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This Batman: Caped Crusader article contains spoilers.
After its first 65-episode season, Batman: The Animated Series took on a new name: The Adventures of Batman & Robin. More than a throwback to previous Batman shows and comics, the new title underscored the new series focus on both the Dark Knight and the Boy Wonder.
Although it features a new cast and timeline, Batman: Caped Crusader serves as a spiritual successor to TAS, which has many people wondering: Does Robin also join Batman in Caped Crusader?
The answer is “Yes… sort of.”
Episode eight “Nocturne” begins with two boys from an orphanage run by Dr. Leslie Tompkins (voiced by Donna Lynne Champlin) sneaking out in the middle of the night to visit a traveling circus. The older of the boys, called Dickie (Carter Rockwood), has dark black hair and wears a red sweater, while the freckle-faced younger boy sports a tuft of red hair and goes by “Jase” (Henry Witcher). Later in the episode, we meet two girls from the orphanage. Blond-haired Stephanie (Amari McCoy) and bespectacled Carrie (Juliet Donenfeld) run afoul of the mysterious happenings at the circus.
These four urchins are, of course, Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Stephanie Brown, and Carrie Kelly, four of the six most well-known Robins in comic book history. None of the kids suit up as Robin and, in fact, only Carrie really gets in on the action, wielding her signature slingshot against the episode’s villain, Nocturna.
The other three orphans are presented as victims of Nocturna, a Z-list Batman baddie first introduced in the early ’80s who has been reimagined here as a pre-teen girl (voiced by Mckenna Grace) modeled exactly like Wednesday Addams. Like her comic book counterpart, this Nocturna is an energy vampire, who feeds on the life essence of her victims. She’s aided/protected by her brother Anton (Haley Joel Osment), who is a traveling scientist in the cartoon and not another supervillain.
Some might argue that Nocturna is not the only heavily-redesigned character in the episode. Most modern readers know Jason Todd as either a veritable Dick Grayson clone or as the grown-up vigilante Red Hood, both of whom have jet-black hair (with a tasteful white stripe as an adult). However, Todd debuted as a ginger in 1983’s Batman #357, and even canonically dyed his hair black to better match his predecessor. Crisis on Infinite Earths gave Jason his black hair (and his bad attitude), but the red hair gets an occasional nod, as in Grant Morrison’s spectacular Batman and Robin series.
The bigger revision involves neither of the boys, but the girls. In “Nocturne,” the girls are orphans, but in the comics, both sets of parents still live. Befitting Frank Miller’s dyspeptic worldview, Carrie Kelley’s parents pay no attention to her, giving her leave to fight alongside the grizzled Batman of The Dark Knight Returns. Stephanie’s mother also has a troubled history, but her father is the Cluemaster, a minor Batman villain. An act of adolescent rebellion inspired Stephanie to adopt her most famous superhero identity, Spoiler.
These changes are among the less notable in Caped Crusader, which also features a female Penguin and a more sinister Harley Quinn. However, they still leave open the possibility of Robin appearing on the show, if needed, in the future.
Showrunner Bruce Timm has explained his desire to stay more or less within the confines of the comics as they were in the early 1940s, which explains the wider ears on Batman’s cowl. However, the show has also played with that restriction, by bringing in some characters most associated with The Animated Series, including Harley Quinn and Renee Montoya. The Dick Grayson Robin debuted in Detective Comics #38 from 1940, which puts him squarely within the target timeframe as well. Nothing in “Nocturne” prevents any of those kids from becoming Robin in the future.
A Robin might clash with the noir tone of Caped Crusader, but the same might have been said of The Animated Series back in the ’90s. Timm found space for some great Robin episodes in that series, so maybe he’ll do the same for Caped Crusader down the line.
Batman: Caped Crusader is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
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