This article contains spoilers for Batman: Caped Crusader Season 2, which is streaming Prime Video now.
Prime Video’s Batman: Caped Crusader, the latest animated iteration of The Dark Knight, has been a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand, you have the legendary Bruce Timm essentially revisiting one of his most famous co-creations — that would be Batman: The Animated Series — with fresh eyes, giving it the more mature and modern sheen he had hoped to infuse the show with back in the day. On the other hand, that take has led to some extremely odd choices in character adaptation, and a mostly deadly serious tone and slow pace that have done the stranger plot choices no favors. But there is one aspect of the series that was a standout in the first season, crops up again in Season 2’s best episode, and points to how Caped Crusader can ape The Animated Series’s own path and vastly improve its own going into a potential third season. That aspect? Robin.
Or rather, Robins, plural. In Season 1’s “Nocturne,” we met a group of orphans who were being kidnapped and sucked dry of their life essence by a woman named Natalia Night, aka Nocturna (Mckenna Grace). Those orphans all came with very pointed names for fans of Batman lore: Dickie (Carter Rockwood), Jason (Henry Witcher), Stephie (Amari McCoy), and Carrie (Juliet Donenfeld). If those don’t immediately seem familiar, their full names are never stated on the show, but they are: Dick Grayson, Jason Tood, Stephanie Brown, and Carrie Kelly, or in the DC Comics source material, Batman’s first Robin, second Robin, fourth (brief) Robin, and the Robin of the future timeline of Frank Miller’s seminal Dark Knight Returns. [Note: it’s weird that they didn’t include Tim Drake, the third Robin, but that’s not the point of this article, so we’ll move on.]
The thing about the appearance of these plucky orphans is that it makes the episode fun and gives it some real stakes. Granted, Season 1 threw a wild wrench in the works by ending with the death of Harvey Dent/Two-Face (Diedrich Bader), something that completely changes DC lore going forward as well as the lore of Gotham City. Similarly, Season 2 goes on a killing spree, with multiple canonical villains dying by the end of the season in various ways. So sure, there are those sort of stakes inherent in the series, but what the orphans bring are stakes for characters you care about versus disposable villains who are oddly opposed to anything connecting them to their comic book origins (whose idea was it to call the villain ‘The Riddler’ because he riddles people with bullets and not because HE TELLS RIDDLES!).
Season 2 ditches the rest of the Bat-ple Dumpling Gang and focuses squarely on Carrie in the season’s eighth episode (she appeared in Season 1’s eighth episode as well, making for a nice parallel), now adopted by a loving mother and father. While things seem to be going well for her, the pint-sized kid has been inspired by Batman (Hamish Linklater) to take up being a vigilante on her own, specifically taking on the identity of the Grey Ghost, whose adventures also gave Batman the idea to dress up in a suit in this continuity. Over the course of the episode, Carrie takes on little missions like finding a missing dog with aplomb while chased by the disgraced Harvey Bullock (John DiMaggio), who’s been knocked down to beat cop and with a bone to pick with the little vigilante.
Things amp up considerably once Carrie encounters Mr. Zero (Kevin Michael Richardson), who was the original version of Mr. Freeze in the comics (though he may be a different character in this series). And of course, Batman gets involved as well, tells Carrie to go home, she doesn’t, they team up, and end up beating the bad guy.
What works about this is that it immediately perks up the whole episode, giving Linklater’s grim version of Batman something fun and light to work with even in the middle of a darkly horrific half-hour that treats the Mr. Zero powers like something out of an Outer Limits episode (and once again ends with the villain dying horribly). Heck, they even do the side-by-side jump right out of the cover of Miller’s Dark Knight Returns #3 from 1986. In a show that seems allergic to going the way you’d expect, having a silly easter egg in the middle is a breath of fresh air, a lifeline to fans who want to like this Batman reinvention but are finding themselves held at arm’s length at every turn.
You can actually hear Linklater brightening up his own line readings from their usual dour mode. He plays Bruce Wayne like a serious version of H. Jon Benjamin’s Bob Belcher from Bob’s Burgers, then deepens his voice and makes the syllables more pointed for Batman. In “Mr. Zero,” the Bruce comes through. Batman actually seems to be having a good time teaming up with Carrie even as they’re both on the brink of being killed. Carrie’s relentless positivity and can-do attitude not only seep into the writing; they’re infectious for Batman as well.
And then we get the final two episodes of the season, which don’t include Carrie — or any of the other orphans — and it’s right back into that sour seriousness, amped up by the end-of-Gotham-City stakes of The Joker (Matthew Needham) making his move. You can feel the lack of energy there versus that poppy eighth episode.
Caped Crusader ostensibly takes place earlier in Batman’s career. None of these orphans, including Carrie, are officially Robin… at least not yet. And as noted above, Timm’s brief for the show was to create something more adult than Batman: TAS, so this suggestion is likely anathema for everything involved in Caped Crusader. But The Animated Series, after the first 65 episodes of the initial season (it was a very different time in TV history), morphed in Season 2 into The Adventures of Batman & Robin, and gave the already iconic series an extra jolt of life.
This is exactly what Caped Crusader needs. While there’s merit to the noir approach that the show is attempting, the glacial pace — even at episodes that usually run 20-25 minutes — and sullen lead character are just no fun to watch. At least the first season had Bruce attempting to form/keep friendships and delved into his psyche thanks to therapy with Dr. Harleen Quinzel (Jamie Chung). But Season 2 has none of that; Batman is all business all the time, with his only real relationships being checking in on mysteries with Alfred (Jason Watkins) and frequently disappearing on Commissioner Gordon (Eric Morgan Stuart). Compare that to when you bring Carrie in, and it gives him something to care about — something to protect other than “the City” and “the mission.”
To those who say Robin only comes later in Batman’s career and would make no sense to add full time in a potential Season 3, we’ll counter that this season includes a Mad Hatter who was A), a woman, and B), wore hats sometimes on her talk show, but otherwise had no powers. The Joker is a serious German guy. And did we mention that whole thing about the Riddler? Caped Crusader has already shown it has no problem making changes to established mythology, so would it be that far of a stretch to add a Robin to perk up the whole affair? Heck, you can even add a whole Robin squad with the other orphans, though that straddles the line of possibly turning the show into Batman Babies.
Yes, Caped Crusader is supposed to be a Serious Batman Show for Serious Adults. But other than showing us how that is executed on screen, the series is not giving us a lot of understanding of why that’s important to see, or what it’s saying differently about Batman or Gotham City. By focusing more on a real relationship, and in this case a mentoring one, we’d get more of a sense of what this Batman needs and wants other than cooking the perfect burger (sorry, wrong character).
Ultimately, will they go this route? Probably not. Given the place we’re left at the end of the season, Batman does have more of a team backing him up, and they’re all adults. But Carrie Kelly is a stellar and beloved character who has been relatively unexplored in the comic books, and this animated series is a great time to perhaps rectify that mistake and get the show on track at the same time. Batman And Robin: Caped Crusaders, anyone?
