No one’s sure what will become of Batman, now that star Ben Affleck has stepped down from the DC legend’s next solo movie. Meanwhile, his butler’s doing just fine. Example: Pennyworth, a forthcoming EPIX show that dives into the backstory of the Caped Crusader’s butler Alfred Pennyworth. We’ve already received a clipped, rhythmic teaser that showed the young Alfred, played by Jack Bannon, as a former SAS soldier getting into some rip-roaring 1960s England intrigue. The latest teaser, slightly longer than the last, does a bit more fleshing out — including introducing one of his more noted employers.
Pennyworth, which launches this summer, will reportedly take place in an alternate universe London, with a different Queen and villains both historical and literary. (It sounds like a lighter version of Alan Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series, where the comics legend tries to cram as many literary and pop culture characters as he can into the same universe, from the Invisible Man to a villainous Harry Potter.) The show will follow Alfred as he begins his own personal security business, long before cleaning up Bruce Wayne’s messes and helping him launch what is essentially his own private NSA.
Of the baddies, we briefly see Jason Flemyng, playing a character named Lord Harwood, who talks about how England needs “love” and appears to be militant about beginning a new nation. There’s some gunplay, some punching, some foot chases, some torture, plus some strangely menacing pamphlet-making. It all ends with our dashing Pennyworth meeting relocated American businessman Thomas Wayne (Ben Aldridge), Batman’s doomed dad, who will hire him as his bodyguard and chauffeur.
We’re guessing, since it takes place after his SAS stint, we won’t see Alfred’s misadventures in Burma, which the iteration played by Michael Caine relayed in The Dark Knight. But doddering, old Alfred as a young, vaguely Bondian man of action? Sure!
