Batman’s Weirdest Cartoon Is Back — And It’s Better Than Ever
From his 1968 animated debut on CBS’s The Adventures of Batman to the brooding heights of Batman: The Animated Series and Batman Beyond, the Dark Knight keeps reinventing TV’s most enduring vigilante — and he’s about to do it again.
Batman has been doing animated laps on TV since 1968, when CBS aired The Adventures of Batman. Since then we have bounced between the darker stuff (Batman: The Animated Series, Batman Beyond, Batman: Caped Crusader) and the unapologetically goofy. On the far, neon- bright end of that spectrum: Batwheels, the kid-targeted show about Batman's sentient vehicles, which just rolled out fresh season 3 episodes on HBO Max.
So... Batwheels?
Yep. It is a Warner Bros. Animation series that puts the spotlight on the Bat-vehicles helping the Dark Knight clean up Gotham. Batman and other DC heroes are around, but the show mostly follows the cars, jets, and assorted gadgets-with-wheels as the leads. It debuted on HBO Max in 2022, skews much younger than your average Gotham title, and still finds room to tip its cowl to wider DC lore.
New season 3 drops (and who shows up)
HBO Max has added several new entries from season 3, and they bring in some heavy hitters, including Aquaman and Zatanna. The new batch covers episodes 10 through 14:
- Episode 10: "Presto Change-o"
- Episode 11: "Caped Crusader Caper"
- Episode 12: "Aqua-Wheels"
- Episode 13: "You Talkin' to Me"
- Episode 14: "The Butler Did It"
Cast and deep-cut DC love
Ethan Hawke voices Batman. Yes, that Ethan Hawke from Sinister, The Black Phone, Training Day, and The Purge. And for a preschool show, Batwheels pulls from a surprisingly wide corner of DC canon: newer Bat-family additions like Duke Thomas and Cassandra Cain show up alongside veterans like John Stewart's Green Lantern and Ray Palmer's The Atom, among others.
Season 4? Not yet
As of now, HBO Max has not announced a fourth season. Given Batman's track record, I would not bet against more episodes down the road, but officially it is wait-and-see.
What the creators were aiming for
Producer Michael G. Stern summed up the tightrope they wanted to walk when the show launched in 2022:
"Oh, I think if you start at the beginning, what we were tasked with doing was to create a show that works for a really young audience but also somehow keeps the bare similitude of Batman, keeps Batman cool, in a way. So that right away is a challenge and you start thinking, 'Well how do we then connect it to a young audience?' Well, what we can do is keep Batman cool over here, and then over here we can create a bunch of new characters that our young audience can see the show through their headlights, so to speak."