Gotham Knights only managed to last 13 episodes before being cancelled by The CW, but given the poor reviews and ratings, there wasn't too much of an outcry from DC fans.
A group of Batman's sidekicks protecting Gotham City in the wake of his death is a cool premise, but ditching the costumes gave the series a mid-2000s feel which alienated a lot of comic book readers from the start.
We've previously heard rumblings that Jensen Ackles was being eyed to play Batman. Now, showrunners James Stoteraux and Chad Fiveash have confirmed they were given the green light to include the Dark Knight in at least one episode.
However, they had someone different in mind to don the cape and cowl.
Talking on The Showrunner Whisperer (via Multiverse of Color), Stoteraux explained, "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."
"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.'"
He adds, "It’s one of those things where they gave us permission, and then unfortunately, who would have played that role – it’s just sort of devastating – was Kevin Conroy. [He] was too sick at that point. 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. 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."
Conroy lent his voice to the Caped Crusader in countless adaptations, with the most famous being Batman: The Animated Series and the Arkham video game franchise. Sadly, he passed away following a battle with cancer in 2022. He played a live-action Bruce Wayne in The CW's Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover.
It's devastating to think this didn't happen, but was Ackles - who starred alongside Two-Face actor Misha Collins in Supernatural - next in line to play Gotham Knights' Batman?
"Misha was trying to bring in Jensen, which would have been awesome," Stoteraux notes. "But ultimately, it was one of those things where we wanted it to be impactful, and we wanted [it] to be someone that had a lot of gravitas. If we weren’t able to pull that off, we didn’t want to do it [just] to do it."
"That’s why that never ended up happening, but DC was really terrific about trying to help us make that happen."
You can watch the full interview in the player below.