General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Gotham Girls

Gotham Girls was an American Flash-animated web series produced by Warner Bros. Animation and Noodle Soup Productions from 2000 to 2002, following the women of Gotham City, principally Batgirl, Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy, and Catwoman, in short stories about their daily lives.¹^•² It premiered on the dedicated site www.gothamgirls.com on July 27, 2000 and ran for three seasons of ten webisodes each, released month by month, until the finale "Cold Hands, Cold Heart" on November 19, 2002.¹^•³

Key fact	Detail
Format	Online Flash-animated webisodes, planned at approximately three minutes each and listed at about four to five minutes, released on gothamgirls.com⁴^•²
Run	July 27, 2000 to November 19, 2002; three seasons of ten webisodes each¹
Main characters	Batgirl, Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy, Catwoman, with Zatanna and Detective Renée Montoya also featured²^•⁵
Voice cast	Tara Strong (Batgirl), Arleen Sorkin (Harley Quinn), Diane Pershing (Poison Ivy), Adrienne Barbeau (Catwoman), reprising their roles from the Batman animated shows²
Writers	Hilary Bader and Paul Dini⁶
Continuity	A spin-off of The New Batman Adventures, set in the DC Animated Universe¹
Afterlife	All three seasons released as bonus material on the Birds of Prey: The Complete Series DVD in 2008; a five-part DC Comics tie-in mini-series appeared in 2002–2003⁷^•¹

Spoilers

Seasons and stories

Seasons 1 and 2 featured primarily single-episode, comedic adventures.¹ Season 1 opened with "The Vault" (July 27, 2000), in which Poison Ivy tries to crack a safe while Harley Quinn's annoyance breaks her concentration, and closed with "Lady X" (December 14, 2000), in which Batgirl, Catwoman, Harley Quinn, and Poison Ivy team up against a mysterious criminal.¹¹ Season 2, premiering June 5, 2001 with "Hold That Tiger," included stories such as Harley Quinn being accidentally transformed into a baby by Poison Ivy's plant toxins ("Baby Boom") and Batgirl turning to crime after being doused with one of Ivy's toxins in the finale "I'm Badgirl" (October 9, 2001).¹¹

Season 3 changed form, telling one ten-part serial adventure.¹ It began on July 16, 2002 with "Ms.-ing In Action," in which every man and boy in Gotham City vanishes into thin air, and followed the fallout: an all-female city government, Harley and Ivy raiding the police Dangerous Evidence Vault, Batgirl being declared Public Enemy Number One after breaking the three villainesses out of prison, and a robotic replacement for Commissioner Gordon.¹¹ The finale, "Cold Hands, Cold Heart" (November 19, 2002), revealed the robotic Commissioner's creator as Dora Smithy, sister of Nora and sister-in-law of Mr. Freeze, who fell into a vat of cryo-solution and became a female version of Mr. Freeze.¹¹ The final episode was dedicated to the memory of Hilary J. Bader, who died on November 7, 2002, of breast cancer.¹

Production and launch

Warner Bros. On-line, DC Comics, and Warner Bros. Animation announced the project in June 2000 as the first all-new original Internet animation shorts based on DC Comics characters. The Gotham Girls site was slated to launch in mid-July 2000, and each original Flash cartoon was planned to run approximately three minutes. Kevin Tsujihara, then Warner Bros. executive vice president for new media, described the project as combining Warner Bros.' animation expertise with DC's characters, and DC Comics publisher Paul Levitz called Internet animation "a perfect way to tell their stories."⁴ The animation was produced jointly by Warner Bros. Animation and Noodle Soup Productions, a New York-based studio then known as Noodle Soup Production and later called World Leader Entertainment.¹^•⁵

The series was written by Hilary Bader, a veteran of numerous DC Animated series, together with Paul Dini.⁶^•⁸ Because it was Flash-based, the animation differed significantly from most DC Animated Universe shows, and the writing placed less emphasis on realism, favoring a more cartoonish approach.³ The use of Flash and vector graphics allowed the animation to appear undistorted at any resolution, and the series featured professional voice acting by the same performers who voiced the television series.⁹

Voice cast

The series drew directly from The New Batman Adventures. Tara Strong voiced Batgirl, Arleen Sorkin voiced Harley Quinn, Diane Pershing voiced Poison Ivy, and Adrienne Barbeau voiced Catwoman.² Barbeau was also credited as the voice of Renée Montoya, and the cast included Stacie Randall as Zatanna, Dee Bradley Baker in multiple roles, Tom Kenny, and Paul Dini himself in a bit part.¹⁰

Comic book and home video

DC Comics published a five-part Gotham Girls mini-series in 2002–2003 based on the characters' appearance in the web series; it was well received by fans and became another tie-in title for the DC animated line.¹^•⁵ In 2008, Warner Home Video included all three seasons of the web series as bonus material on the Birds of Prey: The Complete Series DVD, scheduled for July 15, 2008.⁷

Availability

The series is not currently available on streaming services.¹⁰ The World's Finest hosts the original SWF Flash files for direct download, noting that given the age of the format some episodes may not play properly in modern browsers.¹² Fan uploads and compilations on YouTube and Flash preservation sites such as Flash Museum have kept the episodes viewable.⁹^•¹³

Place in DC animation

Gotham Girls was one of the few series of Flash animations made by a mainstream cartoon publisher with professional voice acting, and it spun out of the DC Animated Universe that began with Batman: The Animated Series.⁹^•⁸ A French academic survey of female-led animated programs describes it as a short-lived web series broadcast on the Warner Brothers website, launched in 2000, and notes that DC's later female-led web series, DC Super Hero Girls, followed in 2015.¹⁴ The DC Database describes the series as a set of Macromedia/Adobe Flash animations set in the DCAU, with an animation style based on The New Batman Adventures but simplified for the medium.¹⁵

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Unscripted, reality, and web-native series › Web-native and streaming-original series › Early English-language web series (1997–mid 2010s)

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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