The latest feather in uber-producer Greg Berlanti’s DC Comics cap is Gotham Knights, which was announced in December. Despite sharing a title with an upcoming videogame, this Gotham Knights is its own thing, an hour-long drama in which the children of Batman’s enemies are framed for the murder of Bruce Wayne.
Variety reports that the first two series regulars have been cast: Fallon Smythe and Tyler DiChiara, who will play the siblings Harper and Cullen Row.
Gotham Knights, Variety notes, “is based on characters created for DC by Bob Kane with Bill Finger,” but the Row siblings are more recent additions to the DC character lineup. Harper and Cullen Row were created by writer Scott Snyder, and first appeared in 2012. Harper, according to Variety, is described for the show as: “streetwise, acerbic and often underestimated, the blue-haired bisexual is a gifted engineer who can fix anything.” What she wants to fix is the lives of herself and her brother, a trans teen who “is tired of being polite and agreeable. Clever and adept at reading human nature, Cullen is ready to fight his own battles.”
Buy the Book
Until the Last of Me
How exactly these two fit into the Bruce-Wayne’s-murder story isn’t entirely clear, though they were saved by Batman in the comics. When the show was first announced, before any of the characters were named, Entertainment Weekly explained:
The Gotham Knights TV series will follow Bruce Wayne’s rebellious adopted son in the wake of Bruce’s murder as he’s forced to forge an unlikely alliance with the children of Batman’s enemies after they are all framed for killing the Caped Crusader.
As the city’s most wanted criminals, this renegade band of misfits must fight to clear their names. But in a Gotham with no Dark Knight to protect it, the city becomes more dangerous than it’s ever been. However, hope comes from the most unexpected of places as this team of mismatched fugitives will become its next generation of saviors, known as the Gotham Knights.
Smythe and DiChiara are both fairly new faces: DiChiara debuted in the 2019 indie film Relish (pictured above), while Smythe has appeared on the series Lost in the West (pictured above) and I Didn’t Do It.
Gotham Knights is written by Batwoman writers Chad Fiveash, James Stoteraux, and Natalie Abrams. Whether it fits into Berlanti’s larger DC/CW universe remains to be seen.
