Review of Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker (2000) by Randall Q — 14 Jul 2012

Holy cow. Out of all the features from the Animated Series canon, I remember "Return of the Joker" the least from my childhood. I'm not even sure I've ever seen it. As a huge Bat-anything dork, I'd watch anything that had the Caped Crusader involved as a kid. But I've always had a love-hate relationship with Batman Beyond. It's a cool concept, and there are some swell episodes, but I never felt that any of the villains held up to the standards of what a Batman villain is. As I'm typing this, I can't think of any original villain from the series. The only character that ever stuck out was Terry. Everything else just felt so Saturday morning. Alas, it had Conroy's Bruce Wayne in it AND Mark Hammill's Joker, AAAAAND I didn't remember it, so I rationalized with myself that I had more than enough reason to watch it during my 2012 Dark Knight Rises hype-a-thon. Besides, it couldn't be worse than "Mystery of the Batwoman.".

To my surprise, not only does it surpass "Mystery" by leaps and bounds, it stands next to "Mask of the Phantasm" as an equal. "Return of the Joker" provides a satisfying conclusion to Batman's relationship with the Joker from the original Animated Series and comes highly recommend to anyone with a fond memory of the series. "Return of the Joker" is a dark, dark bat-tale that takes advantage of its PG-13 rating and kept me guessing throughout.