Despite speculation of its cancellation, the second season of Caped Crusader dropped after a 2 year wait and based on reactions online, about 10 people watched it. Luckily I was one of them, so let’s talk about it!
For the uninitiated, I keep a spreadsheet and assign scores to each episode which I in turn use to aggregate the quality of everything each director, writer and animation studio worked on and then comment on the results, which I sometimes agree with as a ranking of quality, and I sometimes laugh at and explain away. For most shows I do the composers as well, but Freddy Wiedman was the only one so he’s the best and worst, I guess.
More Season Reviews:
Batman: The Animated Series (Season One | Season Two | The New Batman Adventures)
Batman Beyond (Season One | Season Two | Season Three)
Superman: The Animated Series (Season One | Season Two | Season Three)
Justice League (Season One | Season Two)
Justice League Unlimited (Season One | Season Two | Season Three)
Batman: Caped Crusader (Season One)
Season Review
Let’s keep things simple: Season 2 of Caped Crusader is an improvement on Season 1.
Last time around I praised the visuals and commitment to the era, while acknowledging the villains and voice acting were weak, the music was just Very Okay and the hybrid episodic/serialised format was a mixed bag. In my opinion all of the weaknesses have been addressed, whether consciously through the producers reading feedback and making a point of correcting them, or just naturally getting better at making the show with time.
I’ll get into the marked improvements on the worse elements in a moment, but will start off with the positives and so-so stuff. I think the aesthetics improved a smidge, with some slightly more showy things like the launching of Roxy’s rocket, The Spectre stalking targets through the snowy streets, and the gorgeous lighting and colour palette in The Mad Monk’s hideout. They also added proper title cards, a step up from the animated ones that they only posted to socials last time and most people didn’t know existed… but still blatantly lower effort than the classic BTAS ones. I’ve said many times it’s not really fair to keep bringing up another show when reviewing this one, but in places it’s unavoidable. I asserted that it would make sense to use Title Cards here because of the old Hollywood inspirations being so prevalent, right down to the episode titles evoking certain movies of yesteryear, and I think I’ve been proven right even with the cards being generally simplistic. The whole ‘commitment to the era’ thing stayed about the same, which is fine because it was probably my favourite element. All the new characters, vehicles and locations felt like they belonged and had considered the time period before being added… give or take Mister Zero’s overly advanced prosthetic voice box, but even that felt like 1940s futurism rather than being totally out of place.
This may be more to do with my lack of technical knowledge about music than anything, but the change I noticed the most was Fred Wiedmann’s compositions. I went from thinking the music was ‘fine’ and evocative enough of what they were going for without being anything special in Season One, to actively complimenting his work in most of the episodes. Maybe it was familiarity. Maybe they changed something about the workflow process and he was more intimately involved so could attune his pieces better. Maybe there was no difference at all! I have no idea.
Now that oh-so-tricky ‘it’s episodic… but it’s also serialised’ element. It’s not that a Big Sexy Plot was being built up one element at a time in Season One, as much as as the status quo was changing a little around the edges while the adventures remained mostly self-contained. The Big Bad didn’t advance his plans, there were no big twists or turns, but rather public and police sentiment towards Batman shifted or Bruce had a bit of a character breakthrough after Alfred, Harleen or whoever else hit him with some tough home truths. It felt like a good compromise to me, because you could absolutely pick and choose your episodes and have a good time without it breaking the narrative, but you got a little extra something if you were paying even a little attention while watching them in sequence. They kind of flipped the script this time around, as Joker was deployed at the end of about half the episodes to tease his future plans, while very little else changed. It’s not that I think one thing is better than the other, but I would say there’s only so much you can change around the peripheral so I don’t think it’s a great loss to move away from that. Would I have liked them to delve more into Bruce’s mind, build some more relationships and do more with the Flass subplot? Sure! But the writing felt better overall, so it all works.
Now while I do stand by the sentiment that Season Two is better written than Season One, I do think it’s worth delving into why that’s the case. The entire staff changed between seasons (with the exception of Greg Rucka) due to the writers strike, replaced with some writers with frankly spottier track records. Some of them had no track record at all. Of particular note are the absences of the most senior staff, Ed Brubaker and the Ebo Sisters, who seemed committed to tackling police corruption and general social commentary, both of which are toned down this time in favour of only the odd line here and there. None of that is me saying ‘Go Woke, Go Broke’, but rather that often this medium is not equipped to truly tackle these kinds of topics and sometimes it’s better to leave it alone if you can’t do something justice. The same was true of BTAS where Sean Catherine Derek departed the show early on after clashing with Bruce Timm over her desire to do morality tales and big issues. She was replaced by Michael Reaves and the show got a lot better as a result. Another unfortunately weaponisable idea for the bad faith crowd who don’t want women in writers rooms etc. Essentially, by making a conscious choice to be less ambitious, they were able to more consistently succeed at telling fun Batman stories. It’s not that we swapped Mensa members for dumb-dumbs, and I think some of the new staff did demonstrate their talent, but there appears to have been a choice made in how to go about everything.
The biggest casualty of that choice is the Flass subplot. He and Bullock were the faces of police corruption in Season One, committing multiple crimes, framing and even killing innocent people to advance their careers. This corruption is one of the trickier elements of the Batman mythos, because it feels wrong to completely rehabilitate something so systemic, but backsliding also feels a little cheap. Jim Gordon pays some lip service to how much he trusts his men in Season 2, and Flass is still up to no good, but for the most part the problem appears ‘solved’ based on what we actually see. Gordon pairs Flass with Montoya after Bullock is busted down to a beat cop, with Renee tasked with keeping an eye on him… and it works. Flass spends much of the season looking bored and frustrated and the one time he actively attempts to get dirty again, The Riddler rebuffs him. He does go rogue at the end, convincing Mayor Jessop to trust him over Gordon’s assigned detail, hiding him in a ‘massage parlour’. But even with that, all you can really argue is that it took Batman longer to find the Mayor and perhaps if he got to him earlier he could have administered an antidote… but Alfred hadn’t even finished it at the time of death.. soooo…
True enough, Bullock confronts Flass while in monster form to take revenge for his ex-partner’s betrayal, but that resolves itself with both being hospitalised and agreeing to let bygones be bygones. I really thought Renee would get a big moment by catching Flass in the act and taking him down. He was created by Frank Miller as an early nemesis of Jim Gordon, not Batman, so what’s the point in him here? Why are Jim and Montoya recurring characters if you can’t give them something big like this to achieve? This bothered me more than anything else in Season 2 and I almost think they should have just arrested Flass and still demoted Bullock for his involvement if this is where they were going to go with it. This sentiment is enhanced by my sense they won’t be renewing the show, so future advancements to this subplot are off the table. Maybe it’ll be back and they’ll do something with it in Season 3, but I doubt it.
Turning to the more obvious gripes people had with the show, the villains are a big step up. Some still have redesigns that a percentage of fans won’t enjoy, such as The Riddler being just a mobster with a temper who doesn’t deploy any riddles, or Mad Hatter reimagined as a female gossip TV mogul, which many likened to gender-bending The Penguin last time. There are also choices to keep Mister Freeze true to his Mister Zero origins or using Thorn instead of Poison Ivy. I understand these gripes to an extent and have some issues of my own with The Riddler, but generally I admire their commitment to making a 1940s Batman show.
The first episode serves up: Rupert Thorne, The Riddler, Mad Hatter, Hugo Strange and one of his monster men/Blockbuster, and closes with a short appearance by The Joker. Even if you don’t like every individual treatment, they’re giving you plenty of options. By the end of the season you get Batman heavyweights Scarecrow, Mister Freeze/Zero and the best new version of Joker for a LONG time, as well as the surprisingly good Mad Monk, Thorn, Roxy Rocket and even The Terrible Trio, the most notoriously bad BTAS villains. Harley Quinn returns, but unfortunately Catwoman does not. Even returning foe Rupert Thorne has by far his best outing in his lone Season Two appearance. Did they disappoint with Two-Face, Penguin and the less famous Onomatopoeia in Season One? Sure. But overall I think this show has now assembled a solid Rogues Gallery, and nailing the biggest one of all is a huge win given I usually dread The Joker showing up. I would still like to see some of the big names they haven’t gotten to yet if the show gets renewed, but if this is all there ends up being, I’m good with it.
The voice acting remains the biggest knock against the show. They’re just not using the same type of actors as they used to, as they built the DCAU on more theatrical performances and now it’s a lot of journeyman voice actors and a few celebrities. Hamish Linklater actively sought out this role, being a big fan of Kevin Conroy’s work as so many of us are, but he simply doesn’t have enough ‘oomph’ as Batman and there’s no getting around that. But I do think his performance as Bruce improved a lot between seasons, in particular the ‘playing dumb’ playboy schtick. It’s genuinely charming and I came to respect him going for it as Batman even if he whiffed sometimes. He was also able to make up for not always having the best ‘voice’ by being a great actor, such as in ‘Deep Cover‘ where he elevates their somewhat trite material to really sell how much Bruce is shaken by the experience of bonding with ‘the enemy’. I’ve come to believe he’s perfectly solid.
To me the bigger disappointment is the supporting cast – outside of Jason Watkins who is a tremendous Alfred – with Eric Morgan Stewart, Krystal Joy Brown and Michelle C. Bonilla just not bringing the goods enough as Jim and Barbara Gordon. In their defence, they aren’t written for very well a lot of the time, and Brown did step up in her biggest episode in the series when Babs is brought face to face with Jim Corrigan after he almost killed her in Season One. Shrinking Harvey Bullock’s role also meant less John DiMaggio, the most seasoned voice actor in their regular rotation. I don’t feel great about levelling my criticisms at the non-white cast members after coming around on the also iffy white lead, but it simply is what it is, I’m afraid.
Conversely they got some tremendous guest performances from the likes of Wunmi Mosaku, Laraine Newman, Jamie Chung and Kevin Michael Richardson. Matthew Needham had the most pressure on him of anyone as ‘Joker voice’ has become such a cliche because the likes of Mark Hamill, Heath Ledger and even Jack Nicholson and César Romero loom so very large in pop culture history. Wisely, Needham took his interpretation in a very different direction, adopting a soft German accent. Whether on instruction from the voice director or at his own suggestion, it was a nice choice as it immediately set him apart, aided by him only laughing once at the very end and otherwise portraying him as an overly dour character who calmly goes about his heinous work. It could easily have been gimmicky and flopped, but I was pleasantly surprised with how it turned out.
Ultimately no matter what they tweak, this show simply won’t be for everyone. It’s both too much and not enough like BTAS. It’s ‘Woke’. They’ve changed a lot of the iconic characters. If those kinds of things are dealbreakers for you then absolutely nothing I can write will change how you feel about the show.
But to me this second season made the premise even clearer for me: What if the main source of inspiration for BTAS was the character’s 1940s run instead of Neal Adams and Denny O’Neil’s work in the 1970s? Both have become relatively alien to modern Batman projects, which are slavishly devoted to Frank Miller and Jeph Loeb, and I say that as somebody who adores Year One and The Long Halloween. But my most pervasive opinion on this towering icon of a character is that every version of him is valid, and we need to celebrate all eras, not just hyper-fixate on the 1980s in adaptations, and Scott Snyder in comics. I’m not a big fan of Batman ’66 but I fiercely want people to keep making Batman things that draw from that campier tone, and every other flavour of Batman whether I like it or not. The 1940s run is among the least explored to my eye, and this show serves as a nice tribute to that era. I hope they get to keep making it for a while longer, but as I keep saying, my suspicion is they will quietly kill it. Either way, I smile a little whenever I see praise for the show amidst a sea of lazy ‘mid’ comments on Twitter. There are dozens of us! Dozens!
Director Rankings
Season 2
- Christopher Berkley (Ep 3, Ep 6, Ep 9)
- Matt Peters (Ep 2, Ep 4, Ep 8, Ep 10)
- Christina Sotta (Ep 1, Ep 5, Ep 7)
Communism continues to reign supreme as the trio of directors from Season One return and again split things as evenly as possible. In my Season One Review I talked about Bruce Timm’s desire to keep things to house style making it hard to distinguish much stylistic difference between any of these directors. I still broadly believe that, but it is kind of telling that Chris Berkley‘s 3 episodes landed in my top 4, and to his credit his episodes are pretty different to each other. True enough, both ‘Sudden Fear‘ and ‘The Laughing Death‘ have monsters, but the former is more stylised and colourful compared to the more serious final standoff vibes of the latter. Conversely, ‘Deep Cover‘ is slow and drab by design, so I think there is some range being shown off here.
On the opposite end of the spectrum is Christina Sotta, whose 3 efforts all land in the bottom half of the season. This is where I throw up the ‘none of this means anything’ defence though, because I think all of her episodes look good, from the snow-covered Gotham of ‘The Spectral Hand‘, to the monster romp of ‘Brute Force‘ and finally the femme fatale revenge story of ‘Her Dark Reflection‘, all of which generally had more problems on the writing side than direction, IMO.
Matt Peters got to do the most episodes and ended up being the most inconsistent, with one in the top 3, one in the bottom 3, and 2 in the middle 4. To reiterate, I think this is a good looking show overall, and the direction was never bad.
Overall
- Christopher Berkley (6 eps) (↑)
- Matt Peters (7 eps) (↓)
- Christina Sotta (7 eps) (–)
The Season 2 rankings mirror the new overall, but they do swap Berkley and Peters compared to Season One. Not much to say, really. The gaps between them in the end became pretty big, so there’s that?
Berkley pulls it off on the strength of 4 of his 6 episodes landing in the top 10, while avoiding the bottom 3 entirely. Interestingly, Peters got 5 of his 7 in the top 10, but he also accounts for 2 of the bottom 3, so that’s where he falls down. And I feel like a monster for placing only a single Sotta episode in my top 10… and it was tenth, too. She was just assigned to too many episodes that I thought were just fine or had some interesting ideas but were deeply flawed. Alas, it happens. As I say every time there’s one of these director rankings, there’s not really anybody I’d pick as the standout talent. Bruce Timm rules this roost, and now he’s got James Tucker backing him up.
Writer Rankings
Season 2
- Greg Rucka (Ep 9)
- Julie & Shawna Benson (Ep 6, Ep 8)
- Geoffrey Thorne (Ep 2, Ep 10)
- Tyrone Finch & Bryce Abood (Ep 1, Ep 3)
- J.M. DeMatteis (Ep 5)
- Margaret Dunlap (Ep 4, Ep 7)
(Note: The Bensons and Thorne tied, as did DeMatteis and Finch & Abood. I broke the ties based on highest-placing episodes.)
Greg Rucka supremacy continues! He worked on only a single episode of both seasons and both were either my favourite or close to it. I can’t call it comic writer supremacy though, as the legendary J.M. DeMatteis placed fifth out of six. I didn’t always love his DCAU work either though. Maybe it’s an ‘accomplished writer who only dips into cartoons here and there’ thing, given my high placements of the likes of Gail Simone, Darwyn Cooke, Geoff Johns, John Ridley and Andrew Kriesberg in the past.
Swapping out Ed Brubaker and his deputies, the Ebo Sisters, for Geoffrey Thorne and the Benson Sisters is a downgrade in ability given their various resumes, but I can’t argue with the quality of work turned in. I talked about the shift of focus in the Season Review, but yeah, turns out just trying to make a Batman show is easier than attempting to take on complex issues in a 20 minute cartoon. Nobody else’s writing really stood out to me, and I’m dismayed to realise my bottom 2 episodes were written by the only women from the room. Fortunately, the Bensons also wrote my favourite episode, and Margaret Dunlap cracked the Top 5 and delivered my second favourite villain.
Overall
- Greg Rucka (2 eps) (–)
- Geoffrey Thorne (2 eps) (NEW)
- Tyrone Finch & Bryce Abood (2 eps) (NEW)
- Julie & Shawna Benson (2 eps) (NEW)
- J.M. DeMatteis (1 ep) (NEW)
- Adamma & Adanne Ebo (2 eps) (↑)
- Ed Brubaker (3 eps) (↓)
- Bruce Timm (2 eps) (–)
- Halley Gross (2 eps) (↑)
- Margaret Dunlap (2 eps) (NEW)
- Marc Bernardin (1 ep) (↓)
- Jase Ricci (2 eps) (–)
(Note: The Bensons and DeMatteis tied, as did Gross, Dunlap and Bernardin. Once again, highest episode wins. Brubaker and Timm have the same highest ranking episode, so we got to their next highest.)
Interestingly, adding 10 more episodes to the mix warped the averages of some of the Season One writers despite them not getting any extra episodes, besides Rucka. For example, Halley Gross has overtaken Marc Bernardin and the Ebo Sisters and Ed Brubaker have swapped places. Even stranger (but accurate) looking, Geoffrey Thorne placed lower than The Bensons for Season Two, but higher for the overall show. This is of course because additional episodes push a low episode lower and whatnot. It’s fine! Maths is weird!
Animation Studio Rankings
Season 2
- Doghead Animation (Ep 4, Ep 6, Ep 7, Ep 9, Ep 10)
- Studio Grida (Ep 1, Ep 2, Ep 3, Ep 5, Ep 8)
Kind of damning for Studio Grida to be retained from Season One only for Doghead to swoop in as the new blood and embarrass them. It makes sense that they were brought aboard given they worked on Amazon’s other Batman cartoons, Merry Little Batman and Bat-Fam. They earned it too, working on not just my top 3 episodes, but also 4 of my top 5. Ignore that they handled my least favourite episode as well…
Would I say Doghead’s episodes are better looking than Grida’s? Ehhh. Maybe? But not by much. Again, Timm demands uniformity. Boo! Let the studios cook! Let them go off book and turn in stuff that looks so good it almost takes you out of it even if it means some occasional dreck as well. Variety is the spice of life.
Overall
- Doghead Animation (5 eps) (NEW)
- Studio Grida (9 eps) (–)
- Studio IAM (6 eps) (–)
Not much to say here. Doghead won by a lot, while the gap between Grida and IAM got bigger, so the decision to drop IAM and retain Grida justifies itself in the end, I guess?
Episode Rankings
Season 2
- Sudden Fear (Ep 6)
- Dead Before Dawn (Ep 9)
- The Laughing Death (Ep 10)
- Deep Cover (Ep 3)
- The Devil’s Due (Ep 4)
- The Spectral Hand (Ep 5)
- Rocket’s Red Glare (Ep 2)
- Brute Force (Ep 1)
- Zero Hour (Ep 8)
- Her Dark Reflection (Ep 7)
I did wrestle with this ranking a lot, in case I didn’t make that clear as I went with the individual episode reviews. On a first watch I had things like ‘Sudden Fear’ and ‘Deep Cover’ a little lower, while ‘The Devil’s Due’ and ‘Rocket’s Red Glare’ were higher. In fact, Episode 4 was when I said to myself ‘Okay, here we go!’
But after watching them all again and writing far too many words about them all, I was surprised by how much I had to say about ‘Sudden Fear’. A big chunk of that was building off my second-favourite episode of Season One, bringing back Harley Quinn and really mining the emotional arc for Harley, Renee and even Batman himself in some ways. That’s the power of doing an episodic show that has a more subtle ongoing arc, that you can do sequel episodes and whatnot. It’s also in conversation with some classic Batman tropes of the past, with Scarecrow hallucinations (along with dreams/nightmares and all that kind of stuff in general) providing some great opportunities to explore the psyche of our hero. Caped Crusader delivered a banger on that front, and it was a solid little mystery with a quality villain to boot.
The Joker-centric final two episodes made the mistake of not labelling themselves as a two-parter, otherwise their collective might would have taken them all the way to the top. Instead we’ve got some excellent but disjointed ideas for how to deploy a villain many are kind of sick and tired of after almost a century of appearances, and if the final episode is indeed the end of the show in general, it’s a sweet little sendoff.
I like the next four episodes, which is a departure from the first Season where it was very much ‘The Actually Good’, ‘The Not That Bad’ and ‘The Bad’. This is more ‘Great’, ‘Good’ and ‘Not So Good’. Anyway! ‘Deep Cover’ and ‘The Spectral Hand’ are emotional stories, while ‘The Devil’s Due’ and ‘Rocket’s Red Glare’ are more classic detective Batman tales. As I said in the individual review, I really admire the ambition to redeem the absolute worst episode of BTAS and making The Terrible Trio into solid antagonists, while also giving the controversial Roxy Rocket more depth. This quarter would ideally be the baseline level of quality in my opinion. Fun, with a lot of really interesting ideas. In fact, that kind of speaks to my thoughts on the show overall: I’d happily take multiple seasons with 3 great episodes, 4 solid ones and only 3 that even approach negativity.
And again, the bottom three this time aren’t that bad. They’re more boring than bad to me, especially ‘Brute Force’, which is mostly a functional but not terribly interesting season-opener. ‘Zero Hour’ has the kid sidekick trope to contend with, so for some it will be an abhorrent episode, whereas my problems with it are far more specific. Finally, ‘Her Dark Reflection’ just has baffling scripting issues but even that one has one of the best villains in the show and had plenty of fertile ground for a re-write to punch way up.
Overall
- Sudden Fear (S2)
- … And Be a Villain (S1)
- Dead Before Dawn (S2)
- The Laughing Death (S2)
- Deep Cover (S2)
- The Stress of Her Regard (S1)
- The Devil’s Due (S2)
- Kiss of the Catwoman (S1)
- The Spectral Hand (S2)
- Rocket’s Red Glare (S2)
- Brute Force (S2)
- The Night of the Hunters (S1)
- Night Ride (S1)
- The Killer Inside Me (S1)
- Moving Target (S1)
- In Treacherous Waters (S1)
- Savage Night (S1)
- Zero Hour (S2)
- Her Dark Reflection (S2)
- Nocturne (S1)
You don’t really need to read paragraphs of text telling you that Season 2 is better as you can simply look at the above. A 70/30 split in favour of Season 2 in the overall Top 10, while simple maths tells us that the exact opposite is true of the Bottom 10. Or to zoom in even further, 80% of my Top 5 are from Season 2, while 60% of my Bottom 5 are from Season 1.
Rogues Roundup
Season 2
- The Joker
- The Mad Monk
- Harley Quinn
- Roxy Rocket
- Scarecrow
- Mister Zero aka Mister Freeze
- The Riddler
- Thorn
- Rupert Thorne
- Jim Corrigan/The Spectre
- Hugo Strange and the Monster Men
- Hattie Tetch aka Mad Hatter
- The Terrible Trio
A far stronger list of villains compared to Season One. The only thing to note here is that if you take away the Season One appearances of Jim Corrigan and Rupert Thorne, both place higher. Thorne’s lone appearance is his strongest, while The Spectre is an entirely different character to Corrigan.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge many people will be disappointed in the characterisations of Riddler and Mad Hatter, and maybe to a lesser extent Mister Freeze (aka Mister Zero), as well as finding Thorn lacking compared to Poison Ivy, but hey, gotta respect two of those being true to the past. I thought Hattie was fun, but she’s obviously not as directly in opposition to Batman as Jarvis Tetch. I’d speculate they took on board the knocks about Season One’s weak villains, because they’re not just stronger, but there are more of them. Joker pops up repeatedly before making his big debut, Hattie is a recurring character and Riddler plays main villain for a while. Hugo Strange, Blockbuster, Rupert Thorne, Riddler AND Joker all appear in episode one.
I took Flass & Bullock out this time because while Flass is still crooked, his role is dramatically reduced thanks to both being de-fanged. Bullock is demoted to a beat cop who chases a child around and gets screwed over by Flass, and then Flass himself is parked with Montoya to keep an eye on him.
Overall
- 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
There ya go, a final 10 comprised almost entirely of the heaviest hitters in Batman’s Rogues Gallery. We got there in the end!
Remaining omissions include: Poison Ivy (too much crossover with Thorn), Ra’s al Ghul (would fit this setting like a glove), Bane (arguably redundant given they went with Blockbuster) and The Court of Owls (would fit, but I’d understand Timm wanting to be a purist and sticking to the oldest villains, which is another point against Bane). Admittedly, we ended with some ‘suboptimal’ versions of some of the big names, but at least most of them are here now!
The Matt Signal 
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