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BATMAN: CAPED CRUSADER Season 2 Is Really Good, Shame No One Cares
- Batman: Caped Crusader season two continues the 1940s-tinged adventures of the Dark Knight, but Prime isn’t giving it room to succeed.
When the announcement for Batman: Caped Crusader first dropped, with Bruce Timm back doing a Batman animated series after redefining the character and superhero animation, I thought this would be the biggest show in the nerd world. But Warner Brothers selling it off to Prime Video, who subsequently dropped the whole season in one day, seemed to make it seem un-special. Changing and in some cases gender swapping villains also seemed to alienate a group of dipshits. But it was a really good show!
Now we have season two of Batman: Caped Crusader, that’s somehow even more violent and weirder than season one, and Prime is still dumping it all at once. It’s very confusing. But, I urge you to at least give it a chance if you haven’t yet.
Prime Video
Season two picks up right not long after the first season. We’re in a 1940s-coded Gotham City, even more so than Batman: The Animated Series. The premise being that the first appearance of Batman from the comics is canon to this series but everything else is reimagined. So, we have a more violent Gotham, extremely scary at times, really indebted to crime fiction of the era, but also with nods to Film Noir and German Expressionism. At the same time, this is an idealized fictional version of the ’40s. Women and people of color are in more positions of authority and some of the villains reflect this approach.
We have a host of returning characters. Batman, of course, voiced by Hamish Linklater remains the brusque, humorless detective/face-puncher with his faithful butler Alfred Pennyworth (Jason Watkins) providing aid. Their relationship growth in the first season was one of the highlights and I wish we’d seen a little more warmth early in in season two. But nevertheless, we also have a trio of perhaps the only upstanding civil servants in the city. Commissioner Gordon (Eric Morgan Stuart) and his daughter, the public defender Barbara (Krystal Joy Brown) and their ally Detective Renee Montoya (Michelle C. Bonilla) find themselves the thin line, along with the Batman, against the corruption.
Prime Video
Villains this year include a few heavy hitters, all major reimaginings. The Mad Hatter is now Hattie Trench, voiced by Laraine Newman, an uber-conservative gossip-based talk show host. Rather than Mr. Freeze, we get Mr. Zero (Kevin Michael Richardson), a creepy dude who cleans up after mob hits. Even the Joker (Matthew Needham) gets a different vibe, a chilly European murderer who turns people into cackling rage monsters.
All of these work for me, or at least provide some interesting changes that fit the characters at hand. The one that I confess does not work for me is the Riddler. As voiced by Ronan Raferty, this version of “Eddie” Nygma is a sadistic enforcer for Rupert Thorne who doesn’t pose riddles to people, but instead riddles them with bullets from his Tommy gun. It’s definitely a unique take, but the Riddler is one of my favorite villains and this felt a bit like they didn’t want to engage with the character on his own terms.
Prime Video
Despite this, the ten episodes of the season are largely all triumphs. They provide a good mix of very sci-fi concepts (or horror at times) along with gangland drama and police procedural. The ongoing story arc of the Joker’s quiet ramping up of chaos in the city really pays dividends by the end, but we still have plenty of time for one-offs. It is a good idea to watch the first season first if you haven’t already, given a couple of episodes are direct responses to things from last go-round.
My favorite episode of the season actually doesn’t contain that much Batman. The third episode involves Batman going under cover as his petty criminal persona Matches Malone. While in the big house, he gets close to an associate of the Riddler’s to try to get in with the gang and it ends up being a weirdly touching and heartfelt exploration of friendship. As this Batman doesn’t have much in the way of friends, even under subterfuge, it’s interesting to see him start to open up.
Prime Video
While I think the first season is, as a whole, better, this season still has loads of great Batman adventure. It’s a shame that Prime has chosen to dump it all in one day again. We’re seeing how much hype X-Men ’97 gets every week when they drop a new episode. Certainly X-Men ’97 is a better series than Caped Crusader, but there’s no reason why a Timm-produced Batman series of this level of quality shouldn’t get an equal chance to succeed.
As we have to wait now until 2028 to see live-action Batman on the big screen, it would be nice to have a series like this that can hold us over. I hope Batman: Caped Crusader gets a chance to continue, but if not, at least we’ve got 20 really fun, weird, and freaky episodes.
Batman: Caped Crusader Season 2 ⭐ (4 of 5)
Batman: Caped Crusader drops all 10 season two episodes July 31.
Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. He hosts the weekly pop culture deep-dive podcast Laser Focus. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Letterboxd.
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Lindsay Lohan Reese’s Commercial Honors THE PARENT TRAP
- Almost 30 years after the 90s cult classic came out, Lindsay Lohan reprised her role as The Parent Trap‘s twins for a Reese’s Oreo ad.
- It was directed by Patricia Arquette and co-starred Amy Sedaris.
- This comes less than a month after the reveal of a Parent Trap sequel by Disney.
The Parent Trap was one of Lindsay Lohan’s most iconic ’90s movies, a perfect blend of comedy, medium-stakes, and romance. They just don’t make movies like that anymore. But apparently, they do make ads like that. Lohan stars in Reese’s new Oreo collaboration commercial, alongside actress-comedian Amy Sedaris. The advert was directed by Patricia Arquette, another actress.
In the advertisement, Lindsay Lohan plays a “twin retreat” instructor, as well as the instructor’s twin. Her goal is to help twins “work out their differences.” Sedaris acts as herself and a twin, fighting over Reese’s peanut butter. As an homage to the movie, Lohan says, “I know a thing or two about twins.” She helps Sedaris’s characters find compromise with Reese’s Oreo cups.
The 1998 movie was actually not the original, coming out over 35 years after 1961’s The Parent Trap directed by David Swift. Now, almost 30 years after Lindsay Lohan’s version, it is clear that its mark on the cultural consciousness will be long-lasting.
The Hershey Company
After another one of Lohan’s most famous movies, Freaky Friday, received a sequel in 2025 starring her and Jamie Lee Curtis, it makes sense that Disney would wait 30 years to remake a childhood favorite. The audience reception for Freakier Friday was overwhelmingly positive. Clearly, the company noticed this and confirmed a sequel in July, according to X Magazine.
The new movie will star Lindsay Lohan as the twins again. However, Natasha Richardson, who originally played the mother of the twins, tragically passed away in 2009. In 2024, her co-star, Dennis Quaid, questioned how they would do a sequel without her, saying her death “still breaks [his] heart.”
While Disney has not yet released a plot for the movie, it leaves a big question: how will they handle the story without one of its primary players?
For now, we have a small taste of the nostalgia with the Reese’s ad, and for 80s and 90s babies who grew up on The Parent Trap, there is more to come.
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