Hopes for Cassandra Cain

Sadly, at the end of the most recent issue it looks like Batgirl is dead. Since Wargames, Spoiler seems to be her friendly neighborhood Grim Reaper, showing up to guide when she's near death. Spoiler carrying Cassandra, ever when it was really Shiva, is a very bad sign. However, it was really Shiva, leading the idea that Cassandra wasn't dead - she was mearly hallucinating thanks to blood loss. And, she has one issue left in her run.

My hopes are that she lives, and keeps her role to a degree. I doubt she will remain Batgirl until probably after 52 runs its course, the comic ends and so does her need to wear the suit. My guess is that her wound is in reality just as bad as it looks, and will be not unlike when Bane broke Batman's back.

It will take a while for her to recover, and until then she will have to live differently. After talking to Kalinara a bit on the topic, she had a few points that I liked that could fit into the saga of her recovery.

First of all she should finally learn how to read and write. I know she can't learn it the normal way thanks to how her brain is wired up, but now she she is out-of-action and thus has the extra time.

She can also spend this extra time developing relationships with normal people, as well as getting used to "normal" life. She has done this a little over time, but she can still work on these relationships. She's not normal, so the stories revolving around her coping and adjusting are interesting to me (I enjoy her figuring out words in her narrative, and observing normal people).

Anyway, this is just a best-case senario.

Not-so-good senario would be Cassandra Cain permanently falls out of the light to just appear as cameos in other titles. It looks like they are hinting that Barbara Gordon will get the use of her legs back, which may push her into returning to swinging around buildings in a black outfit...replacing the position of Batgirl (with a Batwoman, thanks Kal). I don't really want to see that happen, becuase I really like Barb in her role as Oracle.

Worst case is that we've lost yet another beloved character to the winds of change.