Batman: Caped Crusader Battles the Penguin in Prime Video Premiere — Grade It! (2024)

The premiere of Prime Video‘s Batman: Caped Crusader (all 10 episodes are streaming now) holds nothing back, kicking off its chronicling of Batman’s early-career exploits with shocking murders, gender-swapped baddies, and a massive umbrella-shaped superweapon.

The series premiere, titled “In Treacherous Waters,” opens on a cluster of shadow-soaked mobsters interrogating one of their own, a quivering chap named Clarence. Clarence’s captors accuse him of supplying rival crime boss Rupert Thorne (voiced by Cedric Yarbrough) — Bat-fans will know the name — with intel about their criminal outfit. The men leave, but the questioning isn’t over.

A familiar shadow falls across the blubbering Clarence, and the scene moves to Thorne’s underlings mobilizing near a warehouse. Batman (Hamish Linklater) arrives and, using various gases and gadgets, subdues the mobsters. Before he can question them, though, the warehouse explodes and Bats leaves without a lead.

Bruce and Alfred Pennyworth (Jason Watkins) later deduce that the explosion (one of three identical incidents) suggests the rise of a new crime boss they don’t know about, one powerful enough to threaten Thorne and potentially incite a gang war. Alfred pores over official records claiming the explosions were caused by gas leaks and electrical fires. Bruce immediately smells a cover-up, but Alfred doesn’t think the city’s corruption runs that deep. Bruce takes off, leaving Alfred with a clumsy yet appropriate rhetorical: “It’s Gotham, Pennyworth. Does the corruption really surprise you?”

Meanwhile, District Attorney/mayoral candidate Harvey Dent (Diedrich Bader), already well on his way to becoming a Grade-A slime ball, squares off against Barbara Gordon (Power Book III: Raising Kanan‘s Krystal Joy Brown) in court. After the trial, Barbara accuses Harvey of tampering with key elements of the case and storms off. Batman, having infiltrated police headquarters and found the inspector who falsified the city’s official records of the explosions, dangles the man over some train tracks and eventually shakes a name loose: the Penguin.

Aboard her luxury boat Iceberg Lounge, Oswalda Cobblepot (Minnie Driver) performs for Gotham’s most well-to-do citizens. Harvey, Barbara, and her father, Commissioner Jim Gordon (Eric Morgan Stuart) are present and bored, but Bruce, arriving via speedboat, is fixing to make things interesting. Thorne runs into Oswalda and the two skirt the edges of a truth they both know: Oswalda, operating as the Penguin, blew up Thorne’s buildings. Thorne then stuns Oswalda by revealing one of her sons is the rat her men were searching for in the episode’s opening minutes. Oswalda confronts her sons about the betrayal, locking one of them, Aaron (Paul Scheer), in a crate and dropping the crate into the sea. Ronald (also Scheer), the other son and the true rat, flees and phones Thorne for help, but the mobster tells him he’s on his own. A furious Oswalda orders her men to track Ronnie down.

Ronald, relying on an earlier interaction with Barbara for sympathy, finds her at police headquarters and begs for police protection. She’s initially reluctant, but when he explains his brother’s murder, she whisks him away. Oswalda’s goons catch up to them almost immediately; a brief shootout ensues, and Barbara and Ronald are quickly surrounded. As the gangsters close in, Batman uses the Batmobile to scatter and incapacitate them before speeding off to confront the Penguin.

Barbara and Ronald convene with Commissioner Gordon back at the police station, where Detective Bullock (Futurama‘s John DiMaggio) calls the Penguin and brings her up to speed on her errant progeny. Enraged, she brings her right-hand man, Iggy (Gary Anthony Williams), with her atop her boat and prepares to use her military-grade cannon (shaped like a massive umbrella, too!) to blow up police headquarters. Batman, again demonstrating his knack for splendid timing, arrives, fights and beats Iggy, and engages the Penguin in a brutal bout of fisticuffs. He overpowers her, but is unable to stop her from blowing up police headquarters. Thanks to Ronald’s handy exposition about his mother’s weapons capabilities, Barbara and the others evacuate the building before the explosion.

“In Treacherous Waters” leaves us with Batman lamenting to Alfred that Oswalda’s defeat means Thorne now has an opportunity to expand his criminal empire. He says he can’t fail like this again….

Did the Batman: Caped Crusader premiere leave you wanting to forge ahead with a Bat-binge of all 10 episodes? Let us know in the comments below!