Bruce Timm, who is the showrunner for Batman: Caped Crusader, recently explained why he gender-swapped Penguin in the show.
A photo from Batman: Caped Crusader (2024), Prime Video
In an interview with the Emmys, Timm and executive producer James Tucker were asked by Christine Champagne, “I literally clapped when I saw The Penguin was a woman and heard Minnie Driver doing her voice. It was an unexpected and wonderful surprise. Why did you make that choice?”
Timm answered, “James and I were talking about the overview of the show, and we said, ‘One of the problems with Batman, as he is, is there’s a lack of good villains. You’ve got Catwoman, you’ve got Poison Ivy, you’ve got Harley Quinn. But it would be really good to have more female villains.'”
He concluded, “And off the top of my head, I said, ‘We never really could figure out exactly what to do with The Penguin, what the gimmick for The Penguin would be. What if we gender-flip The Penguin?’”
A photo from Batman: Caped Crusader (2024), Prime Video
As for Tucker he responded, “When he said ‘Maybe we can gender-flip Penguin,’ I just got this flood of ideas. I was thinking of Marlene Dietrich in her tuxedo and Cabaret the musical and the art form of cabaret, and I just started drawing.”
“I instantly got a flood of ideas. Also, I was thinking a little bit of Harvey Fierstein and Hairspray and Divine. It just was like I knew instantly what it could be,” he elaborated.
Tucker would also add, “That was the mission statement for the show in general: to do something that harkened back to the original, but flip it. We’ve seen live-action and animated versions of Batman on TV.”
Commissioner Jim Gordon in Batman: Caped Crusader (2024), Prime Video
Actress Minnie Driver, who voiced the gender-swapped character previously explained why the character was gender-swapped telling Variety, “Here’s the thing: If it hadn’t been so beautifully imagined or reimagined, if it had somehow just been shoehorned in to tick some box of ‘Oh, we have to now have a fluidity around characters,’ That’s not it. The essence of the Penguin is the essence of the Penguin.”
She added, “She’s properly evil. She really does some terrible things, and I hope that she will be embraced as the villain that she always has been.”
Driver concluded, “The essence of this show is quintessentially Batman. Make no mistake, and the fact that the Penguin is a really terrifying woman speaks volumes about the imagination of Bruce [Timm] and the whole team.”
A photo from Batman: Caped Crusader (2024), Prime Video
Timm had previously indicated the entire series was being created to push woke ideology. At DC FanDome back in 2021, he said, “The way we deal with the characters is going to be a quite bit more modern in terms of inclusivity, representation, things like that.”
Interestingly, at the beginning of the interview, Timm made it clear he had no intention of wanting to do Batman: Caped Crusader. He said, “Well, I kind of blame this show on James, because my bosses were interested in going back and revisiting BTAS. They pitched it to me, and I was like, ‘I am so not interested.’ I didn’t want to have to compete with everybody’s memory of that show, because a lot of people grew up with it, and that’s their favorite version of Batman, which is awesome. Another thing is, I didn’t really feel like there was much more we could do with that version of the characters.”
Timm continued, “But James and I had worked on a series called Justice League Unlimited, which was one of my favorite shows I’ve ever worked on, and that was a show that basically had Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman and all those characters teaming up with every character in the DC universe. So I thought there were more possibilities and potential to do different stories. I suggested that to my bosses, and they went, “Well, we’re not as excited about that. But yeah, if you want to talk to James about it, if you want to work with James on it, that’d be great.”
“So I called James up and told him what prompted the whole thing, and we started talking about Justice League, and then he kept swinging the conversation back to BTAS,” he said.
Clayface in Batman: Caped Crusader (2024), Prime Video
As for why he decided to do a Batman show rather than a Justice League series, it appears that Tucker wanted to make his own version of Batman: The Animated Series because he was unable to work on the first one.
Tucker explained, “I started [my career] when BTAS was in production. I was in Chicago subcontracting at a studio that was doing the first season of Animaniacs at the time, but I knew BTAS was happening. In fact, we got some test footage on a VHS from BTAS, I think it was from the episode “On Leather Wings.” I saw it, and my head about blew off. The studio I was at was under consideration to work on an episode, but my boss, the head of the studio, was like, ‘No, we can’t do that stuff.’ It was just too advanced. It wasn’t funny animal stuff. So I thought, ‘There goes my opportunity.’ And I just went on and made Animaniacs. But I always thought, ‘That’s what I really need to do, where I really need to be.’”
“Then I ended up coming out to L.A. and getting a job on Superman: The Animated Series — interviewing with Bruce and getting that job after BTAS had ended,” he shared. “And we ended up doing more Batman later, but it was different in tone. And fast forward [to Caped Crusader] — wishes do come true, kids.”
Catwoman in Batman: Caped Crusader (2024), Prime Video
The show has not been well received audiences. It currently has a rotten 55% Audience Score on Rotten Tomatoes with an average rating of 3.1 out of 5.
Batman: Caped Crusader Rotten Tomatoes scores
On IMDb, the show has a 7.4 out of 10. However, the unweighted mean is 6.9 out of 10. The show also does not appear to have that big of an audience. The first episode received the most reviews with over 1,600 on IMDb. By the 10th and final episode of the season, that number had been halved to just 811.
For comparison, Netflix’s animated Arcane series had over 17,000 reviews for its first episode. It’s final episode received over 19,000 reviews.
Batman: Caped Crusader IMDB scores
What do you make of Timm’s explanation for why Penguin was gender-swapped?
