If you thought Gotham City was a dangerous place before, you haven’t seen anything yet. Batman: Caped Crusader is back for another season on Prime Video, and the animated series quickly makes it clear that they’re playing for keeps. Season two brings more violence, more terror and everything you could possibly want from a Batman television series.

The show’s Golden Age aesthetic is no accident. According to executive producers James Tucker and Geoffrey Thorne, the Dark Knight’s early Golden Age stories served as the bible for the series.

“We looked at Batman’s first several years from [Detective Comics] through Batman and went, what world were they building? Let’s riff off that,” says Thorne.

The new season also introduces Caped Crusader’s take on the Joker, who’s voiced by House of the Dragon’s Matthew Needham. Always true to the vision of the show, Tucker and Thorne looked at Batman’s earliest comics for inspiration.

“It’s coming from a template that the first issue of Batman set up,” shares Tucker. “We knew what we were doing because we saw that’s the Joker we want to do.”

When Needham got his script for the series, he immediately fell in love.

“My feeling was this was much more violent, and it was really dark,” he says. “So, I was sort of nervous, but I was also flipping [the script pages]. This is one of those very rare jobs where you want this to work as a fan of the material, rather than just show off and become famous from it.”

The rise of the Joker is one of the big storylines this season. The other is Batman learning to trust others, which continues a thread from season one.

“It’s a slow buildup to the Joker,” Tucker teases. “But it’s also Batman becoming a little more human than he was in season one, but very incremental.”

Expanding on that, Thorne suggests, “Picture a loner learning that not only are there other people in the world, but that you can count on someone. It’s not the theme, but it’s the thread.”

In other words, this Caped Crusader isn’t quite ready for a Boy (or Girl) Wonder just yet.

“There’s a no-Robin edict in place right now, but we dabble and we toy with that in one of the episodes,” acknowledges Tucker. “And by the end of that episode, you know why there’s not a Robin, because this Batman should not be around children.”

“We’re absolutely not making modern Batman,” Thorne reiterates. “He’s not that guy. These characters do not have these relationships, always remember. And it was an internal thing. Every writer had to consistently be reminded this is not modern—and not just modern in terms of tech, but modern in terms of attitude. He’s not that guy yet.”

Season two will also see the return of Dr. Harleen Quinzel, who is once again voiced by Jamie Chung. The actress previously played Valerie Vale on Fox’s Gotham, and she enjoyed returning to the DC Universe and finding parallels between the two characters.

“You’re in a really dark world,” says Chung. “You’re in a world where you depend on a Caped Crusader to save the day. It’s kind of nice. It’s a departure from Valerie Vale. Instead of someone who’s investigating [stories], I get to play Dr. Harleen Quinzel, and she’s kind of investigating what makes them tick. I really think she’s projecting. She doesn’t want to do the work on herself, so she’s doing the work on everyone else. I think they’re both kind of investigators, and it’s good to be bad.”

From the beginning, Tucker and Thorne told Chung to ignore the familiar versions of the character played by Arleen Sorkin, Margot Robbie and Kaley Cuoco.

“They were like, you can never be Arleen Sorkin, so don’t even try,” Chung reveals. “[Arleen] did such a great job inventing this character, but they really wanted the script to be flipped. So instead of her in costume as Harley Quinn being bubbly, they really wanted her to be disarming as a shrink. We got to play around with the menacing bits as Harley Quinn. It was really fun to play, but there were a lot of redos, because sometimes you can’t help but imitate the best.”

Hamish Linklater, who voices Batman (and was also recently seen on Prime Video’s Gen V), was likewise told to ignore other versions of the character.

“For me, it was a very clear direction to avoid all previous iterations,” he acknowledges. “They wanted something a lot quieter and a lot calmer, sort of spookier in that regard. It was all in the writing and direction.”

Tucker and Thorne acknowledge that the success of season one gave Prime Video the confidence to let them go wild for season two.

“It’s a little rougher this year, but that’s because Amazon was like, ‘Y’all do your thing,’” Thorne says.

“We had a wider parameter for what we knew we could do with action and tone,” Tucker adds.

For Linklater, Batman: Caped Crusader remains a project unlike any other. The only real negative is knowing that someday it will end.

“I remember finishing the last recording session and just wishing that we could go back to the beginning and do it all again,” he shares. “It’s so nice to work on well-written characters and just keep adding to it.”
 

Batman: Caped Crusader season two is now streaming on Prime Video.

Joshua Lapin-Bertone writes about TV, movies and comics for DC.com, is a regular contributor to the Couch Club and writes our monthly Batman column, "Gotham Gazette." Follow him on Bluesky at @joshualapinbertone and on X at @TBUJosh.