NOTE: This article obviously contains SPOILERS. Proceed at your own risk!
Official Summary
In the season finale, the attempt of Barbara Gordon and Batman to keep Harvey Dent safe until he testifies in court leads to an all-out war between Gotham’s heroes and villains.
My Summary
Commissioner James Gordon, Detective Renee Montoya, Public Defender Barbara Gordon, and the Caped Crusader attempt to hold back the tide long enough for Harvey Dent to testify in court about the rampant corruption in Gotham City.
Voice Cast
Hamish Linklater as Batman / Bruce Wayne
Diedrich Bader as Harvey Dent / Two-Face
Michelle C. Bonilla as Detective Renee Montoya
Krystal Joy Brown as Barbara Gordon
John DiMaggio as Detective Harvey Bullock, Manny
Eric Morgan Stuart as Commissioner James Gordon
Jason Watkins as Alfred Pennyworth
Gary Anthony Williams as Detective Arnold Flass
Noshir Dalal as Back-Up Mobster, Guard
Bumper Robinson as Goon 2, Mobster 1
James Arnold Taylor as Client
Cedric Yarbrough as Rupert Thorne
Commentary
Season One of Batman: Caped Crusader comes to a close in “Savage Night,” an episode where—for the first time in this series—the four most honest, unbreakable citizens of Gotham City cement their fellowship against the forces against them. There’s the jaded, but hopeful, Commissioner Jim Gordon and Detective Renee Montoya, two hardened cops who are new in their roles and wish to clean up the city’s police department. There’s the ailing optimist Barbara Gordon, who attempts to protect the populace through the courts but is starting to suspect the hopelessness of her chosen path. And, finally, there’s Batman himself, a vigilante unlike any this world has ever seen, who seeks to stop all crime, period. The first three have been wary of the fourth figure during their brief encounters this season, but here is where they collectively draw their line in the sand, as they attempt to get a newly remorseful Harvey Dent to testify about the evil men behind the curtain.
For Batman, this season could have easily been called “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Rupert Thorne,” as each episode offered a distraction preventing him from taking down the crime boss. Eight episodes introduced supervillains that required his immediate, undivided attention, and in “In Treacherous Waters” Batman actually strengthened Thorne’s position by taking down his direct competitor. In addition, “The Night of the Hunters” and, to a lesser extent, “The Stress of Her Regard” added the GCPD’s anti-Batman task force to the mix, forcing the Dark Knight to deal with both cops and crooks with equal exertion. In truth, Thorne maintained a comfortable background presence until he ordered the maiming of Harvey Dent via acid attack, thus putting him back on Batman’s radar.
Speaking of the district attorney, following Dent’s murder spree in “The Killer Inside Me,” Barbara Gordon and Batman (as Bruce Wayne) attempted to get him to testify regarding the city’s graft and corruption, a subject he knew all too well, as—according to Barbara—he served as D.A. for ten years. In exchange, he would receive a plea deal, which Dent was, at best, divided over. Had he committed to the plan and testified, the results could have been upending; Thorne said early in the episode how Harvey Dent “knows too much about my business and some powerful men downtown too,” having done “a lot of favors for the right people over the years.” Dent’s testimony had the potential to shake up the town … at least, for the short term, as the pessimistic, former D.A. conveyed to the four conspirators in a late night meeting on the Gotham waterfront:
HARVEY DENT: So this is the big plan? You protect me long enough that I can testify against Thorne and half of city hall and then what? You expect that to change anything?
JAMES GORDON: Yes, I do.
HARVEY DENT: Not in this city, no. A hundred other monsters will show up to replace anyone you take down. This is a losing battle. The four of you can’t hold back the tide.
BATMAN: I don’t care. You will testify, Dent, because you don’t bend with the world when it goes bad. You push back.
JAMES GORDON: He’s right. I know the system’s stacked against us, but I’m getting you in front of a judge tonight, Harvey. Even if it costs me my job.
To his credit, even Batman recognized the futility of his words and goals by episode’s end, where he contemplated Dent’s words: “Four of us against an endless tide. Dent was right; those are terrible odds. But I’ll take ‘em.”
And that, my friends, is Batman. He never backs down from a fight, even if it’s a losing one. After all, to quote a line from 2018’s Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles, “[i]n life, you do not fight battles because you expect to win; you fight them merely because they need to be fought” (Russell).
Unfortunately for the quartet, this battle ended with Harvey Dent’s death at the hands of Detective Flass, who—along with his partner, Detective Bullock—was openly working with Thorne’s men to take him down at the crime boss’ behest. Afterwards, Flass and Bullock were, no doubt, arrested by Commissioner Gordon, but considering how they were popular with Mayor Jessop and how they have Thorne’s legal team on their side, the jury’s out on whether they’ll actually face jail time or even lose their jobs prior to Season Two.
Speaking of which, “Savage Night” is notable for how it sets the stage for the next batch of ten episodes. Despite Executive Producer Bruce Timm’s desire for a remote, almost inhuman Dark Knight (Schedeen; Breznican), the character has, over the course of the first ten episodes, evolved as a person. Alfred has certainly recognized this, saying how “Harvey Dent […] lost sight of his own humanity. That isn’t you. You’re still inside there, Master Bruce. I see it more and more all the time. You’ve even made friends, in your own way.” Batman even leans into this in response, calling him “Alfred,” not “Pennyworth,” for the first time all season. Considering the progression of the narrative, one would expect to see further character growth in future seasons.
And, of course, the episode concludes with a bit of foreshadowing, as Batman visits Rupert Thorne’s offices and, via a Batarang through the window, sends the criminal a warning, promising that, unlike before, the Caped Crusader intends to make Thorne a priority moving forward. And so it ends…
…but wait. The scene shifts to a pre-post-credit scene. First, we get a glimpse of a creepy, ramshackle dwelling that would not look out of place in a Hooverville.
Second, we see a row of what appears to be dead test subjects with facial contortions that gradually form into a familiar, rictus grin in the fifth, most recent, victim.
And, finally, we get an obscured shot of a character that, while a stranger to them, is one that the audience knows all too well. A familiar Batman villain that was surprisingly absent from Season One. The Joker.
The presence of the Joker in Season Two has the potential to throw a wild card—forgive the overuse of the idiom—into this conflict between Batman and Thorne. I have previously discussed the concept of “Criminal Darwinism” in Gotham City, where—over time—the rise of costumed criminals overtook the traditional crime families and gangsters. Through natural selection, the city seemed to favor the gimmicky supervillains over the “old-time fedoras,” resulting in a much different landscape from the one before they (and Batman himself) staked their initial claims in. While made more implicit in the Batman comic books, it was only barely implied in Batman: The Animated Series (BTAS). Could throwing the Joker into Batman’s war against Rupert Thorne’s empire turn into a fight over the “soul” of crime in Gotham? Will a new generation of supervillains and monsters take out Thorne and the old guard themselves?
All I know is that it’s going to be a long, long wait until Season Two of Batman: Caped Crusader.
Stray Observations
The title of the episode, “Savage Night,” is was inspired by the 1953 crime novel by author Jim Thompson.
In the episode “In Treacherous Waters,” during Harvey Dent‘s “coin flip” with Barbara Gordon over her client‘s criminal trial, we see that his trick coin (confirmed by Bruce Timm in an August 5th post on Anime Superhero) is identical on both sides, with both heads facing to the left. However, in “Savage Night,” during Barbara‘s “coin flip” with Harvey, it is revealed that the heads on both sides of the coin are inverted, with one head facing right and one facing left.
In Barbara Gordon‘s office, Batman said that Harvey Dent “put his thumb on the scale in court sometimes, but he did care about justice.” I wonder how well Bruce Wayne actually knew his friend.
Batman‘s phone number—KL5-0127—is reference to Batman’s first appearance: Detective Comics Vol. 01, No. 27.
Also, the phone number Batman gives Barbara to contact him is a reference to the Batphone, the secret hotline the Dark Knight used to contact Commissioner Gordon. Used in the comics and the ‘60s television series, it was best remembered as the red telephone under a glass cloche.
I cannot find any literary reference to Barbara‘s reference to leaving a “blue light on in the window,” but it could be a reference to the Blue Light Project, where citizens leave a blue light in their window in memory of fallen police officers.
Following Harvey Dent‘s abduction, Bullock‘s reference to “the big sleep” is no doubt an allusion to the 1946 film of the same name.
When Barbara Gordon handcuffs herself to Harvey Dent in an attempt to keep him close, note how she handcuffs herself to his “good” side. Though it works symbolically, it must have made it difficult for her to drive.
The forced tether between Harvey Dent and Barbara Gordon works in two ways. For Dent, it allows Barbara to function as a sort of conscience and reminder of what he was (“God, I’m trying to remember if I was ever as naïve as you, but … I think I was once. I think I wanted to change things before I saw how the world really works”). However, for Barbara, it could provide a look into her future if she allows herself to become as cynical as Dent.
It is worth mentioning here that—in some of his earliest, Golden Age appearances—Batman did, in fact, use guns.
Detective Flass’ indignant rage over a vigilante like Batman daring to threaten a cop with a gun is certainly in character with previous attitudes he’s shown about police authority and “the thin blue line.”
The scene with Batman on the rooftop with lightning behind him is a deliberate homage to the opening credits of BTAS. The accompanying musical score appears to contain BTAS elements as well.
Whether referred to as Joker Venom or Smylex, the Joker’s notorious homebrew toxin debuted, along with the Clown Prince of Crime himself, in Batman #1 (Spring 1940). While BTAS was able to utilize a nonlethal version of the chemical, it appears that Caped Crusader will be giving Joker carte blanche to freely kill his victims here.
Finally, while the Joker’s one line of dialogue is uncredited, I suspect that the voice was performed by Rupert Thorne’s voice actor, Cedric Yarbrough. If true, mind you, this does not mean that he’ll be voicing Joker in Season Two. Most likely, he filled in as a placeholder until a full-time actor can be found.
Works Cited
Breznican, Anthony. “Meet the New Voices of Batman, Harley Quinn, and Catwoman: Exclusive.” Vanity Fair. Condé Nast. 20 Jun. 2024. Web. 20 Jun. 2024. <https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/story/batman-caped-crusader-voices>.
b.t. Comment on “’Batman: Caped Crusader’ Season One Talkback (Spoilers).” Anime Superhero. XenForo Ltd. 5 Aug. 2024. <https://animesuperhero.com/forums/threads/batman-caped-crusader-season-one-talkback-spoilers.5799833/post-87961552>. Accessed 13 Sept. 2024.
Russell, Mark. Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles. Illustrated by Mike Feehan and Howard Porter. DC Comics. 2018.
Schedeen, Jesse. “Batman : Caped Crusader Exclusive Trailer.” IGN. IGN. 26 Jun. 2024. Web. 27 Jun. 2024. <https://www.ign.com/articles/batman-caped-crusader-trailer-plot-cast-release-date-interview?utm_source=twitter>.
Images courtesy of Prime Video, Warner Bros. Discovery, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, and DC Comics.
Comments