YMMV / The New Batman Adventures E8 "Growing Pains"

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Just how much of a separate entity was Annie from Hagen? Was her sapience the equivalent of Clayface reproducing, or did he develop a second personality given physical form? If the latter, what does that say about Clayface himself?
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Batman says to Robin (Tim Drake) that sometimes there are no happy endings. Robin nods sadly and silently. Now take Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker into account.
  • Batman is admonished for treating Robin like a child, particularly when it's found he keeps a secret tracking device in the boy's utility belt. Return of the Joker would show Batman didn't take enough precautions to safeguard Robin, and he felt deeply guilty about it.
  • Robin tries to force Clayface to restore Annie by exposing him to solvent that melts his body. Batman intervenes to ensure Robin doesn't cross that line, which strikes a shriller tone when watching the unedited version of the aforementioned movie.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: Fortunately, Tim Drake managed to find a stable relationship with the daughter of a supervillain who wasn't made out of clay. To be precise, Stephanie Brown, AKA Spoiler.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • This wouldn't be the last time a hulking villainous mutant monster voiced by Ron Perlman would manifest into the form of a completely sweet and seemingly innocent child.
  • Poor Tim Drake befriending and falling for Clayface (or at least part of him) is somewhat this since years later, the two would be fighting side by side, and Clayface formed a sweet friendship with a girl who isn't so different looking from his "Annie" persona.
• Moral Event Horizon: Clayface's absorption of Annie and laughing it off in this episode is the moment he stops being a Tragic Villain and goes to being just as despicable as Roland Daggett.
• Spiritual Adaptation: The same premise and twist ending was reused in a 2019 comics story with Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy in the roles played by Robin and Annie/Clayface.
• Squick: Annie doesn't look much older than Robin, and is in fact much younger, but that doesn't stop a motorcycle gang from cornering her.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Many a fan lament Annie's "death" at the end. Had she survived, Annie could've become an interesting new addition to Batman's team as a Good Counterpart to Matt Hagen. Since she's part of Clayface, she could even be used to explore a very different side of him. Sadly it was never to be: there is no ambiguity to Annie's untimely end, and the event only serves to show that Clayface has gone well past the point of redemption.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: "Growing Pains" is regarded by many to be one of the darkest episodes across the whole DCAU:
  • Even with Batman being on the grittier end of the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism, a character being Killed Off for Real on-screen is something not usually done in a show aimed at children, and when it is, it's usually reserved for the villains and monsters of the setting. Unfortunately for poor Annie and the audience, Improbable Infant Survival was not in play here.
  • There's also the bleak scenes of Robin searching for Annie. Unlike "The Forgotten", we see shots of homeless people living on the streets, women and children included.

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