Batman: Caped Crusader might still be finding its footing with some sections of the fanbase, but the critically acclaimed new show has already added a pretty herculean feat to its list of accolades early into its run on streaming.
Batman has seen several adaptations over his long tenure as the premiere detective in comics, but none have been quite as true to form and well-loved as Batman: The Animated Series, a masterwork that originally aired from 1992 to 1995 and expanded on the Batman mythos we know today in the best way. Notably creating the likes of Harley Quinn and the now-canon backstory for Victor Fries, Batman: The Animated Series has lived on without anything worthy of taking its place in the cultural zeitgeist. Bruce Timm was one of the men behind the magic on the show and would announce a spiritual successor to the original series in Batman: Caped Crusader. The Batman: The Animated Series creator was notably excited for Caped Crusader as it gave him a chance to work on his true, unfettered version, which wasn’t possible with the original series made for kids programming.
The show would be dropped by Warner Bros. Discovery but would be saved by Amazon’s Prime Video service, which would issue a two-season order for Caped Crusader, with the first making its premiere in As noted by Forbes in a recent report, Batman: Caped Crusader took the number 1 spot on Prime Video, toppling The Boys from that position and leaving it in second place. This is in spite of The Boys’ fourth season breaking prior records for the franchise in spite of the divisive nature of the season and the mixed reception it initially received. The report also noted that this is unusual for the service, with Prime Video rankings usually holding steady for a good while.
This is great news for Prime Video as it already greenlit another installment via the original two-season order, and there are indicators that even more could be on the way if this sort of attention keeps up. Given the run of the original show and the episode count expected for each season, there’s little doubt that this new take on the Dark Knight could stand for a couple more renewals to finish telling its story, after which the creatives on the team will no doubt take on the tried and true tactic of putting Superman in it to keep things interesting.
While Batman: Caped Crusader might have dropped the ball on one essential aspect and suffered from not having the iconic Kevin Conroy in the lead role due to his unfortunate passing, the show is still many leagues better than its contemporaries. Timm arguably gave his best to the original animated show, as constraints tend to do more for quality than creatives care to admit, and it shows in Caped Crusader’s failure to truly live up to Batman: The Animated Series. However, that’s a perfectly fine mark to miss, and while it’s no replacement for the original, the show that did get made is solid and doing well with critics. Fans have the usual objections to many of the seemingly inexplicable changes the show makes to canon, and so there’s no clear picture yet of where Caped Crusader will fall in the long term. However, the show’s
How long Caped Crusader stays on top remains to be seen, as a prequel show for The Boys is finally getting made, and the mainline show itself is set for a massive final season with all sorts of important story resolutions keeping fans in their seats. Whichever one of the two wins when these two projects materialize, or if some other new Prime Video programming will take the top spot, the real winner here is still Prime Video for betting on these projects.
Batman: Caped Crusader is currently available to stream on Amazon’s Prime Video platform.
