asked at Fan Expo San Francisco whether he’d ever return to the role, Hamill famously replied: “Without Batman, crime has no punch line.”
Both actors last stepped into their iconic roles for the Crisis on Infinite Earths animated trilogy. Since then, the absence of Conroy, who passed away in 2022 from intestinal cancer at the age of 66, has left a noticeable void in the animated Bat-verse.
Conroy portrayed Bruce Wayne for over 30 years across animation, games, and even live-action in The CW’s Crisis crossover. His final gift to fans, the autobiographical comic Finding Batman, can be read for free on DC’s website.
Friedle, best known in the ‘90s as Eric Matthews on Boy Meets World, carved out a second career as a prolific voice actor with roles in Kim Possible, Transformers: Robots in Disguise, Guardians of the Galaxy, and of course, Batman Beyond.
The series, created by Bruce Timm, Paul Dini, and Alan Burnett, ran from 1999 to 2001 and introduced audiences to a new kind of Batman… Terry McGinnis, a rebellious teenager mentored by a much older Bruce Wayne in a cyberpunk Gotham of 2039.