Prime’s Acclaimed Batman Show Promises A Radically Different Joker 1 Year After Gender-Swapping Another Villain

Every time Batman gets reinvented or rebooted, there’s an inevitability that fans are waiting on: how will the creative team also reinvent The Joker? It’s been the case for decades, but really took on a new life after the success of the character in Tim Burton’s 1989 feature film, where he was played by Jack Nicholson, and then again after Mark Hamill’s version in Batman: The Animated Series became a structural version of the villain. Christopher Nolan successfully navigated those waters with The Dark Knight, and, for better or worse, Todd Phillips and Joaquin Phoenix did the same in 2019. Now, the character is about to get another… facelift.

A forgotten Batman series that is still on currently, as fans continue to pine for any details at all about The Batman Part II, is the Prime Video streaming series, Batman: Caped Crusader. The show, developed by Bruce Timm of Batman: The Animated Series fame, already raised eyebrows in its first season when it introduced a female version of the Penguin as well as a new take on Harley Quinn. Now, the series has confirmed that its next season will put a brand new spin on The Joker, and fans need to be ready.

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Prime Video’s Batman: Caped Crusader Is Rebooting the Joker

Speaking with The Direct, Batman: Caped Crusader co-showrunner James Tucker revealed that the show will finally tackle the clown prince of crime after teasing his presence in the show’s Season 1 finale. For long-time fans of Batman and The Joker, Tucker confirmed that this version isn’t going to be akin to what you may be used to, especially if your firm foundation of The Joker is the interpretations from a few decades ago.

“I think it’ll be a new take on the Joker for people who only know of… If Joker begins with Mark Hamill and Jack Nicholson, this take on the Joker will be very different for them,” Tucker revealed. “But for people who’ve read comics for a long, long, long, long time, it won’t be. I think some people will recognize it and go, ‘Oh, I see what they’re doing.’ And other people will go, ‘Wow, this is different.’ But, I think it’s all Joker.”

As Tucker notes, for long-time DC Comics readers, The Joker is a character whose eighty years of history have been radically changed and shifted based on the creative team and the readership’s feelings about him. Back in the 1940s, when The Joker and Batman were both still nascent characters in comics, the villain entered the series as a sinister killer, experimenting on and killing Gotham’s citizens. It seems likely that Batman: Caped Crusader will take this angle, especially since the lone tease of the Joker played into this.

It’s worth noting, however, that the Joker didn’t stay a sadistic killer for long in the pages of Batman comics, quickly becoming a prankster-type villain that was more into committing petty crimes than murder (made famous by Caesar Romero’s version in the live-action TV Series). Considering the noir tone of Batman: Caped Crusader, the series will almost certainly avoid a fully comedic version of The Joker, especially one whose idea of a good time is committing crimes across the country in places that spell out his name (a thing he did in the 1940s).

Radical reinventions of The Joker are not new to animated takes on Batman, but it hasn’t always proven to be a popular strategy. The Batman, the 2004 animated series, not the Matt Reeves movie, took the Joker back to his sinister roots and featured a radically different look for the character aesthetically. This was met with resistance by some fans at the time, but over time came to be appreciated. So even if Batman: Caped Crusader‘s version of Joker really is a wildly different take on the villain, time could be on its side in the end.