Batman: Caped Crusader sets up its iteration of Harley Quinn to replace the Joker for at least the first season of the DC show, and through her story manages to break a long-standing live-action movie trend in fascinating fashion. The animated Batman show is set to reimagine a lot about Gotham and its cast of characters, with this focus on mixing it up with the overall rogues gallery perhaps explaining why the Joker is currently absent from both preview photos and the Batman: Caped Crusader trailer.

With this in mind, it seems that Quinn is instead set to be the series' primary clown-based criminal for at minimum the initial chapter of the show. This makes it all the more interesting that the changes made to Harley's story in the upcoming DC release take a route that is both entirely unusual and entirely fitting for the Batman's mythos.

Batman: Caped Crusader Breaks A Big Dark Knight Trend By Giving Bruce Wayne A Psychiatrist

Batman: Caped Crusader delves into territory the live-action Batman movies have never fully tread by giving Bruce Wayne a genuine psychiatrist in the form of Dr. Harleen Quinzel. Comparatively, the movies have only ever explored this story avenue via psychologist Chase Meridian in Batman Forever, and even then, it seemed clear Kilmer's Wayne was seeking Meridian out romantically instead of for mental health treatment.

Giving Bruce Wayne a psychiatrist or psychologist makes a lot of sense for the character, making this decision an especially interesting part of the upcoming show. This is doubly true since, much like Bruce's double life as a billionaire and Batman, Harleen is also working as a psychiatrist by day and as Harley Quinn by night, meaning her role as Bruce's psychiatrist should provide a real opportunity to explore the parallels between these two iterations of iconic DC characters.

Why Caped Crusader Breaks The Long-Term Batman Trend

Though the natural thought would be that Bruce's childhood trauma and subsequent desire for justice would perhaps benefit from mental health treatment, it seems that Batman: Caped Crusader won't be approaching this in the way audiences may expect. Indeed, it appears that while this Batman's focus on his vigilante life is harmful to his ability to exist as a person, his regimented focus only has its roots in the tragedy of his parents' murders.

Speaking of the upcoming series while providing a preview for the show, Bruce Timm mentioned to Entertainment Weekly that this Batman is, "a really weird human being... He's not obsessed with his parents' murder, but it changed him in a way where he’s still not adjusted to being a human being. He's literally Batman; inside, that's who he is. Whenever he's Bruce Wayne, that's not just him with a mask off, that's him wearing a person suit. He's trying to pretend to be something that he's not.”

Based on this, it seems more likely that these psychiatrist sessions will be a way to showcase this lack of adjustment to audiences, instead of focusing solely on the more conventional lines of Batman's focus on the crime that tore his own life apart and the grief of this event. A Batman whose Bruce Wayne persona is fully a "person suit" due to his utter commitment to his superhero life should also be a figure whose interactions with a psychiatrist in his civilian form are truly fascinating.

Batman: Caped Crusader's Psychiatrist Story Is Perfect For Its Reimagined DC World

Batman: Caped Crusader is set to be "an incredibly complex psychological story about someone who, in a way, needs to be redeemed" based on show creator J.J Abrams' own words at DC FanDome 2021. As such, it makes sense to have ways in which this aspect of the story can be conveyed clearly to the audience. Giving Bruce Wayne a psychiatrist - especially one who has a secret alter ego of their own - serves as a great way to directly address the deeper themes and psychological aspects of Caped Crusader's narrative, while keeping things suitably tense due to Harley's double life.

Since the Joker appears to be missing from Batman: Caped Crusader season 1 based on his absence from promotional materials, it seems that this could make it especially easy to even let Harley Quinn instead take over the role of Batman's direct nemesis for the foreseeable future, making her civilian job even more perfect for its proximity to the DC hero. All of this can serve to perfectly allow Batman: Caped Crusader to serve as a moodier, more adult imagining of Batman: The Animated Series' world, and allow the show to look deeper into topics that the original couldn't.