BATMAN: CAPED CRUSADER CASTS A FORMER BATMAN ACTOR AS A VILLAIN, AND IT'S PERFECT

It can be difficult to stand out amid an ongoing bumper crop of great Batman performances. From Adam West to Robert Pattinson, fans have had no shortage of potential favorites, and choosing a single "best" becomes an exercise in futility. The closest to a consensus choice is probably the late Kevin Conroy, whose legendary run on the character started with Batman: The Animated Series. Even he has a lot of strong competition, however, and solid arguments could be made for at least a half-dozen incarnations. It's usually more useful to look at the part like Hamlet, and ask what each actor brings to the role, rather than trying to anoint one single performer as the "definitive Batman."

Actor Diedrich Bader may have accomplished something unique on that front, however. He himself has memorably voiced Batman twice, first in Batman: The Brave and the Bold and then in the Harley Quinn animated series. That makes his work distinctive in and of itself, as there aren't many to take on the role in two distinct universes. However, he's found a unique way to add to it in Batman: Caped Crusader. He's not voicing Bruce Wayne, however, leaving the title role in the capable hands of Hamish Linklater. Instead, he plays an unsettling version of Harvey Dent, making him the first Batman actor to also play a notable Batman villain.

Two-Face Escaped the Batman Comics Slowly

Harvey Dent took a long time to break out of the comics, despite a long history as one of Batman's most tenacious antagonists. He first appeared in Detective Comics #66 (Bill Finger, Bob Kane, Jerry Robinson, and George Roussos) all the way back in 1942, where his name was Harvey Kent. He underwent a number of reboots, including a change to Harvey Dent in 1954's Batman #81 (David Vern Reed, Dick Sprang, and Charles Paris), which involved the first appearance of the giant coin that usually appears in comic depictions of the Batcave.

Throughout DC's various seismic Crises, he has remained a stalwart foe of Batman's, with a perennial spot in the upper echelons of his rogue's gallery. Yet despite that, it took a surprising amount of time for the character to break free of the comics. Batman 1966 famously planned on adding a version of Two-Face played by Clint Eastwood, but the series was canceled before that came about. He finally arrived in the 2017 animated feature Batman vs. Two-Face, voiced by William Shatner. The film was Adam West's final role, and released posthumously following his death on June 9, 2017.

Similarly, Tim Burton delivered a pre-Two-Face Dent in his 1989 movie Batman, played by Billy Dee Williams, and intended to become Two-Face in a later sequel. Williams was booted when Burton left, with Tommy Lee Jones stepping into the role in 1995's Batman Forever. Neither that film nor its cartoonish interpretation of the character has aged well. It took 2008's The Dark Knight and Aaron Eckhart's searing portrayal to give the character a lasting live-action presence.

As with so many aspects of Batman, however, Dent's best incarnation is probably still Batman: The Animated Series, voiced by the late Richard Moll. It arrived before Jones' turn on Batman: Forever, making it the first realized origin story outside of the comics, as well as a sinister and heartbreaking inclusion to The Animated Series' memorable villains. It also allowed Dent several episodes as a stalwart DA before his transformation, establishing his friendship with Bruce Wayne and giving them a very personal connection that haunts Batman in his later showdowns with Two-Face.

Diedrich Bader's Harvey Dent Is Crooked from the Start

Name	Played by	Appearances	First Appearance	Final Appearance
Harvey Dent/Two-Face	Diedrich Bader	8	S1, E1, "In Treacherous Waters"	S1, E10, "Savage Night"

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Most incarnations of Two-Face emphasize Dent's fall from grace: a good man who believes in the law succumbing to his demons after the scarring of his face. His darker side appeared here and there, but it didn't truly emerge until he became Two-Face. Besides the inherent sense of tragedy, the arc gave Bruce Wayne something else to brood over, wondering if the good man Harvey once was can be restored from the monster he's become. Caped Crusader dispenses with that in favor of a far less likable Gotham DA. Bader's Dent fits this Gotham City like a glove: slick, self-assured, and definitely wearing two faces well before his unfortunate scarring.

He first appears opposite Barbara in the courtroom, arguing for the guilt of an obvious fall guy caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. He could care less, as he's running for mayor, and each conviction he gets helps his poll numbers go up. Everything is transactional for him, accompanied by an air of smug entitlement that gets under everyone's skin. It comes in the service of one of the show's biggest themes: the necessity of compromise and the cost of doing good in a world so thoroughly corrupt. For all of his off-putting qualities, Dent does stand to make things better if he can get into office.

His disastrous election bid takes up the whole of the first season, as a series of PR fumbles put him down in the polls and Rupert Thorne offers him victory in exchange for playing ball with the mob. When he refuses, he's scarred by one of Thorne's associates and becomes Two-Face. Owing to who he was before, the change is less jarring and in many ways more unsettling. His criminal incarnation genuinely embodies two personalities, with the light side openly warring against the dark. The scary part is that his better angels never appeared until the acid was thrown in his face. It took his mind fraying to show him just how far from the straight and narrow he had slipped.

Bader's Batman Can Be Seen in His Two-Face

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Batman's enemies appear in a poster for Batman: Caped Crusader while Batman is in an alley and rain appears.

Bader has the advantage of playing two comparatively light versions of The Caped Crusader in the past. The Brave and the Bold pays homage to Batman's sunny Silver Age incarnation, with fun-filled team-ups and an emphasis on snazzy gadgets. His Bruce Wayne in Harley Quinn is openly satirical, as a self-serious rich boy who never quite grew up, and who spends a good deal of time with pie on his face. It speaks volumes about the actor's credentials that he could make them both so distinctive and yet both unquestionably Batman. Their largely jovial tone helps underscore the very real darkness of his version of Harvey Dent.

Even his most light-hearted moments have an air of phoniness to them, playing off of the actor's bright tone to create a man who is all surface all the time. Beneath it lies the anger, the vindictiveness and the self-righteous desire to break the rules he's always upheld, which he keeps secret until they're too powerful to deny. In many ways, he's the person that Bruce pretends to be, which gives their genuine friendship an enhanced sense of tragedy. Bruce has no problems manipulating Harvey, even out of pure motivations. Harvey's transformation into Two-Face hits Bruce particularly hard, both for his implied culpability in Harvey's corruption, and for the fact that a similar fate might befall him if he's not careful.

Other actors have played Batman in multiple universes, including Adam West, who voiced Batman in a 1977 animated series after memorably playing him on the live-action show, and it's safe to say that Conroy's takes embrace multiple universes. But they didn't break from each new incarnation as strongly as Bader has, and none of them have stepped into the role of such a major rogues' gallery figure. It helps make Bader's Harvey Dent something unique, and indeed, creates a spiritual connection between him and Batman that might not have existed before.