Warning! Spoilers ahead for Future State: Gotham #6
In the latest issue of DC Comics' Future State: Gotham, Red Hood and the Next Batman Tim Fox join forces to fight the resistance fighters led by Nightwing. This black and white series reveals that Gotham's future is even bleaker than its present, and the nature of Red Hood's secret undercover work has had him at odds with his Bat-Family for a long time, especially after the alleged death of Bruce Wayne's Batman. Now, this latest issue of Future State Gotham sees Jason and the Next Batman having to work together to fight off the Bat-Family, seeing as how they've all been corrupted by Gotham's new villain, Warmonger.
Set during the Magistrate's takeover of Gotham, which has turned the city into a brutal fascist state, Red Hood is shown as estranged from Nightwing and the rest of his family. They believe that Jason Todd betrayed them to work as a vigilante hunter for the Magistrate, when in reality he's actually working for the original Batman. The rest of the team has intentionally been kept in the dark that Bruce Wayne is still alive, as Bruce has chosen to remain dead publically so he can break the Magistrate from within (with Jason's help). But when Tim Fox's Batman is blamed for a large chunk of Gotham being destroyed, Jason went after the new Dark Knight seeking justice. However, the two of them find themselves working together as allies against the rise of Warmonger, who intends to use the deceased Mad Hatter's tech to hypnotize Gotham into tearing itself apart.
This all culminates in Future State: Gotham #6 from writer Joshua Williamson and artist Dennis Culver. Pretending to turn the Next Batman into the Magistrate to get into their evidence locker, the vigilantes were hoping to secure the Arkham Knight's helmet, which holds the Hatter's hypno-tech. However, Warmonger beat them to the punch and he promptly used the headset to order Gotham to go to war. With Jason and Tim being the only two with immunity to the Hatter's nanites, they now have to fight the deadliest people in Gotham: Nightwing and the rest of Jason's family in the resistance movement.
Having no inhibitions thanks to Warmonger's mind-control, the Bat-Family is going to be incredibly hard to take down (as if things weren't bad enough for Jason Todd and his family relations). Furthermore, Red Hood elects to go after Warmonger to free his family while the Next Batman agrees to hold them off as best he can by the end of the issue. Things are not looking good for Gotham at all, especially with the few heroes they have left having been corrupted and hypnotized right alongside its everyday citizens.
In any case, this current crisis has created the opportunity for Jason to truly get to know the Next Batman and accept him as an ally rather than an imposter disgracing his surrogate father's cape and cowl. It seems likely that Red Hood will find a way to reconcile with Nightwing and the rest of his family once the dust settles, even if that means coming clean about Bruce being alive and having been working for him all this time. He's certainly not going to be able to keep working for the Magistrate after everything that's happened. Either way, fans will just have to wait and see what's next for Red Hood and the Next Batman as Future State: Gotham continues.