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The lego Batman movie version of Batjokes is neat but its not by any means the truest Batjokes. The truest Batjokes is dysfunctional and unhealthy and gruesome because the Joker IS a bad person.

I do think its fair to claim that you can’t see Batman ever dating the Joker after the things he does to the Robins but that doesn’t mean there can’t be anything between them before that, and considering the inconsistencies of the timeline anyhow it’s not like both can’t happen in the same universe.

And yes, Batman does have a strong sense of morality while the Joker has none, but that didn’t stop Batman from canonically fooling around with catwoman, so why would it stop him from having something with the Joker?

It’s not like Batman is entirely anti-violence. He’s simply against killing, and against crime, though he himself hypocritially is breaking the law constantly, from physical assault and tax fraud, getting information from illegal sources to child endangerment.

And though the Joker doesn’t avoid killing he certainly doesn’t make it a big goal either. He isn’t killing people because he thirsts for violence, he kills them if they happen to be in his way because he lacks the morality that would stop him.

A reoccuring weapon he uses is Joker gas, something that rarely kills and instead simply tends to paralize. Murder isnt the goal it’s a side effect. He doesn’t openly consider himself evil because he doesn’t believe in good or evil. He doesn’t do things to be evil. He does things for either his amusement, to send a message, to get a reaction or simply to see what happens.

He isn’t evil in a way of discriminatory crime, he doesnt pick his victims by gender or age or race. He doesnt pick off people who are vulnerable. He picks people simply for the fact that they land in his path, and in that way he is deceptively redeemable.

While Batman wouldn’t simply embrace him with all his crime and violence, just the way he is now, that doesn’t mean he’d rule him out completely. More likely he’d hope that by being a beacon of morality he could change the Joker, redeem him, bring him from completely immoral and pure egoistical hedonism to something more managable.

Ofcourse it wouldn’t likely ever happen. The Joker himself sees no reason and has no desire to change. So he wouldn’t. But he would take advantage of Batman’s naivety of seeing good and worth in all people.

And in many versions, it’s likely the Joker too would hold some kind of belief that he could change Batman. Yes, there are versions where his obsession derrives from the clashing of their worldviews and the contrast of their beliefs, but there are ones where he’d definitely believe he could “corrupt” Batman, change him by making him see the world his way, show him that the world will be cruel and unforgiving with or without people like them.

To take away the Jokers lack of morality is to water him down. And to say he wouldn’t hurt a child is to give him a sense of morality.

Trying to change eachother through deception, trying to force your beliefs on the other through physical violence is inherently a part of their relationship.

Also i’m not exactly sure how to word this but like i see them as perfectionism vs. Pohhuism in a way? Thats the best wording i can muster

Basically Batman cares so much for his city, for his morals, for his mission, that he’s borderline torturing himself with discipline. Sleep deprivation, hurried stitches with no anaesthetic, etc. its his ultimate defining factor when it comes to his identity. And it’s what causes the dysfunction in his relationships. He cares too much about Gotham to care for anyone else, or at least to show he cares about anyone else.

But the Joker has a lack of care for anything. His only ideal in life is amusing himself. Not in a way i’d call nihilist but in a way I’d call absurdist. With the exception of batman he couldn’t care less about the people who surround him.

Outside of this i could also see them as an Archangel vs Lucifer? An archangel usually is the antithesis to a powerful demon where the pair are destined to fight til eternity should one breach the other’s territory. Archangel’s defend the rules that god set (in Batmans case his rules that he defends are the law). While Lucifer walked out of heaven and damned himself to escape those rules, choosing freedom over acceptance and encouraging others to realise their free will and choose for themselves wether they want to be among gods kingdom where they’ll never be free or his kingdom where they’ll all be accepted. (To do crime or not to do crime) and yes if the Joker is lucifer that would make Batman Archangel Michael specifically

In an interview, Vivziepop said that "redemption is complex", which I agree, it's complex, especially because it depends on the individual... so where is that complexity that she sees in her show? Why is it shown as if there is one way to be a good person? Why doesn't it explore guilt and atonement at all?

My theory is that when she said "redemption is complex" what she actually meant is "I actually have no clue how it works so I pull the "I'm 14 and this is deep" card to sound smart". Ok, too much judgemental, but sometimes you have to be a dick if you want to be direct.

To make my point clear, her show doesn't portray her view of redemption in general, heck, her characters don't even change. Bad guys have no gray areas, and those who call out the good guys' bad actions face a D.A.R.V.O. treatment. It shows redemption more like a medal or a label that allows you to pass Hell rather than a concrete act of change.

Let's start with the obvious problem that I talked about over and over: Charlie.

One of the key problems is that the narrative follows her morality only, which, for a show that wants to talk about redemption, ruins any possibility of nuance. As some people pointed out, the show ultimately portrays only a few characters as deserving redemption, but not everyone. It shouldn't be a problem if that was intentional, that perhaps Charlie understands that not everyone can be redeemed. But unfortunately, that doesn't happen. Charlie stubbornly believes that everyone can be redeemed until the end. To make things worse, not only she doesn't change her perspective, but she also doesn't change her methods. And is not even like that she's the only character who believes that everyone can be redeemed, no. Vaggie, Lucifer, Emily, Sera and everyone follow her ideal, anyone who doubts her gets antagonized.

You may be thinking, "Perhaps Charlie is supposed to be 100% good with no fail. Perhaps she's meant to be a guide for these sinners". Here's the thing, she either is 100% pure or she's flawed, you can't have both.

Not to mention her methods to redeem sinners and how they portray these methods as the right way.

She teaches to stop with drugs, alcohol, and sex as if those are the main reasons these people are in Hell.

"It starts with sorry". This method is reused by Penteus towards Sera not only as if she and Heaven are the only people who are in the wrong, but also as if saying sorry is enough to cancel all wrongdoings.

Not only she treats sinners like babies instead of adults who committed crimes, but also teaches them stuff that are on a kindergarten level.

Makes them participate in a war against Adam (with 0 moral conflict btw) as if fighting for the Hotel is enough to call it redemption. It's just "awful criminals vs the police", very hard to call it "good guys vs bad guys". You may think that is redemption because "it's for a good cause and the angels are just big meanies", but if we should follow this logic, then I'm pretty sure that the exorcists were indeed fighting for the protection of Heaven (aka a good thing). That's not redemption, that's a pragmatic thing to do, not necessarily moral. Heck, some of them participated for selfish reasons (the cannibals participated just so they could eat angelic meat). It would have been morally good if the Vees caused trouble in Heaven is S1 and Charlie invites her Hotel to save Heaven proving TO ADAM that sinners can change for the better (instead he dies knowing that he was right that Hell is full of awful people).

Doing a roleplay with her playing a villain and Angel have to risk his life to save Husk. Seriously, this is literally trial and error. The extermination was an act of mercy if those are her methods to redeem people. Now, sure, the show doesn't really portray that specific method as correct. The problem is that if she had used it in S1 to prove a point to Adam, the show would almost certainly have presented it as the unequivocally right way.

To make matters worse is that Charlie doesn't even know what these sinners have done to gain Hell in the first place. What's funny is that an HH stan told me that what they have done is irrelevant because what it matters is that they redeem themselves.

To care about the redemption of a character you need to know their faults first, crazy, right? Imagine if you befriends a person who on the surface look like a total good guy only to discover way later that this person had burned an orphanage, raped the dead nurses inside and eaten the burned children, and in all this he doesn't have a bit of regret about it. If the show wants me to care about these sinners and wanting me to see them in Heaven instead of being killed, knowing what they have done first, regretting and trying their best to change for the better is all that is needed to see.

Look, if Charlie is intended to be this naïve and narrow minded, fine, but don't make her look like she is morally above everyone else, because it doesn't work at all. It just makes her look like an insufferable, spoiled child who wants things to go her own way. All that you need to do to make her actually flawed and her actions actually backfire really bad, not that everything is fine and can be fixed easily and one bad guy is causing the troubles to her.

But outside of Charlie, how is redemption portrayed in general?

None of the characters from the main cast actually change at all nor is fully explored what they have done to gain Hell, their only good side is that they care for each other (which is questionable considering how sometimes they seem like they don't care when one of them gets harmed). Caring for each other isn't the equivalent of being 100% a good person. How many villains in every medium have you seen caring for someone close to them? Walter from Breaking Bad was manipulative and selfish, but very deep down he cared about Jesse. Cersei Lannister from Game of Thrones was cruel and a narcissist, but she loved her kids. Toadvine from Blood Meridian was a murderous outlaw and also participated in a genocide, but he tried to protect The Kid once he realized that Judge Holden was the one harming children. Francis Dolarhyde from Red Dragon was a terrifying serial killer, but he loved Reba McClane, a blind woman. Tony Soprano was a cruel mobster, but he loved his family. Despite their kindness to someone, none of these characters have their crimes overlooked. Is not unheard that even the worst kind of criminals had at least one person who they cared about. Because at the end, the real question is, "What about the people you actually wronged?"

Another problem with the redemption in HH is how it dissociate from the sinners' crimes.

For example, the show tries very hard to paint Sir Penteus as a changed man. But 1. We know very little about him unless we check the wiki. 2. He's not really changed at all.

It's revealed in S2 (because why not revealing it in S1?) that his sin is that he hasn't reported Jack the Ripper to the authorities out of cowardice, allowing him to kill more women. Ok...

Then if his problem was cowardice, why once he's in Hell he immediately take the Crazy Villain persona and cause trouble around Pentagram City? Shouldn't he be an actual outcast of Hell because he doesn't have guts to do anything? It's not like the show wants to give us the idea that he became that way by living in Hell, it's never explained. Because we need to show that Heaven is in the wrong right in front of the angels, so let's give Sir Penteus the pettiest kind of sin.

Oh wait, the show also wants us to give the idea that he actually feels bad for what he has done. Ok? Why has he never mentioned this sense of guilt in S1? Why does he act like he has no guilt at all until the trial in Heaven in S2? Because we need to show Heaven being in the wrong in that particular moment, that's why. Basically his faults are brought up once the biggest conflict is over.

Also, how is participating in a war against Adam the equivalent of redemption? He didn't even sacrifice himself, he only died in the most goofy way. He hasn't changed tactics, he hasn't slowed Adam down, he didn't actually protected more people by being a temporary shield, he hasn't made the war go more in Hell's favour (heck, they could have 100% lost if it wasn't for Lucifer Ex Machina). He simply died. "Oh but Charlie got mad at his death and went full demon against Adam...". Shut up, it's still stupid calling it a "self-sacrifice". It's the equivalent of Sir Daniel Fortesque from the game MediEvil who died right at the beginning of the battle, but everyone confused him for a hero only because he was a friend of the king, and now his journey is to be a hero for real.

Except that Fortesque had a much better redemption arc to overcome his incompetence than Peteus (and MedEvil was PEGI 7 in Europe). Vivziepop really thought that she made Sir Penteious sacrifice himself, but he just made a Chiaotzu type of sacrifice.

Also, if Penteus can reach Heaven because "he protected his friends", what about Angel Dust for defending one of his eggs?

Doesn't that count? Or is because he didn't die? Is the message seriously "die and you'll be forgiven"? That's a horrible message if you ask me.

But of course we can't have the show being self-aware enough to know that his pass to Heaven was total BS and only because the plot wanted to be in favour of Charlie.

No, we need another Deus Ex Machina who tells everyone what the plot wants, "He's redeemed, can't you see? He just died to save the others (which is BS as I mentioned before) So what he has done doesn't matter anymore". Where was this literal deus ex machina before? Nowhere, we needed her for this scene only in order to not cause any more drama and making the story go in favour of Charlie. Geez, imagine the female victims of Jack the Ripper in Heaven seeing the angels treating the guy who caused their death like some kind of martyr. I don't know about you, but I would be pissed off.

Oh, but the BS doesn't stop there. Nooooo. You think that the show would at least try to take a better turn.

He doesn't like being in Heaven (very likely a new BS kind of story will happen in future seasons where is told that it's ok if the redeemed sinners stays in Hell, which makes the whole Adam's final battle in S1 meaningless as if the Speaker of God wasn't enough).

But what about the other characters? Angel Dust is still a promiscuous drug addict and clearly hasn't become an anti-violence person, Cherri Bomb still causes mayhem with her explosions, Niffty is still a violent gremlin, Husk is Husk, Alastor is still an overlord, Rosie is still a cannibal and Vaggie is more traumatized about how Adam and Lute's treated her than having at least one sinner's life in her conscience.

There is also the fact that the show constantly uses techniques of neutralization when it's about calling out the sinners' actions.

(Rosie is still a cannibal and enslaves sinners, btw. Is not like she improved herself).

If that's the case, then why don't they apply this logic to Adam and Lute too? Why their actions of killing people who committed crimes in their whole life is the one labeled as the worst kind of action? Just because they were "having fun"? How many of these sinners got involved in real genocides that involved killing people because of their religion or ethnicity instead of actions? How many of these sinners got involved with war crimes, rape, torture, human trafficking, ect. Is Valentino just a poor innocent soul who just did the whoopsie-daisy of raping? Is Vox just a misunderstood guy? Was Cherri Bomb just a poor, innocent girl who wanted to make fireworks? You can't make an "us and them" on the sinners unless you accept that some of them can be redeemed and some others are just terrible monsters. But no, the story wants to insist that all of these sinners can change for the better (and only the sinners because screw Adam and Lute)

It's undeniable that certain actions cannot be forgiven at all. It's undeniable that you cannot just ignore certain actions by thinking, "ok, I burned a children's hospital for fun, but hey, I saved a puppy last night, so I'm a good person after all". That's not how it works. It's not about what other people think of you as a person, it's about how much your conscience is handling your mistakes (whatever personal or towards others).

Forget about the Parable of the Prodigal Son, this is the bad ending where the Prodigal Son hasn't learned anything, exploits his father's kindness, and his brother was right to get mad at him.

This show twists the concept of redemption, implying that it's society that should move past one's actions instead of the individual making amends. It's like the Colleen Ballinger and Sienna Mae's apologies videos where all they said was "Yeah, I did something horrible (first case grooming second case SA) , but I'm a human and I can change for the better, so just give me some time, ok?".

So yeah, Vivziepop's view of redemption is just "do one good thing and everything you did doesn't matter anymore and move on". Seriously, how on Earth is she a grown woman? Is not even hard to understand that bad deeds are bad deeds. Is not even hard to do some quick research if you have no clue what you are even talking about.

Hey, you know what else portrayed redemption as something complex better? *Drum Roll* Fucking Vinland Saga. Yeah, it's the third time that I'm mentioning this manga, but I can't help it. It's one of my favourites, and it has exactly what it needs to be mature and adult. Spoiler alert, especially for the possible season 3, which will bring this arc.

So, after Thorfinn changed during his slavery years, becoming a pacifist, accepting his mistakes, and finding a new goal, there is one thing that he hasn't faced yet. The consequences of his actions.

This is Hild, a woman whom Thorfinn wronged in his years as a violent warrior. It's revealed that Thorfinn killed her father right in front of her, and since then, she hasn't forgiven him and is hunting him down for her revenge. Here's an interesting part: the narrative doesn't portray it as unreasonable or her as a bad person. You know what she has been through and you feel bad for her, but at the same time, after everything that happened to him and how much he has changed, you want Thorfinn to finally put his past behind him. It shows that even if you changed for the better, the past won't let you go easily anyway (and Thorfinn knows this since he's constantly haunted by nightmares about his past actions). Some people have problems with her, and I understand why, it's like she's making all Thorfinn's actions meaningless and her constantly warning Thorfinn can become tiresome, but for what I have seen the manga going until the end, I think that the story has handled her pretty well (and maybe the anime adaptation will make her arc better).

Anyway, she hunts him down with her crossbow, but Thorfinn refuses to fight. After a while, she finally compromise with him. Hild will follow him on his journey for Vinland. If Thorfinn proves to her that he has actually changed as he and his friends say, she'll spare him; if not, she'll kill him. She follows him on his journey, always with her crossbow ready in case. It took her years to see his atonement and forgive him. It's just beautiful.

Thorfinn didn't become a saint; he only became a better person, and he proved that to those he had wronged.

And before any of you says "give it some time and HH will handle redemption..." NO. If this is what we saw in just two seasons, there's no way that these characters will redeem in a way that feels mature, natural and credible. Believe it or not, beginnings in stories are way more important that they seem.

Vinland Saga started by showing us Thorfinn's father leaving the army because he had enough of wars, that was a great setup in 3 minutes to make us understand what kind of story we're about to see.