Batwheels is an American computer-animated superhero children series that premiered on September 17, 2022 on HBO Max, later on October 17, 2022 on Cartoon Network's preschool block, Cartoonito. The series follows the crime-fighting adventures of the Bat-Family's Bat-Vehicles, The Batwheels — Bam, Redbird, Bibi, Batwing and Buff as they defend Gotham City from The Legion of Zoom, led by the Badcomputer. The series is developed by Sofia the First and Doc McStuffins writer Michael G. Stern.
The series would also start to air on Discovery Family on September 13, 2025.
This series provides elements of:
- Always Night: In this Batman series, Gotham City is always shown to be at night.
- Animal-Themed Superbeing: Jestah resembles a hyena, Ducky is a duck-themed vehicles, and Kitty resembles a kitty-cat.
- Birthday Episode: The episode “It's My Bat Birthday Too, Yeah,” focuses on the Batwheels celebrating their birthday at the Gotham Central Park. But the Legion of Zoom ruins their party games in the shadows, only because today is their birthday too but no one cared enough to throw them a party. That is, until the Batwheels decided to invite them into their party so they can celebrate together.
- City of Adventure: Gotham City becomes a colorful vibrant city for the series.
- Company Cross-References: To other Warner Bros. properties:
- Buff mutters Shaggy's iconic "Zoinks!" sound effects in "Spooky Batcave".
- In "Harley Did It", Harley Quinn tries the iconic Bugs Bunny act on Batman, but he never fell for that.
- Cool Car: Almost every main vehicles counts, each with their own personality and gadgets galore.
- Dance Party Ending: The Batwheels dance to Batcomputer's music while she and MOE play another game of chess at the end of "Batcomputer for a Day".
- Edutainment Show: Batwheels teaches preschoolers lessons on character building and teamwork.
- "Everybody Laughs" Ending: Most of the episodes ends with the characters laughing.
- Fairy Tale Episode: "The Wizard of Bats" is this since it's a Wizard of Oz episode.
- "Freaky Friday" Flip: The episode "Batty Body Swap" is about The Batwheels have their motherboards swapped and inserted into each other's bodies to learn more about each individual's roles.
- Halloween Episode: "Pumpkin Panic" has Ban and Redbird teaming up to stop Poison Ivy when she unleashes a pumpkin army to take all the candy.
- Here We Go Again!:
- At the end of the episode "Batty Body Swap", The Batwheels return to the Batcave after having MOE switch their motherboards back to their original bodies and defeating The Legion of Zoom, only to find that MOE switched his motherboards with Batcomputer. However, everyone laughs it off.
- In "Bite-Sized Buff", Buff uses the Atom’s shrink belt to shrink himself so he could win Hide & Seek, which he manages to get back to regular size in the end. At the end of the episode, MOE accidentally gets shrunken by the shrink belt and the Atom goes to help.
- In the season 3 episode "Kitty Kong," Kitty grew into a 50-foot tall cat car that went on a run all over Gotham, until the Gotham Guardians managed to tire her out in the forest. Then as they slept together (with Kitty shrinking back down to her normal size), a pigeon landed on the Ultra Grow Gas puddle and grew 50 ft tall.
- Home Base: The Batcave is the place where the Batwheels live while the Parkam Scrapyard is the hangout for The Legion of Zoom.
- It Runs on Nonsensoleum: Music Meister has a sonic blaster that's powered by stolen singing voices. Unlike other examples of stolen voices, it's just the singing voice, so people can still talk afterward.
- Lighter and Softer: Being made for the preschool audience, Batwheels has no blood and violence. Despite that, there are some scenes of Jestah using her toy hammer to pound enemies, though it's not too hard.
- Mythology Gag: While its younger target demographic doesn't allow them to be overt, Batwheels will reference older materials on occasions.
- The entirety of "To the Batmobile!" references the 1966's Batman series.
- Mr. Freeze's status as the Pungeon Master originates from the infamous Batman & Robin film. However, the Batwheels version of Mr. Freeze is a total Jerkass.
- The Joker is much closer to the 1966 series version. Rather than being absolutely psychotic, he's just in it for money and very elaborate pranks.
- The Riddler wears a skin-tight bodysuit alongside a domino mask and still keeps the bowler hat from the 1966 series version. The character's voice also being patterned off of Frank Gorshin's.
- Green Arrow's debut episode has him suggest that Batman puts poles in the Batcave instead of the elevator already present. This references some iterations of the Batcave that do have fireman's poles, most notably the 1966 series' "Batpoles".
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!: Like any team of heroes, The Batwheels make mistakes during their missions, and manage to fix them in the end.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain!: In "Dynamic Du-Oh-No!", Snowy find out that he and Jestah make ice cream with freeze-berries only to freezes the civilians - he dropped off the ice cream hat and abandoned Jestah, to which Buff and Batwing used it as a landing pad for Jestah to freeze her.
- In "Bat-Buds Forever", when Jestah and Batwing battle, Jestah accidentally fixed Batwing's rotor.
- No Antagonist: There are some episodes that don't have the Batwheels fighting villains, such as "Bats In Show" (which focuses on a talent show).
- Out of Focus: Starting from the middle of Season 1, it's more commonplace for episodes to not have The Batwheels altogether.
- Poke the Poodle: Due to the kid-friendly nature of this series, Batman's villians are far cry from the homicidal maniacs they're usually portrayed as. Most of their crimes involve stealing, and inconveniencing people.
- Quarter Hour Short: The majority of episodes are around 11 minutes segments.
- The Secret Life of Nonhumans: The human superheroes and supervillains aren't aware that their vehicles are sentient, being unable to see their faces or hear them (In scenes focused on the humans, the vehicles' faces will disappear). Batcomputer even tells the Batwheels that the Bat-Family won't know of their sentience when they first come online.
- Shout-Out: The Penguin singing "The Blimp Where It Happens" from "Cobblepot: The Musical" in "Up in the Air" is a reference to Hamilton's "The Room Where It Happens".
- Spin-Off Babies: All of the talking vehicles are kids (except A.D.A.M.).
- Villain Episode: The episode "Zoomsday" and "Betterwheels" focus on the Legion of Zoom.
- "What Do They Fear?" Episode: There are two episodes about these topics, those being "The Dark Knight" and "Nightbike's Noisy Night".