When Batman sidelines Robin from the war on crime, the Boy Wonder (Loren Lester) discovers it’s because their latest criminal quarry is Tony Zucco, the racketeer responsible for the death of Dick Grayson’s parents. Robin defies his mentor’s orders, while flashbacks reveal how it was that Dick Grayson came to be the ward, later sidekick, of Bruce Wayne and Batman.
I’ve been gently ribbed for being something of a sucker when it comes to emotional stories, often getting “choked up” at touching moments in stories that might otherwise not seem to deserve them. As I was watching “Robin’s Reckoning,” I felt that tightness in my throat a few times, and I wondered if maybe there might be something psychologically wrong with me. Then I read that Batman: The Animated Series producer Bruce Timm has also gotten emotional over this two-part episode, and so I don’t feel quite so silly.
The truth is that “Robin’s Reckoning” is such an emotionally heady episode because it tackles the reason why Robin is an essential part of the Batman mythos. While I’ll contend that the episodes of BtAS without Robin tend to be on the whole more engaging and more my speed, Robin adds an invaluable element to the story of Batman in that Robin has suffered the exact same loss that created Batman but responds to it completely differently. He’s an opportunity for Batman to live vicariously through the childhood he never had, and he’s a tangible way for Batman to prevent someone else from falling into the darkness like he did. Everything Batman does in these two episodes, he does to protect Robin from loss. In short, Bruce Wayne becomes the father he lost in order to protect the son he never got to be.
When I was younger, I lamented the fact that there wasn’t a “real” villain in this episode; Tony Zucco is paranoid and suitably loathsome, but he’s not exactly Two-Face material. Now that I’m older, though, I understand that Zucco is almost ancillary to the plot; the idea isn’t that Robin ought to have a personal vendetta against a singular villain (though the next animated Robin would – in fact, against Two-Face) but rather that Robin has the capacity to catch his parents’ killer. And while the mythology usually puts Joe Chill in the alley the night the Waynes were murdered, I’ve always found it more compelling to think that Batman never knew who killed his parents, that he never caught their murderer, that his neverending quest was inspired in part by its un-resolvability. (At least, that’s the version BtAS seems to endorse.) Robin, on the other hand, needs that chance to heal his soul, so the story isn’t about Zucco so much as it’s about Robin’s ability to move forward, to put that chapter of his life to a close and run headlong into his destiny as the Boy Wonder with a sense of reconciliation.
“Robin’s Reckoning” does a first-rate job of grappling with those ideas, introducing Robin’s backstory alongside a new rift that opens up between mentor and sidekick, and the simultaneous resolution of both at the climax is pretty inspired screenwriting. That painful reminder that Batman, too, was born in a moment of loss strikes a brutal blow for Robin, and voice actor Loren Lester does probably the best work of his Bat-career in these episodes (though the moment when he calls Alfred “man” seems woefully dated). Lester is very good at putting a youthful spark into Robin’s voice, but he’s equally potent in these dramatic beats.
Much as I like the solo adventures of Batman, “Robin’s Reckoning” is a powerful reminder that Batman is strongest when he is not alone, a lesson that Robin too learns. All told, this is such a good episode that I wish it might have been a three-parter, so that we might have seen flashbacks involving Robin’s first days on the job, perhaps even glimpsing that famous candlelight oath he swore deep in the bowels of the Batcave. The episode is so faithful to the source material elsewhere – including a construction site opener that simply must be a nod to the original comic, in which Robin confronted Zucco on a skyscraper’s skeleton – that it’s surprising the oath isn’t the final image of the episode.
As it stands, despite the slight peculiarity of this ostensible origin story coming after more than one Robin episode, “Robin’s Reckoning” is really just dynamite storytelling. It is – and readers of this review series know this is not faint praise – Robin’s “Heart of Ice,” another great episode in a string of uninterrupted favorites. (Spoilers: next week isn’t the end of the streak, either!)
Writer: Randy Rogel
Director: Dick Sebast
Villain: Tony Zucco (Thomas F. Wilson)
Next episode: “The Laughing Fish,” in which The Joker goes pescatarian.
🦇For the full list of Batman: The Animated Series reviews, click here.🦇
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