DC Multiverse Deluxe Theatrical Edition Wave 5 Checklist — Every Figure in the Wave

McFarlane put Deluxe Theatrical Edition Wave 5 up for preorder on Friday, August 7 with no teaser and no announcement — collectors found out because the listings appeared. Three days later the cases were already landing at retail, a month ahead of the September window everybody had written down. If you had Catwoman in your cart on the 7th and watched the checkout fall over, you already know how that went.

What's in DC Multiverse Deluxe Theatrical Edition Wave 5

Three 7-inch figures, each with 22 points of articulation, a DC-logo display base and an art card, in the foil-stamped Deluxe Theatrical window box:

• Commissioner James Gordon — The Dark Knight (2008) — sidearm, handcuffs, case file, a pair of interchangeable hands, base, art card
• Catwoman (Battle Damage) — Batman Returns (1992) — alternate head, bullwhip, taser, base, art card
• Batman — The Batman (2022) — unmasked Bruce Wayne head, 3 interchangeable hands, grapnel, batarang, base, art card

That's the whole case assortment. The retail case is six figures, packed two of each, which is why no single figure is short-packed and why nobody in this wave is artificially hard to find. What is hard to find is anything that already sold through — see the exclusives section below.

When do the Wave 5 figures come out?

This is the rare case where the date question has already answered itself. The September 2026 window came from retailer listings at preorder time; the cases moved out in the second week of August instead. Collectors were finding them at GameStop counters and on Target pegs before some preorders had even been invoiced.

Which is worth saying plainly, because “September 2026” is still sitting on a lot of listings and in a lot of news posts. It's stale. If a page tells you these are coming next month, that page hasn't been touched since preorder day.

No Collect-to-Build part, and no Platinum chase

McFarlane runs Collect-to-Build across most of the DC Multiverse mainline, and they run Platinum Edition chases through the case assortments. Wave 5 has neither. Nothing in any of the three packages is a piece of a fourth figure, and there's no rare variant hiding in the cases.

So there's no penalty for buying one. In a Collect-to-Build wave, skipping the figure you don't want costs you a limb of something you do want. Here it costs you nothing. Buy Gordon on his own and you have not left anything unfinished. That matters more than usual with this wave, because one of the three is a figure a lot of people genuinely should not buy — more on that below.

This line has an expiration date

McFarlane's DC licence runs out this year. Mattel takes DC back, and DC Multiverse as a line goes with it. The exact handover date is muddier than the headlines suggest: Mattel's own announcement said its DC products start “in the second half of 2026,” while Todd McFarlane has said on the record that his company holds the licence through the end of 2026. Both statements are out there, they don't agree, and nobody has reconciled them publicly.

What that uncertainty doesn't change is the practical consequence. There is no reissue coming. When a Deluxe Theatrical figure sells through, it sells through — the tooling doesn't get another run under a new licensee, and the aftermarket is where the rest of this ends up. That's not a countdown timer we invented; it's why the run-out is happening this fast and why waves are shadow-dropping with no lead time.

Every figure in the wave, and who it's actually for

Commissioner James Gordon — The Dark Knight

This is the one the Nolan shelf has been missing. McFarlane has done Batman, Joker, Two-Face, Scarecrow and Bane out of that trilogy, and Gordon — the man the whole third act of The Dark Knight hangs on — never got a figure alongside them. The only prior McFarlane Gordon is the Batman: Year One version that went out as a Walmart exclusive, which is a different character design entirely.

The accessories are the argument. Sidearm, handcuffs, a case file, and a swap pair of hands, which is a real complement for a figure whose whole job is standing next to other figures. Collectors who've had it in hand this month have been consistent that the Gary Oldman likeness holds up — that's the part McFarlane most often misses on a civilian sculpt, and here they didn't.

Verdict: The buy of the wave. If you own one Nolan-trilogy figure, this is the one that makes the rest of them make sense. It's also the first of the three to go — Entertainment Earth is already sold out. We ordered deep and have twenty.

Batman — The Batman (2022)

McFarlane has released a Pattinson Batman before, and a separate unmasked Bruce Wayne. This deluxe is both, done better: a real fabric cape instead of moulded plastic, three swap hands, the unmasked head in the box, and a revised paint job — a cleaner deco on the cowled head and a lighter grey on the suit. Collectors comparing it side by side with the original release have been blunt that it's an upgrade, not a repaint.

Two honest caveats. The unmasked head does not really nail Pattinson up close; it reads better at shelf distance than at arm's length. And if you already own both the original masked and unmasked figures, you're buying a better version of something you have, not a gap-filler.

Verdict: Buy if you skipped the 2022 release or you own the masked one and always wanted the cape and the head swap. If you own both originals and you're happy with them, this is a want, not a need. We have the fewest of these — eight.

Catwoman (Battle Damage) — Batman Returns

Here's the figure we're going to be straight about. This is the 2025 Batman Returns Catwoman with battle-damage deco worked into the catsuit tooling — the torn shoulder and scuffed panels from the film's back half — plus one extra head. Everything else is the release you may already have.

That has split collectors down the middle, and both halves are right. If you missed the first one, this is the best version of the best Catwoman sculpt McFarlane has produced, the Michelle Pfeiffer likeness is legitimately good, and it was the figure people were fighting the checkout queue for on preorder day. If you already own her, you are being asked for $34.99 for a shoulder tear and a head — and a lot of people have said out loud that they'd rather that head had just come in the original box. Several of them are passing.

Verdict: Buy it if you don't have the 2025 Catwoman. Skip it if you do, unless the battle-damage deco is specifically what you want on the shelf — we'd rather you keep the money than open this one and feel like you paid full freight for an accessory.

What's not in the case: the GameStop Gold Label Batman

Alongside Wave 5, McFarlane put two GameStop-exclusive Gold Label figures up on the same day, August 7:

• Batman (Justice League) Deluxe Gold Label — $27.99 — alternate heads, grapnel, batarang, art card. GameStop's own listing files it under the theatrical deluxe banner, though it carries Gold Label branding rather than a Wave 5 case number, and collectors have gone back and forth on whether it counts as part of this wave. Either way it's the Affleck Justice League suit and it's not in any case. Currently unavailable at GameStop.
• Harley Quinn (Gold Label) — $27.99 — mallet, novelty weapon, base, art card. Comic-based rather than theatrical, so it's adjacent to this wave rather than in it. Also currently unavailable at GameStop.

Both are single-retailer exclusives, which means they don't come through the hobby channel and we can't order them for you. We're telling you they exist so your checklist is complete, not because we can sell them to you.

If you're only buying some of them

1. Commissioner Gordon — the only genuinely new character in the wave, the strongest early demand, and the first one to disappear at retail.
2. Batman (2022) — a real upgrade over the original release, and the cape alone justifies the swap if you display him.
3. Catwoman (Battle Damage) — first on this list if you missed the 2025 release, last if you didn't. There is no middle position on this one.

Different order if you're buying for someone who's going to actually play with these rather than shelf them: Batman first, because the cape and the batarang survive being handled, and Gordon last, because a seven-inch police commissioner with a case file is a display piece and everyone knows it.

What we have right now

All three, in the building, sealed. Gordon is already gone at Entertainment Earth and the GameStop exclusives are showing unavailable; we ordered against the whole case assortment rather than cherry-picking, which is why we still have depth on Gordon while the rest of the channel is thinning out.

Everything is MSRP — $34.99, no launch markup, no bundling something you don't want onto something you do. We open the case, look at every box, and don't ship a window box with a crushed corner without telling you first. If you'd rather see them in person, they're on the shelf at the shop.

Browse the full Wave 5 collection, the rest of our McFarlane DC Multiverse figures, or everything that just came off the truck.

We'll update this page as stock moves and if anything changes on the licence handover. Given how the last few McFarlane drops have gone — no announcement, straight to preorder, gone by lunch — a page that says what's actually buyable today is more useful than one that says what was announced.