How much can you change a character before they’re no longer the same character fans know and love? It’s a frequent argument with superhero movies and TV shows, particularly given the multiple reinventions beloved (and not so beloved) heroes and villains have gone through in their translation from the comic book page to screen. And nowhere is that tested more, in multiple iterations, than in Prime Video’s new Batman: Caped Crusader, which keeps some characters constant – while others change gender, race, or other characteristics until they’re no longer recognizable.
A word of caution here, though, before we delve into the changes made by the team behind the latest Batman animated series. One of the reasons behind fan arguments about characters is that everyone has their individual view of how a character “must” be. Some of that comes from how they were first introduced to the character, through a particularly impactful run on the comics, or viewing on screen. Some of it comes from groupthink on the internet, as one gravitates towards a welcoming and like-minded fanbase on the internet.
Those are the more positive, and potentially fruitful (though sometimes not) ways someone arrives at what they believe is the definitive adaptation of the character. But there are other, far more toxic views that influence these takes: sexism, homophobia, racism… All that is present and horrifyingly pops its head up with regularity whenever a show or movie dares to not 100% represent exactly what a character looks like in static 2D in a comic.
This gets back to the core argument we’re aiming to examine here: what does actually change a character? What can you change that illuminates them in a different way, but still retains the intrinsic parts of who they are? And when does a character change so much that they are, in essence, an entirely different character?
To explore this further, let’s take a look at a few characters who went through some subtle – and not-so-subtle – changes in Batman: Caped Crusader.
Krystal Joy Brown plays the voice of Barbara Gordon on Caped Crusader, and you may notice that despite the character’s classic red hair, there are two big changes in the series: First, she’s a public defender, and second, she’s Black. The latter has already sent folks into a needless tizzy, but we’ll just ignore them.
Regardless, the color of her skin is less of a change than the fact that she’s a lawyer, a job Barbara Gordon hasn’t previously held in comics or on screen. She’s worked as a professor or helped out the police department. She’s been the eye in the sky character Oracle and been Batgirl. But the show expressly sets her up as a lawyer to bring her into conflict with the District Attorney, Harvey Dent (Diedrich Bader).
Rather than change who Barbara is, it emphasizes everything at the core of her character. She has a strong sense of justice. She’s often at odds with her father, though she loves and respects him. And ultimately she’s willing to bend the law a bit if it’s on the side of right. Barbara is strong-willed, whip-smart, capable in a fight, and like with her father, respects Batman, but goes her own way. That’s Barbara Gordon absolutely nailed, and Caped Crusader delivers a perfect rendition.
There’s an alternate argument to be made, though, as to why they changed the color of her skin if it wouldn’t impact the character's life in any way. The answer is simply “representation,” as it costs nothing to add more characters of color to the usually lily-white universe of Batman. Could they have played with the idea of what it means to be a woman of color in an early 1900s man’s world? Sure, potentially. But that’s an overall note for the show, which seems to exist in a 1930s devoid of racism, and homophobia when it comes to women kissing in a public restaurant halfway through the series. So perhaps that’s a moot point, at least where the direction of the series is concerned.
Jason Watkins voices Bruce Wayne’s butler Alfred, and there are few changes to how we traditionally know the character. First, his origin is as a beat policeman who takes in an extremely creepy young Bruce after Thomas and Martha Wayne are killed, rather than already working as the Wayne family’s butler. As for how he went from police officer to butler? Who can say. But hey, you flesh out that resume, Alfred.
The other changes are that Alfred speaks with a significantly more lower-class British accent than fans may be used to, and is also more rotund than the slender cut the character carries in the comics, and in Batman: The Animated Series (the roundabout antecedent of this show).
But there have been so many takes on Alfred over the years – Michael Gough’s classic butler from the Burton movies, Sean Pertwee’s rough-and-tumble action Alfred from Gotham, Andy Serkis’s equal partner in The Batman – that it feels like Alfred can be almost anything. As long as he stands by Bruce’s side, challenges him when necessary, and insists he eat something… That’s Alfred.
Another big change the show throws out in the very first episode, titled “In Treacherous Water”: a gender-swapped Penguin named Oswalda Cobblepot, voiced by Minnie Driver. She’s first introduced singing at the Iceberg Lounge, though we – and Batman – quickly discover her thriving boat cruise slash club is a front for the criminal activity she’s coordinating with her sons, Aaron and Ronald Cobblepot (both voiced by Paul Scheer).
Making Penguin a woman allows the show to paint her as sort of a Ma Barker meets Mama Cass-type character. The latter as she’s a flamboyant singer and entertainer; the former because she’s a vicious crime boss who uses her sons to do her dirty work… Until she kills them.
But again… That’s Penguin, pretty much. This iteration of the character, like pretty much any other iteration, is an ostentatious club owner with a flair for the dramatic. She’s quick to anger. And the second she starts to lose to Batman, she goes absolutely hog wild, throws everything she’s built away, and blows up the Gotham Police Department. Despite writer Tom King’s current calculated take on The Penguin in DC’s comics that is retconning most of Oswald’s behavior for the past eight-plus decades, Penguin is usually a literal rogue element with a murderous streak, beating people to death with his umbrella if they so much look at him funny.
Like we’ve been driving home, the core of the character is there in Caped Crusader. And making her into Oswalda allows the show to play with some new stories for The Penguin that we’ve never seen before. And unlike Barbara Gordon, where the show purposefully doesn’t draw attention to the change of race, here swapping Penguin’s gender allows the show to open up new avenues of storytelling.
Jamie Chung is first introduced as the voice of Dr. Harleen Quinzel in Episode 3 of the series, titled “Kiss of the Catwoman,” though doesn’t have her villainous turn until Episode 5, “The Stress of Her Regard.” This Harleen is a psychiatrist disconnected from the Joker. She’s also of Asian descent, and still into women – she strikes up a romance halfway through the season with Gotham PD detective Renee Montoya (voiced by Michelle C. Bonilla), leading to that female-female kiss we mentioned earlier.
That’s just the start of the changes to the character, though. The show’s co-creator Bruce Timm explained the thought process behind this new Harley to EW during an interview: “I co-created the character, so I have a lot of love and affection for her, but I thought there might be something interesting about bringing her on the show, just not as Joker’s girlfriend. So how do we do that? A big part was just doing a basic flip. The original Dr. Quinzel was a little bit more serious, and then when she became Harley, she got really goofy and weird. So we thought, what if we reverse that? When she's Dr. Quinzel, she's a little bit more whimsical and fun, and then when she's Harley Quinn, she's scary.”
The issue here is, and with all due respect to Timm, this is a different character. Chung gives the smallest touch of Harley’s iconic, chirpy voice to Harleen, but only when she’s flirting with Renee. When she’s in the harlequin costume, she’s a disturbing, serious villain who tortures rich men – former patients of hers – to break them and bring out their true personalities. If a man acts like a baby, she turns him into a big baby. If he acts like an animal, through her glass prisons and repeated torture, she makes him into that.
The issue here isn’t the lack of Joker, the change of race, nor the flip of the character as Timm puts it, to make Harleen the funny one and Harley the serious one. And in fact, if this was an entirely original Batman villain – a psychiatrist who treats rich men like Bruce Wayne, and fed up, breaks them down to who they really are – that would fit right in with the rest of the Dark Knight’s rogues gallery.
The issue is that this isn’t Harley. While she was introduced in Batman: The Animated Series as Joker’s moll and sidekick, the character evolved rapidly into her own thing, separate from the Clown Prince of Crime. That’s accelerated rapidly in the modern era, moving from her lamenting the loss of her relationship with the Joker, to finding love with Poison Ivy, to building up her own supporting cast of characters in the comics and the excellent animated series. If anything, through the movies, comics, and the new anime show Suicide Squad: Isekai, Harley is arguably more associated with the Suicide Squad at this point than Batman’s arch-enemy.
But all that aside, to get back to what we’ve been discussing with the other characters on the series, it’s not the trappings that change Harley; it’s that where it matters most… She’s not Harley. She doesn’t have the humor, but more importantly, she’s missing the heart. We get a hint of that through her friendship with Barbara Gordon. But the connection is introduced tangentially and then pushed for emotional resonance right before Harley’s seeming demise at the end of Episode 5 (she survives, don’t worry).
Harly Quinn – even when she’s Dr. Harleen Quinzel – has always had a brightness to her, which is what drew people to the character. It’s not the classic red and black (and white) Harlequin costume. It’s not the booty shorts and crop top of the Arkham games era. It’s not even her giant hammer, or hyena buddies that makes Harley who she is. It’s her ability to twist things to the bright side, even in the middle of all the darkness that Gotham City brings.
And that’s not just what’s lacking here, but by painting her as the one who brings the darkness, it does indeed break the character. Call her The Jester or (had to look this one up) Merry Andrew. But the character there on screen is, unfortunately, not recognizable as Harley Quinn.
Perhaps with the initial story out of the way, and Harley still alive, the in-the-works second season of the series will pivot appropriately. All they have to do to fix her is look to the other, successful examples above. Or hey, maybe with The Joker showing up in the closing seconds of the season, that will change her, too… Even if Harley Quinn can, and does, exist without her puddin’.
