Gotham Knights co-showrunners James Stoteraux and Chad Fiveash recently revealed that Kevin Conroy almost appeared in the superhero drama series as Bruce Wayne/Batman.
On the latest episode of Multiverse of Color‘s The Showrunner Whisperer podcast, Stoteraux and Fiveash detailed how they intended to use Conroy in Gotham Knights, explaining that he would have appeared in a flashback scene opposite Navia Robinson’s Carrie Kelley/Robin.
“One of the things that I don’t know if we’ve quite exactly talked about [is that] we were given permission for one episode to be able to use Batman for Gotham Knights,” said Stoteraux. “There was a scene from The Dark Knight Returns that we wanted to do. It was Robin’s audition sides; the interaction between her and Batman. Everyone loved the scene, and we felt it was important to Robin’s backstory to show this meeting.”
He continued, “It was one of those things where, initially, there was a bit of reluctance for that. But our executives really fought and said, ‘Look, I think that this is the perfect setup and way to do this. You get this one scene you can do.'”
Kevin Conroy was too sick to play Batman again
Unfortunately, Conroy was “too sick at that point” to join the cast of Gotham Knights, revealed Stoteraux. Conroy, who had provided the voice of Bruce Wayne/Batman in more than two dozen animated projects, died in November 2022 following a private battle with intestinal cancer.
“He was always my favorite Batman, and we were dealing with an older Batman. You can still see in some of the DNA of things, like for the pilot, [we] used a photo double, and it’s not quite an accident that the photo double looks a lot like Kevin,” Stoteraux said. “That was very much intentional, and it was one of those things where we just weren’t able to, but we wanted to do it.”
Once Conroy became unavailable, the showrunners opted to remove the flashback scene. “We didn’t want to just do this with a random person,” Stoteraux explained. “We felt like it was important [to have] somebody of Kevin’s stature and somebody that had this gravitas and obviously, he was the right age for that. That was initially the plan, and it was obviously very sad that he died, but we didn’t want to do it just by slotting somebody in there.”
What was Gotham Knights about?
Gotham Knights aired on The CW for a single season, premiering in March 2023 and concluding that June. The series, which was not part of the network’s Arrowverse franchise, follows Bruce Wayne’s adopted son, Turner Hayes, as he forms an unlikely alliance with the children of Batman’s enemies when they are all framed for killing the Caped Crusader.
Following low viewership and negative reviews from critics and fans, Gotham Knights was canceled by The CW in June 2023. The series remains available to stream on Max.
