Why is Alfred fat in Batman: Caped Crusader? He's not the only one redrawn — look closely at Catwoman and Batman too
Batman: Caped Crusader landed on Prime Video on 1 August 2024 with a butler nobody recognised. Jason Watkins voices an Alfred who is squat, round, and clean-shaven — no silver fox, no lean ex-SAS frame.
He's drawn that way because that is how Alfred was drawn in 1943, before an actor's jawline changed him for the next 80 years.
Alfred started out portly
Alfred debuted in Batman #16, cover-dated April 1943, written by Don Cameron and drawn by Bob Kane. His surname was Beagle, not Pennyworth, a nod to his hobby: he was an amateur sleuth, heavyset and comically bad at it, closer to a bumbling Watson than a surrogate father.
Then the 1943 Columbia serial cast the tall, pencil-moustached William Austin in the part. DC editors preferred the film version, so in Detective Comics #83, dated January 1944, Alfred took a trip to a health resort and came back thin with a moustache. That look stuck. Bruce Timm simply went back to the version that existed before the rewrite.
Batman and Catwoman got the same treatment
The whole show is a 1940s period piece — no computers, no mobile phones, rotary dials only — so the designs come from the same decade:
- Batman — short gloves, tall boots, long cowl ears, and a small chest emblem, lifted from his 1939 debut rather than the modern armoured silhouette.
- Catwoman — a purple dress, cowl, and green cape, her original Golden Age costume. Christina Ricci's version is also a wealthy socialite in Bruce Wayne's own circle rather than a street thief, modelled on Barbara Stanwyck's con artist in The Lady Eve (1941).
- Harvey Bullock — heavyset and openly corrupt, a role usually handed to his partner Arnold Flass.
Timm explained the Catwoman choice to Entertainment Weekly in 2024:
"We didn't want to do the B:TAS Catwoman... So we thought, well, let's go all the way back to the beginning. I love the original look that she had in the '40s. It's purple!"
What isn't from the 1940s
Plenty. Penguin is Oswalda Cobblepot, voiced by Minnie Driver. Jim Gordon is Black, Harley Quinn is Asian American, and Alfred's relationship with Bruce is strictly professional — Batman calls him by his surname and treats him as staff, not family. Those are new. The waistline isn't.
Season 2 dropped all ten episodes on 31 July 2026, adding Edward Nygma, Carrie Kelley, and Roxy Rocket to the roster. Alfred is still round.