Plot summary: With the Scarecrow terrorising Gotham with fear gas Batman reluctantly accepts help from Harley Quinn to try and deduce the villain’s identity.
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Notes and Trivia
Episode: 16 (S2.E6)
Original Air Date: July 31st, 2026
Directed: Christopher Berkley (5)
Written: Julie Benson & Shawna Benson (1)
Animation: Doghead Animation (2)
Music: Frederik Wiedmann (16)
You may have assumed on a first watch that Carmine was intended to be Carmine Falcone, but we go on to learn his surname is Broome. He is in fact named for longtime artist/writer team Carmine Infantino and John Broome. Among other things, the pair were responsible for bringing Batman back to basics in the 1960s after ‘silly’ elements had crept in over time.
Likewise, the list of victims are filled with nods to Batman writers and artists:
- David Mortimer: Seems to be nothing. Mortimer Drake was the broadly forgotten early villain The Cavalier?
- Rebecca Cloonan: The award-winning Becky Cloonan was the first female artist to draw mainline Batman. Took all the way until 2012!
- Bill Sprang: Bill Finger + Dick Sprang. Bill basically created Batman, no matter what Bob Kane and his estate would have you believe. Dick was one of the most prolific early Batman artists. The two were close friends.
- Mary Frandon: The only one I can’t find anything at all for.
- Thomas Dalton: An extremely obscure pull. Tom Dalton appeared in one of the BTAS comic tie-ins written by Kelley Puckett. He was an Olympic athlete who snapped after his wife was killed by the mob, donning his own Batsuit. Bruce had to talk him down from his vigilantism and helped him let go of his vendetta.
- Jane Overstreet: There’s an Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide?
One of Quinzell’s diagnoses of the neighbours is ‘ideational apraxia’. This is a pretty severe one, inhibiting a patient from being able to execute multi-step everyday tasks such as making a meal, as they lose the ability to conceptualise and carry out sequential ideas. Disagree that the sufferer hides it well given he gets stuck opening and closing his front door repeatedly, but hey!
Harley name-dropped her old professor, Doctor Crane in Season One when helping the GCPD profile Batman and suggesting using a costumed villain to lure him out.
The Benson sisters wrote together on The 100, Star Trek: Prodigy and Wu Assassins.
Recap
When a series of bodies turn up at Gotham University with all the victims experiencing hallucinations before their deaths, Bruce investigates.
The fugitive Harleen Quinzell also works the case, having been hiding out in Renee Montoya’s apartment and reviewing her case files in secret.
Their paths – and Scarecrow’s – collide at the morgue and an uneasy alliance is formed. They suspect the students’ professor, Dr. Burton, but it turns out to be Jonathan Crane Jr., another student, who unleashes the gas on the campus.
Batman overcomes his fear and takes Crane down. Harleen bids Renee a tearful goodbye and then surrenders herself to the GCPD.
Episode Ranking
Five bodies in five weeks and the university still being open stretches credibility a smidge, but hey, that’s academia for you, I suppose. What really breaks the whole thing is every victim is in the same fucking class with the world’s creepiest professor. He ends up being a red herring but he’d be in police custody after the second body. Nice detail to make clear he super fucking sucks even though he’s innocent of being Scarecrow, having co-created the drug in the first place and sleazing all over one of his students. They use this to play into the fake-out, as Scarecrow strikes again shortly after Burton is advised to leave the poor girl alone, with her even questioning if it’s him following her home. But of course the real Scarecrow is ‘Junior’, who tried to comfort her after helping scare Burton off, so it still works.
Batman getting hit with Scarecrow’s fear gas in BTAS led to the iconic “I am vengeance, I am the night, I am Batman!” quote as he triumphantly willed himself to overcome his hallucinations of his father being disappointed in him. We get something similar here – and if I can be honest with you, it’s better in my opinion. Scarecrow wonders what it is Bruce is seeing, tossing out some logical options if you didn’t actually know anything about Batman, open spaces and sunlight, then moves to the Batman Begins suggestion of the fear of bats. Instead the audience sees Bruce is afraid of being elderly and isolated, unable to help as Gotham burns. Yet just like BTAS he wills himself to simply put fear out of his mind, shown through Old Man Bruce leaping out of the window and screaming NO FEAR. He then tells Scarecrow “Fear is a poison, fear is a weapon, but fear is never in control.” Essentially he acknowledges his fears, but will not allow them to own him. And then of course we get the classic ‘villain sees Batman as a giant bat monster’ and a pretty good one at that.
While this is theoretically ‘The Scarecrow Episode’, it’s really a sequel to ‘The Stress of Her Regard‘, or rather the ‘Batman and Harley Quinn team-up episode.’ This is the this time a Bruce Timm project has had Batman and Harley team up to catch a criminal, but the first time they’ve made a sincere effort to justify it, as she’s the one to notice Scarecrow is conducting a scientific experiment with one victim per week in a controlled environment, three boys, two girls in the same age group, and making sure nobody interferes with the corpses. She of course revels in trying to psychoanalyse Bruce, but he gets to fire right back by instantly deducing Renee is the one hiding her as she failed to anticipate he would know which cops are working the case and that he’s already spent time watching Flass. Just some juicy back and forth. Harley even tells Batman he’d make for a good psychiatrist if not for… ya know, the whole sociopathic dedication to punching the abstract concept of crime. Or as she puts it, “classic monomania.”
There’s a real tragedy to Harleen and Renee’s romance. Harley spends her days cooped up in Renee’s apartment, diagnosing people across the street using binoculars, playing solitaire and napping as she awaits the return of her only human interaction. Renee letting her briefly see case files gives her the itch to return to her old life, but Montoya won’t let her do more than glance, which is arguably a little fucked up on her part. She also won’t take her outside despite Harleen insisting her being presumed dead will help. And then while she may sincerely want to spend quality time with her beau, her job is an intense one and it means a lot of falling asleep early, which is simultaneously her right, and deprives Harley further. It’s unfair to them both, essentially. Plus Harley’s hiding the costume and whatnot, and we later see her deepest fear is being more literally trapped in the apartment and Renee just leaving and ignoring her. They really stick the landing, too, with Harley quietly spiralling after Renee sees her in costume, with Batman offering her no help because he’s not into that kind of thing. Her decision to go ice skating with her final moments of freedom, giving Renee a smooch and setting her free before turning herself in is lovely. The maturity to recognise she’s drowning her lover with the guilt and stress of keeping the secret, as well as essentially forcing her to be 100% responsible for Harley’s mental health is great to see as well. If you love her, let her go etc.
I assume some people will be bothered by the fact Batman lets one of the victims jump out the window to her death because he was busy saving Harley, but I think that tracks perfectly fine. He doesn’t in fact have to be perfect every time. I know there’s some perverse comedy in how he’s so good at everything, but the original spirit of the character was just he’s a very determined gumshoe in a bat costume and the notion of him being an impossibly capable polymath and olympian is a more modern idea. This is detective Batman – Noir detective Batman to be more specific – and the essence of detectives used to be that they just kept working the case and that dogged drive got them most of the way to the end. Again, it’s a modern notion that detectives just figure everything out because they’re super geniuses.
The opening conversation between Barbara and Montoya sheds some light on what I thought was a forgotten thread, namely that Renee spends a good chunk of her time making sure Flass doesn’t get into any shady shit while on the clock. I still think it’s a wasted subplot to not ever have her actually uncover anything about his nightlife so that Flass could be triumphantly taken down after all the shit he pulled in the previous season, but I suppose this holds as an explanation as to why Flass is no longer really important to the story. He also makes a comment insinuating he suspected Renee and Barbara are banging, confirming the department knows about her sexuality and perhaps adding more venom to some barbs from him and Bullock in Season One.
Finally, Bruce once again manipulates a situation nicely while out and about as an obnoxious billionaire, using his photo-op with Vicki Vale to help him eavesdrop on Montoya and Flass’ interviews with students. He also has Vale send him copies so Alfred can look them over for background details. Slick.
On first watch, I liked this episode but didn’t have it in my top 3 for the season. However, as I came to write about it and found more and more words spiling out of me, I think I have to listen to my heart. For handling both the Scarecrow stuff and in particular the Harley/Renee relationship so well I simply have to put it at the top of the list. Some may have wanted a more protracted fight with Scarecrow, or for him to have a larger role in ‘his’ episode, but to me Crane has always been about the gas way more than the character himself. More below. There are a lot of mature themes here and topping an iconic Batman moment is no small feat.
- Sudden Fear (NEW ENTRY)
- … And Be a Villain
- Deep Cover
- The Stress of Her Regard
- The Devil’s Due
- Kiss of the Catwoman
- The Spectral Hand
- 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
Hamish Linklater really is a great Bruce Wayne and a decent enough Batman. His wild flirtation with Vicki Vale was perfect. In fact this might be his best outing in the role to date. The only thing really letting him down is his take on overcoming fear, making Batman sound like a drugged caveman. Aaand he’s also outgunned…
Jamie Chung definitely didn’t forget the characterisation for Harley Quinn, making herself more excitable and gabby when out of costume, and then cold and almost sedate when she suits up, the opposite of her pre-and-post transformation behaviour in BTAS, while also mirroring Bruce’s two personas. She’s good at both, and this time gets to accidentally drop one for the other when she gets emotional, the first time when she wakes up from knock-out gas in the Bat Cave and briefly fears she’s going to be serial killed, and the second when Batman figures out she’s under Montoya’s protection.
General voice-acting note: Two of the victims of the fear gas say out loud exactly what they’re hallucinating. I understand it’s necessary to let witnesses tell the cops they they were wigging out before they died, but it’s heavy-handed and I think they could have found a more organic way to get there.
Rogues Roundup
Harley Quinn (Jamie Chung) (second appearance)
Not a villain, but still has to go to jail.
Harley’s situation here is tragic, as detailed above. She broadly remains self-aware, but her relapse into her costumed persona is fascinating. She continues to change her voice while wearing the outfit, albeit catching herself slipping a couple of times, which was fun. The desire to lock up and psychologically torture bad people is ostensibly gone, perhaps thanks to having love in her life, but she still has this base compulsion to dress up, play a role and solve grizzly crimes. I think seeing Renee looking back at her while she wears the costume is what makes her realise she’s got a problem and needs to turn herself in rather than simply setting Montoya free by skipping town again.
I’m going to move her up one spot on the basis of being such a well-written and well-rounded character.
Scarecrow (Josh Brener) (first appearance)
I like the look despite somebody complaining all the villains in this show are dudes in regular clothes and a mask/hat. Plague Doctor masks forever go hard, and the generic ‘scary bad guy voice’ works well when you consider the reveal it’s actually just a kid with delusions of grandeur.
It may be Jonathan Crane Jr. but functionally the characterisation is the same, he’s just aged-down. Junior helped develop the gas with his college professor but was the more obsessive of the two, snapping when Burton got cold feet and Batman started interfering. It’s not that far removed from being a discredited academic seeking revenge. He’s still spouting off different types of phobia and still making his victims see all kinds of messed up stuff, allowing the art team to have a blast.
He puts up a surprising fight given he’s a teenager, but whatever. Opening drawers at the morgue to slow Batman down, then fully shoving cadavers at him that he has to catch and delicately put down is a wonderful little touch.
He fares better than the majority of the Caped Crusader adaptations of classic villains, but is slightly too one dimensional to break the top five, who all have more complex psyches or more interesting things going on.
- The Mad Monk
- Harley Quinn (↑)
- Clayface
- Roxy Rocket
- Catwoman
- Scarecrow (NEW ENTRY)
- Two-Face
- The Riddler
- Firebug
- Rupert Thorne
- The Gentleman Ghost
- Hattie Tetch aka Mad Hatter
- Flass & Bullock
- The Terrible Trio
- Jim Corrigan/The Spectre
- The Penguin
- Hugo Strange and the Monster Men
- The Joker
- Onomatopoeia
- Nocturna
Title Card
The Matt Signal 
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