Batman: The Animated Series - "Nothing to Fear"

“What hidden terror keeps the Batman awake at night?”

That’s the question The Scarecrow sets out to answer, robbing his way through a revenge scheme that Batman has to understand before he can put an end to the wiry villain’s plot. But just who is The Scarecrow? What does he want? And what really scares Batman?

“Nothing to Fear” is a great example of why Scarecrow is a tricky villain to get right, an A-list gimmick mixed with a B-level (at best) threat to Gotham City. We saw in Batman Begins much ado about Batman’s use of the power of fear, turning his adversaries’ fear against them. To that end, Scarecrow ought to be a first-rate foe for the Dark Knight, a feedback loop of phobia. And when Scarecrow douses Batman in his fear gas and delivers the line above, it seems we’re in for a real treat.

Bafflingly, however, that’s not quite the focus of the episode; indeed, it’s difficult to say what the focus is. The episode bounces between establishing Scarecrow’s motive for revenge, his execution of a fairly mundane heist-not-heist, and Bruce’s underlying fears that he’s failing the memory of his murdered parents. The last of those is where the real meat of the episode ought to be, but puzzlingly the writers throw in a wrinkle that Scarecrow’s fear gas is “time-released,” deferring a fuller consideration of the psychology of Batman until the very ending of the episode.

Don’t get me wrong – that moment packs a punch, often imitated but seldom duplicated. Amid the spectral accusation that he has failed his parents, Batman retorts, in the gravelly gravitas that only Kevin Conroy can bring, “I am vengeance! I am the night! I AM BATMAN!” It’s the kind of moment that would belong in the opening credits, if the opening credits to Batman: The Animated Series weren’t already so perfect, and it’s an affirmation – maybe the first of its kind in the show thus far – of just what Batman stands for, of how confident he is (and ought to be) in his mission. I would have liked, however, to see more of the episode devoted to that psychological journey rather than the criminal threat of Scarecrow.

You see, Scarecrow works best when Batman has to overcome him on a psychological level. Once Batman gets his hands on Scarecrow, it’s a fairly quick fight. Again, Batman Begins did it just right, using Scarecrow as a preliminary to the main threat. I’ll say this a lot throughout this series of reviews, but it’s not that this is a bad episode per se; even a mediocre episode of Batman: The Animated Series is a perfectly fine diversion. Episodes like this do, however, underscore just how much more thoroughly these themes are explored in future episodes, like “Perchance to Dream” or “Over the Edge” (the latter featuring Scarecrow, in a shocking redesign – about which, much more later).

While parts of “Nothing to Fear” are more undercooked than I might like, there’s some good stuff in this episode. Last March, moviegoers were treated to one more iteration of the murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne. A lot of us felt like, “This again?” (even though it proved essential to the climax of the film), so kudos to “Nothing to Fear” for going in another direction and implying the backstory in order to foreground the effect this absence has had on Bruce Wayne. It’s wise that the show does this early in the run, permitting us to keep this knowledge in the back of our minds. This isn’t the overconfident Batman of 1966 or even the brooding detective of 1989. Here’s a Batman who exposes his humanity by wrestling with his doubts about whether his nocturnal missions are making the difference he needs to see.

It’s important to remember that in 1992 the Scarecrow wasn’t exactly a prominent member of the rogues gallery, so “Nothing to Fear” needs to do a certain amount of introduction for him, and in that sense it works. It also concludes with a delicious bit of irony when Scarecrow gets a dose of his own medicine (on which I suspect Batman Begins riffed). And the episode’s final moment introduces the looming motif of the Wayne family grave, a central image in the Batman: The Animated Series playbook. Bruce’s absurdly “cool” sunglasses, thankfully, aren’t in subsequent episodes.

Original Air Date: September 15, 1992

Writer: Henry Gilroy & Sean Catherine Derek

Director: Boyd Kirkland

Villain: Scarecrow (Henry Polic II)

Next episode: “The Last Laugh,” in which a clown dies, and a bath is drawn.

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