UPDATE: While the video has been updated, none of the commentary below (from 2016) has! Please consider this a re-post!
Episode 7 marks a sea change of sorts in the Arkham Knight universe, as one of our primary objectives tragically becomes redundant early in the episode.
It's far too late to protect you from this spoiler: Episode 7 marks the death of Batman's longtime sidekick Barbara Gordon, aka Oracle, aka formerly Batgirl, who had been in Scarecrow's clutches since Episode 3. Basically, Scarecrow pumps her full of fear toxin, places a loaded gun next to her, and uses Batman's terrifying visage as a catalyst to scare her into shooting herself. It's an extremely powerful and moving scene that would have been all the more tragic if the hallucinatory Joker didn't comically interpose himself between Batman and Oracle at the moment when she pulls the trigger. But that does serve the purpose of keeping the scene PG-13, which is how you get that lucrative demographic.
Now here's a little behind the scenes insight: It's at this point in the story that I do the most significant trimming of gameplay content and rearranging of plot elements that you'll see in these videos. However, no one will likely notice except for die hard fans who know the game backwards and forwards, and hopefully even most of those fans will agree that my changes result in a more streamlined story that makes a little bit more sense than what's presented in the game. That's not to criticize the game's designers by any means - the parts I cut out of these videos provided some great gameplay experiences. But when your goal is to edit 30+ hours of gameplay into 15 half-hour episodes, some material has to end up on the cutting room floor.
Anyway, what happens next in MY version of the story is the introduction of the Joker's former #1 henchwoman, Harley Quinn. Which means I get to suggest another casting choice for my hypothetical live action version of the Arkham Knight story: Lizzy Caplan. Don't get me wrong, I like Margot Robbie a lot, and her portrayal of Harley Quinn is the part of Suicide Squad that I'm most interested in seeing, but that movie is going to be much darker and grittier than the Animated Series-inspired Arkham Universe. Also, it's never good to cross the streams, so to speak, in different adaptations of similar subject matter, and if we're going with a fresh take, Lizzy Caplan can fill all the roles that Harley Quinn needs to. We've seen her nail both comedy (Mean Girls, Party Down) and drama (Masters of Sex, True Blood), and I'd really like to see her take a shot at full-blown crazy.
This is also the first episode where you get to work together with Robin, but since we'll explore the Batman/Robin dynamic more fully in the next episode, I'll reserve my casting choice for Tim Drake until next week. That said, there's not much more in this episode that requires a lot of explanation. We get a couple of new gadgets: one that's part of the story (the Voice Synthesizer) and one that's more of an easter egg than a necessary addition to the utility belt (the Freeze Blast, yet another direct reference to a Mortal Kombat character). We also get introduced to a new way for Batman and Robin to team up in order to take down the gigantic minigunners that patrol the Haunted House set where Christina Bell makes her last stand.
Speaking of which, I advocated for Katherine Heigl to play the part of Christina Bell way back in my blog recap for Episode 3, where the Joker infected were first introduced, but it's not until this episode where we really get to see that character in action. I still wholeheartedly stand by my choice, and I encourage you to watch Act 3 of this episode again with my casting choice in mind to see if you agree. I also want to call your attention to how Act 3 ends - with Robin countering an incoming attack from Christina Bell and then proceeding to chokeslam her to the ground. I'll touch the awkward situations that arise from trying to reconcile the presence of female supervillains with the heinous nature of violence against women in the voiceover commentary for the next episode, but for now, can we agree that Robin's action was somewhat justified in this circumstance since it was clearly in self defense? If you feel differently or have any thoughts on the matter, please sound off in the comments to this post or the YouTube video!
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