‘Batman: The Animated Series’ Almost Included a Black Canary and Catwoman Episode

Batman: The Animated Series has plenty of standout episodes – but it nearly included one featuring two of DC Comics’ biggest female characters.

Paul Dini, who served as a writer on the beloved Fox Kids animated series, recently revealed one BTAS pitch that was rejected by Fox. The episode would have centered around Black Canary and Catwoman, but was ultimately canned for not focusing enough on Robin.

“Yeah, the Black Canary/Catwoman episode was a casualty.” Dini revealed to CBR. “They wanted more Robin in the series, and each time we wanted to drop him from a story, we had to fight for it. Not that we had anything against Robin, we just wanted to stretch now and then and do solo Batman stories or episodes that focused mainly on Gordon or the villains. After the experimentation of the first season, the network felt we might be leaving the boys behind, so we got the edict, add more Robin.”

While Catwoman (portrayed by Adrienne Barbeu) appeared quite a bit in Batman: The Animated Series, this proposed episode would have marked the series debut of Dinah Lance/Black Canary. It’s a mystery exactly what sort of story the episode would have told, considering Dinah and Selina’s dynamic in the comics.

The closest fans have gotten is the Batman: The Brave and The Bold episode ‘The Masks of Matches Malone!’, which saw the pair teaming up with Huntress (and singing an innuendo-filled musical number in the process).

As it turns out, this wasn’t the only episode idea that didn’t make its way to Batman: The Animated Series.

“Other than that, there was a Poison Ivy seducing Swamp Thing story I toyed around with.” Dini revealed. “But the rights to Swampy weren’t available then. I did a sort of version of it years later as an episode of Justice League Action.”