Batman: Caped Crusader rightfully feels like a return to a creative peak for the title hero. The animated series marks the return of Bruce Timm, who developed Batman: The Animated Series and helped usher in a new aesthetic and narrative tone for the Dark Knight. Caped Crusader pushes the envelope in a similar way: the series is an alt-universe take on Gotham City, and is thus able to reinvent famous villains (like Timm’s own creation, Harley Quinn) and dive a bit deeper into the fractured mind of Bruce Wayne. It’s just the boon that the Batman universe needed on the small screen — which is why its so surprising that it almost didn’t happen at all.
Timm started developing Caped Crusader at Warner Bros. with executive producer James Tucker, The Batman director Matt Reeves, and J.J. Abrams. But the production faced a big stumbling block when Warner canceled its plans to stream the series on HBO Max. Timm and Tucker later turned to Amazon, the streamer with a history of picking up Batman projects (Merry Little Batman and Bat-Family, another new animated series, have each found a home on Prime Video).
“They’ve been a great partner in making the show,” Timm told The Wrap. The streamer notably ordered two seasons of Caped Crusader, which means that another chapter of this alternate, noir-esque Gotham is coming. That may not be the end for the series, either: if Timm has his way, Caped Crusader may just set the stage for a major animated crossover.
Timm and the team are still working on developing Caped Crusader Season 2, but the future is pretty bright for the series. “We’re still working on the scripts and starting to record,” Timm said. If Season 1 does well, Amazon could order more seasons — and since this is an alternate history, where anything is possible, Timm seems to have plenty of ideas for the future: “We don’t have to bring Superman in yet to keep it interesting.”
Not yet, at least. But it’s worth noting that Caped Crusader started off as a Justice League series. Timm produced two separate shows about the Justice League, each connected to the world of Batman: The Animated Series, in the early aughts.
“That was more of an open-ended concept that we could incorporate the entire DC canon in it, instead of doing just another Joker story, or just another Harley story or whatever,” Timm told The Wrap. He and Tucker ended up focusing solely on Batman’s world, but the door is open for other DC characters to meet up with Batman.
Caped Crusader might have even included a Superman-related Easter egg in Season 1. A reporter that looks a lot like Lois Lane appears in Episode 4, “The Night of the Hunters.” Could this be setting the stage for Superman to pay a visit to Gotham City? Time will tell, but the idea of a crossover does seem to be on Timm’s mind — otherwise, why bring the character up at all?
