When Gotham’s electronics are overrun with brainteasers and a giant puzzle box arrives at police headquarters, Batman and Robin know that The Riddler (John Glover) is back in town. An assist from Alfred helps Batman crack the clues, but the Dynamic Duo is one step behind Riddler, who’s ensnared Commissioner Gordon in a trap from which only Batman is allowed to rescue him.
The Riddler’s debut in “If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich?” is arguably one of the finest episodes of Batman: The Animated Series, with its antagonist one of the most underrepresented in the show’s catalogue. And while this episode advances the character of The Riddler in a few interesting ways, it also sets him back a step or two, particularly with a finale that leaves the character (without spoiling too much) incapacitated in a way that would seem to preclude him from appearing again. It’s an episode that is, at its best, very very good but simultaneously adorned with several puzzling features that feel out of place.
The main plot is essentially a Batman version of the movie Tron, in which Batman has to enter the computerized world of The Riddler in order to rescue Jim Gordon, who’s been digitized and entrapped in Riddler’s latest electronic labyrinth. Therein lies my big issue with “What Is Reality?” – we’ve kind of already seen this episode, and it continues to immerse The Riddler in the world of techno/cyber-crime as a kind of shorthand for his intelligence. The writers one-up “If You’re So Smart” by giving Riddler a way to upload consciousness into a computer, which feels a little hokey but nevertheless falls under the umbrella of “Batman still works in this genre.” But the episode does feel a little dated in the way it characterizes Robin as this tech-savvy cool kid and Batman as a fuddy-duddy baffled by all this newfangled tech, and it doesn’t quite feel true to form to have The Riddler so plugged into the digital world. (Had the villain been, say, The Calculator, I might not have had this grievance, but he wouldn’t be rehabilitated as a valuable character until 2004. A remnant of H.A.R.D.A.C. would have worked well, too, but that’s being saved for a later episode.)
Then again, this episode contains some really great Riddler material, beginning with his riddles-within-riddles (riddleception?) that require Batman to recognize first a pattern of numbers, then the corresponding value in Roman numerals. That’s my Riddler! Moreover, this episode contains a number of really solid riddles (from “no tales” in $1.01 in change leading to “copper headquarters,” up through a game of chess where “knightfall” could kill Batman), proof positive that Riddler must be a fun character to write. Then there’s the running subplot in which Riddler is attempting to expunge all records of Edward Nygma’s existence, effectively deleting his alter ego so that he can continue his crime wave without leaving a trail. Had this been the focus of the episode, it’d be first-rate riddling, creating an enigma behind Edward Nygma; as it is, though, it serves only to pay off a pun in which Riddler threatens to “delete” Batman within the world of the computer.
The showrunners have said that it was truly difficult to write for a character as clever as The Riddler, and when done right he’s probably handily the second greatest villain in Batman’s rogues gallery. And so “What Is Reality?” is a good but not great Riddler episode, populated with enough great Riddler moments that it’s far from a total loss. Indeed, it works quite well as a sequel to “If You’re So Smart,” following up on Riddler’s evolution from a personal vendetta to a master criminal. It’s this kind of internal continuity that BtAS did particularly well, this narrative consistency which made characters like The Riddler feel (despite their brief appearances) like integral parts of the animated universe’s larger story. Though you wouldn’t know it to look at this episode, Riddler does resurface, in what I recall as being a particularly strong episode (and maybe even better than “If You’re So Smart”?) – with, if nothing else, perhaps the show’s most outrageous audio gag.
Writers: Marty Isenberg and Robert N. Skir
Director: Dick Sebast
Villain: The Riddler (John Glover)
Next episode: “I Am the Night”, in which a commissioner is shot, a knight facepalms, and Batman has miles to go before he sleeps.
🦇For the full list of Batman: The Animated Series reviews, click here.🦇
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