Plot summary: With much of Gotham infected by the Blockbuster gas, Batman and Joker do battle for the fate of the city in the season finale.
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Notes and Trivia
Episode: 20 (S2.E10)
Original Air Date: July 31st, 2026
Directed: Matt Peters (7)
Written: Geoffrey Thorne (2)
Animation: Doghead Animation (5)
Music: Frederik Wiedmann (20)
Barbara’s client is Mr. Merkel aka Rag Doll, created by Gardner Fox and Lou Ferstadt in 1942 as a Flash villain. His son is arguably far more famous, a delightful little freak created by Gail Simone and Dale Eaglesham. If you don’t know… you’re probably not ready. Father and son are both extreme contortionists, hence the insane crab walk Merkel does after getting infected.
Joker recites lines from Yeats’ poem, The Second Coming, which was written just after World War I and is about the coming of a new civilization after the fall of the old one from a great crisis. Fitting, as Joker is attempting to ‘cleanse’ Gotham.
Recap
Alfred doesn’t die from the Joker gas, but rather becomes a Blockbuster monster. Luckily, he had concocted an antidote pre-transformation which Bruce uses to return him to normal.
Batman heads back into the city to take on the small army of Blockbusters, but The Joker lures him into a lengthy fight in and atop an unfinished skyscraper.
Alfred flies over the city dispersing as much antidote as possible, restoring all the monsters to normal as Batman finally gets the better of Joker, but no body is found in the aftermath.
With the battle won and the sun rising over the city, Batman, Jim and Barbara Gordon, and Renee Montoya pledge to continue protecting Gotham together.
Episode Ranking
It kinda sucks that Bruce went back to calling Alfred “Pennyworth” all season after their little breakthrough last time around, only to repeat the trick by having him use his butler’s first name to try and snap him out of his altered state. You don’t get to keep doing this! Especially because they make a whole point of how Batman is not alone as Joker says, with Alfred flying over in his little plane to administer the antidote. Speaking of which, I love that he’s wearing the full tux still, just with an old-timey flight cap and goggles.
I question the validity of Alfred having synthesised an antidote for a problem he didn’t know existed yet. He was working on the first wave of Joker toxin, which has to be injected, kills its victims via uncontrollable laughter, and then turns them into spreaders of the second wave of toxin, now a gas, which turns them into Blockbusters, who can then bite people to turn them directly into more Blockbusters. Exhausting. I suppose the gas would still be present within Rupert Thorne’s corpse, which Alfred was using, and that would mean he cured it without even realising he was doing it… but potentially did not have a cure for the first wave of toxin. Also! The Blockbuster formula used by Riddler had to be injected and was not a gas, but hey, Joker futzed with it to make it into a time bomb. I dunno, man!
Anyway, after all of that is done with, the episode is split neatly into two plots: Batman and Joker fighting for an extended period of time, and the Blockbusters rampaging through Gotham, with the various civilian characters trying to remain alive and uninfected. It’s a bit of a shame the two couldn’t bleed together a bit more, with Batman never really interacting with the monsters after his opening skirmish with Alfred. You do get the nice moment where Bruce finally hears the screams of Gotham far below and is outraged, but then they get straight back to their brawl.
And it’s about as even of a fight between Batman and Joker as you’re going to see anywhere, with their version of the Clown Prince coming across as far more physically dangerous than most, getting extremely knife-happy against a far less armoured Caped Crusader who loses quite a bit of blood in the battle. They give you all the good shit: taking turns to sneak-attack each other, falls from a great height, their giant silhouettes against the clocktower, concealed weapons, and of course SO much philosophising. It culminates in Batman knocking loose a stack of huge iron rebars, one of which impales Joker. He almost definitely survives this, but some may question if Bruce would take an action that borders so closely on attempting to take a life, delivering a snappy one-liner to boot. I dunno, I’m fine with it. He tried ‘one last thing’ as his opponent was about to leave and while there was a chance of a lethal blow, it wasn’t necessarily his intention. Then Joker jumps off the fucking building while laughing, though he’s no doubt still alive. Overall I think this is a really good ‘Big Sexy Confrontation’ between these two icons. Probably not quite as good overall as Phantasm, which is uplifted by the spectacle of the World’s Fair making them look like rampaging kaijus, but it’s not that far off it.
Barbara and Renee trying to keep everybody safe as everyone around them turns into Blockbusters – including Jim Gordon, who gets a nice little hero moment early on – was decent enough. I liked them taking the time to show people trying to stay safe, barricading their doors, climbing up onto a roof etc. I could just really have done with either Batman getting stuck in, or him having a sidekick running this side of things. Babs and Renee don’t really do much other than keep evading the monsters, save for the scene where they help some folks back down off the roof. Every little helps, I suppose. It would have been silly for them to try and fight the beasts, of course, but I dunno. Just not all the way there.
Bullock and Flass’ lingering beef at last pays off as Harvey is our ‘main’ monster man, showcasing John DiMaggio (more below) as he stalks his way around the GCPD. Flass continuing to shit-talk his former partner to the end is a nice bit of villainy, and you simply cant feel any sympathy for him when Harv attacks. It’s a pretty short battle though, with both winding up in hospital in the aftermath. Where things get interesting is Bullock’s obvious lie about not remembering what happened and offering Flass an olive branch which he finally takes. Like fuck these guys for what they did in Season One, but hey, maybe it’s better late than never to do something with it all?
If this and ‘Dead Before Dawn’ were an official two-parter, I’d put them at Number One, but unfortunately each part is very good but not truly great. ‘Dead Before Dawn’ is an incomplete story, while this is just a little bit too segregated in my opinion. The highs are extremely high, in genuine conversation with the best of animated Batman, but I still take the stance of rewarding something that nails every part of what it’s trying to do over something very ambitious but falling a little short. If you’re more about taking the big swings, I understand some of my placements over the years might look screwey, but I ams who I ams.
As of this writing there’s no confirmation of the show coming back and I would guess it will not. I think the ending scene with the heroes standing tall and Joker in the wind works as a series finale.
- Sudden Fear
- … And Be a Villain
- Dead Before Dawn
- The Laughing Death (NEW ENTRY)
- 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
- Zero Hour
- Her Dark Reflection
- Nocturne
Best Performance
Matthew Needham takes well to the slightly generic villain monologues, stalking Batman, calling him brother, quoting poetry etc. The interesting part is when he becomes genuinely angry, his first emotion of any kind, when Bruce calls him a monster, not because of the word, but that he thinks that kind of thing is beneath Batman. He loses and regains his cool from there as Batman keeps defying him and then ends things with a very solid Joker laugh, beginning as a little cold chuckle and then building into something more dramatic. Good casting, I think.
Jason Watkins yet again makes a very strong case for the crown, with his barbs about Bruce being unable to feed or dress himself while under the influence of the Blockbuster formula being delivered really well. There’s a subtle laughter in his voice, fitting of the giant Joker-grin, but without undercutting the fact Al has temporarily been made into a scary colossus. Then of course he’s mortified by what he said afterwards, all while conveying he’s still weak from the effects of the process.
John DiMaggio obviously built a big chunk of his voice acting empire off his unique laugh, which is put to maximum effect as Harvey stalks around the GCPD.
I have defended Hamish Linklater throughout the show, but that big defiant laugh when he tells Joker he’s wrong is about as bad as it gets. Biiiig yikes on that one, Big Dog!
Rogues Roundup
The Joker (Matthew Needham) (eighth appearance)
We finally get the villain monologues to accompany Joker’s scheme, and while you can say it boils down to the same Order vs Chaos schtick we’ve heard a thousand times, I do appreciate him being far more calculating about it all. By his own admission he’d been working at it for months, both to perfect the Joker-Toxin he unleashes here (supported by the experiments he was doing in his debut at the end of last season, as well as his various little cameos this season), and making a point of removing Rupert Thorne from the board first. He claims to have had a hand in Riddler’s downfall too, though I’m not sure how that would be the case.
His contention that he and Batman are simply better than everybody else, rebels against society who can actually shake things up is also pretty well trodden ground, but again, I like their particular choice of phrasing. He wants to ‘free’ Batman of the burden of being a hero so he can set his skills towards… other things? I dunno man, it’s good though!
I love how he moved on from being reluctant to engage with Batman, only pulling a gun when he got in his way, to jumping all the way up to a fucking rocket launcher, lying in wait and blowing the Batmobile off the road.
The journey is complete, Joker reigns supreme. Last to First!
(Hugo Strange and) The Monster Men (second appearance)
Look, we can consider these all to be Blockbuster clones and split the original off from Hugo in ‘Brute Force‘, or we can just go with it given it’s all his general scheme and I normally put henchmen in with their master, even if they’re working for Joker here. Write to your congressman.
The decision to have them still capable of full speech and potentially unleashing some of their subconscious thoughts they’d been keeping hidden was a great one, with Alfred going allllll in on Brucey Baby, mocking him for not being able to take care of himself. That’s maybe the only person in the world whose opinion Bruce values! Even better, Alfred clearly remembers it all, which makes the moment where Harvey Bullock claims not to far more interesting.
They do their best to sell the terror of these things rampaging, but ultimately very little direct damage is done. It’s all threat, no follow through. People are running and hiding from them, and Bullock gets his hands on Rag Doll and Flass, but nobody else really gets got.
I’ll move them up a few spots.
- The Joker (↑)
- The Mad Monk
- Harley Quinn
- Clayface
- Roxy Rocket
- Catwoman
- Scarecrow
- Mister Zero aka Mister Freeze
- Two-Face
- The Riddler
- Thorn
- Firebug
- Rupert Thorne
- The Gentleman Ghost
- Hugo Strange and the Monster Men (↑)
- Hattie Tetch aka Mad Hatter
- Flass & Bullock
- The Terrible Trio
- Jim Corrigan/The Spectre
- The Penguin
- Onomatopoeia
- Nocturna
Title Card
The Matt Signal 
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