I was pretty sure I was done with the Joker. After Heath Ledger’s Oscar-winning, arguably definitive take on the Batman villain in The Dark Knight—and Jared Leto’s confused, forgettable take in Suicide Squad—it seemed obvious that it was time to push the Joker aside and give one of the literally dozens of underutilized villains in Batman’s rogues gallery some time in the spotlight. Give me Clayface! Give me Man-Bat! Give me Black Mask! Give me the Court of Owls!
So when the first season of the episodic video game Batman: The Telltale Series introduced an Arkham Asylum inmate going by the name "John Doe"—a dude with green hair, a rictus grin, and a propensity for breaking into unnerving peals of laughter—I rolled my eyes. The Joker? Again? Did I really have the patience for yet another face-off between Caped Crusader and the Clown Prince of Crime?
Telltale’s Batman is essentially the video game equivalent of a Choose Your Own Adventure novel—heavy on story and light on gameplay, with a branching plot based on the tough choices each player is forced to make along the way. So in Telltale’s Batman, I initially made the choice to minimize the time I spent with John Doe, and to brush him aside whenever he approached me. This version of Bruce Wayne might not have known how evil this maniac could be—but I did, and I disliked and distrusted John Doe immediately. He’s the Joker, right? Why would I ally with this psychopath?
This was, of course, exactly what Telltale’s Batman was counting on—setting up one story every Batman fan thought they knew, and twisting it in a totally different direction. My contempt for John Doe was borne out of accumulated baggage about the Joker, drawn from the Batman movies and TV shows and video games and comics I’ve consumed over the years. It wasn’t until getting deeper into the second season of Telltale’s Batman—subtitled, tellingly, The Enemy Within—that I realized I had been treating John Doe’s villainy as a foregone conclusion when the game was treating it more like a question mark. As John, now sprung from Arkham, approaches Bruce with an opportunity to get the drop on Gotham City’s biggest villains, an intriguing hypothetical wormed its way into my brain: If this guy wasn’t already the Joker, maybe he didn’t need to become the Joker.
And so I spent the rest of The Enemy Within—culminating in the final episode, which dropped earlier this week—trying to prevent John Doe from becoming the Joker. (If you want to try it for yourself, you can get both seasons on Playstation 4, Xbox One, and computer or mobile platforms.)
Telltale’s Batman is always at its best when it subverts the seemingly immovable building blocks of the Batman universe. The first season kicked into high gear when it became clear that, in this telling of the Batman story, Bruce Wayne’s deceased father—always depicted as noble, saintly doctor and philanthropist—was actually a shady mobster who was secretly responsible for much of Gotham City’s corruption. Further episodes introduced more unique wrinkles on traditional Batman staples: the ability to save Harvey Dent from the disfiguring acid attack that earned him the nickname Two-Face, or the climactic revelation that one longtime Batman ally was actually the game’s biggest villain.
But the series saved its cleverest and most surprising re-imagining for the Joker. When he reemerges in The Enemy Within, John is a peppy loser who hero-worships the handsome, charming billionaire Bruce Wayne. The Enemy Within even reverses the power dynamic of the relationship between the Joker and Harley Quinn. Here, John Doe is a lovestruck sap desperate to earn even a few crumbs of warmth from Harley, whose affection for John is largely predicated on how easily she can manipulate him into doing her bidding. John is so desperate to win Harley’s heart that he takes Bruce out and asks him for dating advice.
And that’s one of many times when The Enemy Within puts the player into a very uncomfortable position. By then, you’ll probably like John. He’s weird, and he could benefit from a little impulse control—but he’s also funny and scrappy and unfailingly loyal. He also doesn’t realize his old buddy Bruce Wayne is bent on taking down Harley Quinn and the rest of his criminal cohorts. And so you’re left with the uneasy moral quandary of whether you should abuse his trust to bring the rest of his friends to justice.
This tension comes to a head at the end of the penultimate episode of The Enemy Within, when Harley Quinn is cornered on a bridge by law-enforcement agents bent on taking him down. By now, John has figured out that Bruce Wayne might not actually have his best interests at heart. Whether or not he betrays Harley in this moment is entirely up to the player. If you side with the law, he’ll snap, and become a version of the psycho criminal Joker any Batman fan would recognize.
But there’s a second option that pushes the story in a much more interesting direction. If you refuse to betray John’s trust, he’ll side with Batman over Harley Quinn, and remake himself in his hero’s image: a kind of vigilante superhero who calls himself... the Joker. Carving his hair into the shape of Batman’s cowl and throwing his own smile-shaped Batarangs, John styles himself as a co-crimefighter bent on keeping Gotham City safe. The problem, given his unstable mind, is that he takes his crusade too far: Brutally and repeatedly stabbing the criminals he subdues on the streets, and appointing himself judge, jury, and executioner over the public officials he deems too corrupt.
And that means Batman ultimately needs to stop him. I don’t want to overstate how much freedom Telltale’s Batman gives you to craft this story. Whether he’s a vigilante or a villain, John Doe’s arc is fundamentally tragic. Either way, he’s a violent and unstable figure who poses a genuine threat to Gotham City. You can’t finish The Enemy Within without confronting him, brawling with him, and putting him behind bars.
But playing such a key role in the origin of the Joker brings the character to life in a way that I’ve never seen before, and puts Batman in a troubling and morally dubious position. At this point, most Batman stories pay lip service to the idea that Batman is just as messed up as the criminals he hunts, and that his presence in Gotham City may actually push the city’s criminals and oddballs into a similarly colorful direction. But those ideas have rarely been explored to such a literal, haunting effect. The Enemy Within makes the case, rather convincingly, that John Doe—a troubled young man whose therapy was interrupted by a chance encounter with Bruce Wayne—might have been just fine if he hadn’t become so enamored with such an extreme individual.
After his final confrontation with Batman, John has one final question for you: Did you ever really think of him as a friend, or were you just using him all along? The Enemy Within lets you decide the answer. And while Telltale games are sometimes guilty of taking inconsequential choices and making them feel consequential, I struggled with this one. He's so deeply wounded that you want to comfort him—but when had nurturing Bruce Wayne’s relationship with John Doe done anything but made John’s life worse?
In the end, I made my choice, and a post-credits coda hinted at the consequences that might result from it if Telltale’s Batman returns for a third season. But whatever happens next, The Enemy Within deserves credit for making me feel personally invested in the arc of Batman’s most overexposed villain. The Joker has always said his past is multiple-choice, but this is the first time I’ve felt like I was the one checking the boxes.