This article contains spoilers for “Batman: Caped Crusader” Season 2, Episode 4, “The Devil’s Due.”

“Batman: Caped Crusader” is set in the 1940s, and the show is based on the earliest Batman comics from that decade. You can see that in Batman’s design, which resembles his original designs by Bill Finger and Bob Kane (longer ears on his cowl, smaller gloves with no spiked fins, etc.)

Now, “Caped Crusader” has introduced one of the first ever Batman villains: the Mad Monk, who debuted in 1939’s “Detective Comics” #31 (by Kane, Gardner Fox, and Sheldon Moldoff) and fought Batman well before now-classic foes like the Joker, the Riddler, etc. Amazingly enough, this is also the first time the Mad Monk has appeared in “Batman” animation, which might be explained by both his relative obscurity and also the horror-tinged overtones of his character. “Caped Crusader,” which is aimed at an older audience, can embrace those.

As in the comics, the Monk (voiced by Blythe Melin) is a cult leader. In “The Devil’s Due” his flock worships the bat god Barbatos, which pulls from a much later wrinkle to the Batman legend. The Monk’s robes are red, but are given new bat motifs resembling Batman’s own costume. 

The cult believe Batman (Hamish Linklater) is an avatar of Barbatos, and they need his blood to summon their god. At least, that’s what the Monk says. The episode’s twist is that he does not believe in Barbatos, and is only using the myth to swindle his followers. He even tries to rope Batman into the grift, only to find himself stabbed by one of the true believers he cultivated. “Batman: Caped Crusader” has proven unafraid of supernatural stories, but in this case chose to explore the all-too common trend of phony cult leaders.

In “Detective Comics” #31-32, the Monk was a truly supernatural foe: a vampire who could shapeshift into a wolf. A vampire is an easy foe to match up with Batman; he’s a man who dresses like a bat, while Count Dracula and his ilk can literally become bats.

To show you how early into Batman’s history this was, he killed the monk by shooting him with a silver bullet. Yes, Batman used the lethal force of a gun, which is something you’d never see today. This was before Batman developed a “rogues gallery” of villains; the Joker himself was intended to die in his first appearance (“Batman” #1) too, before a last minute edit saved him.

The Monk was revisited in the 2006-2007 mini-series “Batman: The Mad Monk” by Matt Wagner, which remade the original “Detective Comics” story. Here, the Monk’s nature was more ambiguous. He claims to be a vampire named Niccolai Tepes and drinks blood from his sacrificial victims’ necks (then shares that blood with his followers in a goblet, evoking Christian communion). Batman, though, comes to believe he’s really Richard Rallstone, the scion of a rich Gotham family, pulling a con. The comic suggests perhaps Rallstone was possessed by a true demonic force while traveling Europe, but the Monk is incinerated by a strike of lightning and the questions remain unanswered.

“The Devil’s Due” owes most to Wagner’s “Mad Monk” by depicting the villain as a charlatan with a mass of followers. Him supposedly wanting Batman’s blood could read as a nod to vampirism, but he never drinks from anyone’s opened neck. Not for nothing, “Caped Crusader” already did a vampire villain last season, so maybe there was reluctance to revisit that.

“The Devil’s Due” depicts Barbatos as a centuries-old Gotham urban legend that the Monk appropriated for his cult. There’s never any true doubt raised that maybe Barbatos is real, but in DC Comics, he absolutely is. The character goes back to the underrated story arc “Batman: Dark Knight, Dark City” by Peter Milligan and Kieron Dwyer (published in “Batman” #452-454).

During the 1700s, in early colonial Gotham, a group of men tried to summon Barbatos (originally spelled Barbathos) to grant them power. But this “Ceremony of the Bat” went awry. The cultists fled, leaving their intended victim (a woman named Dominique) and Barbathos trapped in the cellar where they had performed the act. 

The modern Gotham City was built upon this tomb and Barbathos’ influence traveled up like the city’s root. Barbathos manipulated Gotham’s creation, stone by stone, to create the man who would one day set him free: Batman. This recontextualizes the entire history of Batman; he lives in an accursed city, one where a vigilante dressed like a bat is the only sane response to its woes.

Instead of frightening us with a buried bat demon, “The Devil’s Due” is ultimately about a truer corruptive evil: demagoguery. One of the Monk’s intended victims is Hattie Tetch (Laraine Newman), a sensationalist talk show host turning Gotham’s public opinion against Batman by blaming the cult’s murders on him. Both the Monk and Hattie adopt platforms of legitimacy and spread lies to wayward souls for their own benefit. Hattie manipulates via mass media, while the Monk does so with faith and promises of godly power. That Hattie almost winds up on the wrong end of his knife shows which is more dangerous.

“Batman: Caped Crusader” is streaming on Prime Video.