Plot summary: With a bat-demon-worshipping cult on the loose, Batman faces intense scrutiny from Mad Hatter and the media.
For more reviews and rankings of The Caped Crusade, check out the show page. New episodes each weekend.
Notes and Trivia
Episode: 14 (S2.E4)
Original Air Date: July 31st, 2026
Directed: Matt Peters (5)
Written: Margaret Dunlap (1)
Animation: Doghead Animation (1)
Music: Frederik Wiedmann (14)
Mad Monk was actually the second supervillain Batman ever faced after The Joker, debuting in 1939 and created by Gardner Fox, Sheldon Moldoff and ‘Bob Kane’. He was originally a vampire, then reimagined as a plantation owner transformed by voodoo magic, and then back to a vampire again.
Likewise, Dala, was Batman’s first ever female villain. She was originally a vampire minion of The Monk, then updated to be his sister, and finally to just a devoted human follower not related to him.
The Monk’s cult worship the bat-demon ‘Barbatos’. Grant Morrison dreamed up this delightful slice of the mythos in the 2000s, though some believe it to be an evolution of a ‘bat-devil’ mentioned in 1989’s Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth. It gets convoluted due to time travel shenanigans and has been reinterpreted by other writers over the years, but functionally it’s a giant bat-like entity and is tied closely to the history of the Wayne Family.
A couple of Season One characters make returns here: Annoying paparazzo Eel ‘Plastic Man’ O’Brian and occult expert Linton Midnite. I think the Fleischer era Lois Lane is with the media at the museum too.
Studio Grida animated the first three episodes of the season after splitting duties 60/40 with Studio IAM in Season One. Doghead Animation now step in to lighten the load. An Italian studio, they have worked on Bat-Fam, Hazbin Hotel and Mr. Bean.
Margaret Dunlap has written a lot of children’s television, probably most relevant for our endeavours here are Avengers Assemble, Marvel Rising: Initiation and a Black Widow serialised podcast.
Recap
Hattie Tetch and the media are abuzz after a bloody Bat Symbol is left at a murder scene, which Batman learns is the work of a cult who worship ‘Barbatos’.
‘The Mad Hatter’ of news wants to regain her edge as Gotham’s leader in Batman coverage, so invites Jim Gordon on her show… but they’re both kidnapped by the cult.
Batman arrives in time to prevent their ritual sacrifice. In a final confrontation, their leader admits the entire thing was a con and is stabbed to death by his closest follower while being led away in handcuffs.
In the aftermath Hattie credits Jim Gordon with her escape while admonishing Batman. Among her viewers on this night is a very somber looking Joker…
Episode Ranking
As ‘Cold Open’s go, Batman ostensibly murdering a jewel thief is pretty hardcore. Viewers would have already suspected something was up from him taking it over the line with the punching, but pulling out a knife made it obvious. And that’s before they reveal the multiple attackers angle. But obvious isn’t always bad. This is another well-trodden trope, where the audience knows for sure the hero is innocent, but if you lived within the world of the fiction, it would be pretty difficult to give Batman the benefit of the doubt given the attacks are perpetrated by somebody in a bat-hood, leaving behind a Bat Symbol.
Speaking of which, the art direction here is wonderful, with the cultists sneaking about in the shadows and hiding out in the ruins of an old church. I always a appreciate a good demon worshipping cloak and dagger meeting, and this has some great ones of those. The intended blood sacrifices (an ally and an enemy of ‘The Avatar’) are great too, evocative of horror movies of the era as they’re tied to big stone tables with rope with organ music playing.
I loved that The Monk outwitted Batman during his escape through the catacombs, leaving an obvious trail and then emerging from the shadows with a gun when Bruce follows it. We enjoy a smart villain around these parts! Then of course he monologues, admits all his wrongdoing, reveals he never understood Batman at all, gets taken down by our hero, grovels for clemency and is stabbed by his most devoted follower. As it all should be.
The Bat Cult dominates the episode of course, but I also enjoyed the media relations subplot, with the evergreen smear campaign stuff from Hattie Tetch (more below), and Jim Gordon wanting to defend the GCPD’s name in order to continue rehabilitating it. His notion of the beat cops needing to see the brass have their back is astute, and it’s nice to see Jim having a slightly bigger role this season. He even gets to fight back to back with Batman.
HUGE fan of the final line of the episode delivered by Tetch as she condemns Dala for being easily taken under the spell of a bad person because they have showmanship while assuring her viewers they’re smarter than that. I don’t know if they intended this to have a double meaning or not but to me the obvious reads are 1) She’s lying, because she’s basically describing herself and we know from earlier in the episode she thinks her audience are idiots, but also 2) A meta comment on The Joker – who is teased yet again while the line is being delivered – as a lot of people adore this objective abomination of a character and even want him to win because he’s got pizzaz.
Also it has no bearing on the ranking, but easily the best of the Season Two title cards too! Check it out at the bottom of the page if you haven’t seen it.
In terms of negatives, I thought it was a bit flimsy how Batman ascertains their location, with Alfred offering to go through some recent unsolved crimes, which Bruce skips out on and tells him to just radio anything he finds… and then Alfred does exactly that with the precise location and no real justification as to how he figured it out. I understand sometimes you need to be economical with time and can’t go over every fine detail, but we could have done better here, I feel. And more generally I think they had some solid ideas that don’t necessarily stitch together the cleanest, making it a little less than the sum of its parts.
Still a very good episode though, slotting in at number four thanks to the heavy lifting of the villains. How very BTAS!
- … And Be a Villain
- Deep Cover
- The Stress of Her Regard
- The Devil’s Due (NEW ENTRY)
- Kiss of the Catwoman
- Rocket’s Red Glare
- Brute Force
- The Night of the Hunters
- Night Ride
- The Killer Inside Me
- Moving Target
- In Treacherous Waters
- Savage Night
- Nocturne
Best Performance
Laraine Newman is really good as Hattie Tetch laying on the smear campaign against Batman and Jim Gordon extremely thick. This kind of irritatingly effective rhetoric is still used to this day and is supremely vexing the moment it hits the ear. She’s done that part before, albeit with more brevity than this onslaught, but what’s really delightful to hear is her change of demeanour when the cameras stop rolling and she chews out her PA, sliding into more of a mean old lady sound versus the ‘butter wouldn’t melt’ routine she does on the air. I loved her little dig about soft leftie FDR.
Blythe Melin is solid as The Monk as well, and it’s potentially Eric Morgan Stuart’s best outing as Jim Gordon, but Newman is simply too good.
Rogues Roundup
Mad Monk (Blythe Melin) (first appearance)
As is my wont with these things, I’m including the entire cult here. I like their designs and the way they’re able to pass them off as Batman in the shadows, leading to the cool shot of what seems like Bruce on a rooftop being joined by two clones. The scene where a group of them repeatedly slash at Batman under the cover of smoke is gnarly too.
The Monk being angry that his followers committed murder was a great wrinkle that tips the hat of the reveal, as you’d think an occult style killing would be right up his alley, but he’s instead singularly focused on the ‘artefacts’ he tasked them to ‘acquire’. He does acquiesce and escalate to a blood sacrifice, which you’d think undermines the point I just made, but we learn at the end he actually intended for Batman to kill all his followers to tie up his loose ends. He offs one of them personally for beginning to doubt (see through his farce) to prevent him sewing the seeds of doubt, but importantly only when they’re alone together. Just a really robust opportunistic dirtbag satisfyingly undone by his own hubris, whose final words before getting stabbed are snivelling like a worm and failing to grasp what Batman is all about.
There’s also the Dala of it all. I liked her hiding in plain sight as Hattie’s assistant. She is The Monk’s most dedicated acolyte and also his lover, which makes his admission that it’s all hogwash all the more deplorable, given the connotations around sexual manipulation etc. She’s the most tragic part of this all, as her belief is so absolute that it breaks her psychologically when Mad Monk reveals the truth, stabbing him for his blaspheming and then pleading with Batman to release Barbatos while he peaces out and ignores her.
Taken in totality, this is a marvellous one-off villain showing. It really has almost everything and I’m afraid The Monk and his crew are going straight to the top. Pressure’s really on The Clown Prince to claim the throne now!
Hattie Tetch aka Mad Hatter (Laraine Newman) (second appearance)
Hey remember when I said in her first appearance I wouldn’t be ranking her because she’s not really a proper villain and just an annoying TV personality? That was stupid of me. She’s so excessively shitty that it’s kind of charming. Her change of tone off-camera – as mentioned above – is a nice wrinkle to add, so unreasonable that she’s angry the morning papers are beating her evening show to stories and chastising her audience as sheep who she can dictate taste to. She dovetails that idea with her final line about her audience being too smart to fall for a charismatic charlatan… such as herself.
Then after surviving the kidnapping – during which she endears herself a little by boasting about being “East Gotham born and raised” and attacking a cultist with a hairpin – she doubles down on her position about Batman being responsible for everything.
She’s a useful narrative device for them to play with throughout the season and this episode establishes she sucks as a person too, though we’ll never get the full Alice in Wonderland showdown we’re used to with this character.
- The Mad Monk (NEW ENTRY)
- Clayface
- Harley Quinn
- Roxy Rocket
- Catwoman
- Two-Face
- The Riddler
- Firebug
- Rupert Thorne
- The Gentleman Ghost
- Hattie Tetch/Mad Hatter (NEW ENTRY)
- Flass & Bullock
- The Terrible Trio
- The Penguin
- Hugo Strange and the Monster Men
- The Joker
- Onomatopoeia
- Jim Corrigan
- Nocturna
Title Card
