https://www.vulture.com/article/oral-history-batman-the-animated-series.html

"As the 1990s dawned, television audiences weren’t used to a dark version of the Dark Knight," says Abraham Riesman in introducing his oral history. "America had briefly gone crazy for the 1960s series Batman, starring the late Adam West and an array of over-the-top character actors, but that had been camp at its most frivolous. Oddly enough, it took a kids’ cartoon to show TV-watchers the emotional and visual weight of the Caped Crusader. Debuting on Fox Kids as an after-school show in 1992, the Warner Bros.-produced Batman: The Animated Series changed the titular character’s mainstream profile forever. It consisted of 110 episodes (the latter 25 of them billed as The New Batman Adventures), spun off into a theatrically released film called Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, and is now regarded as one of the greatest collection of superhero stories ever told. Here, 25 years after it debuted, is the history of the show in the words of its creators and stars."

Still the best version of Batman ever.

https://www.vulture.com/article/oral-history-batman-the-animated-series.html

"As the 1990s dawned, television audiences weren’t used to a dark version of the Dark Knight," says Abraham Riesman in introducing his oral history. "America had briefly gone crazy for the 1960s series Batman, starring the late Adam West and an array of over-the-top character actors, but that had been camp at its most frivolous. Oddly enough, it took a kids’ cartoon to show TV-watchers the emotional and visual weight of the Caped Crusader. Debuting on Fox Kids as an after-school show in 1992, the Warner Bros.-produced Batman: The Animated Series changed the titular character’s mainstream profile forever. It consisted of 110 episodes (the latter 25 of them billed as The New Batman Adventures), spun off into a theatrically released film called Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, and is now regarded as one of the greatest collection of superhero stories ever told. Here, 25 years after it debuted, is the history of the show in the words of its creators and stars."

The two Tim Burton movies preceded the animated series, so the general public outside the comic book community was already well aware of a more mature version of Batman. The Animated movie even borrowed the Danny DeVito version of the Penguin.

Batman: The Animated Series seems like the only superhero series to escape the inevitable back and forth of popularity and backlash (https://www.pastemagazine.com/tv/hbo-max/batman-the-animated-series-episodes-streaming-legacy/)

"So why has BTAS eschewed this cycle?" asks Daniel Dockery. "Aside from the fact that it is, as anyone who’s seen it will attest, a really good show, it’s also the series that would blend the macabre Art Deco Gotham City of the recent Burton films with a film noir-ish sensibility, making it look unlike any other show on TV at the time. After the 1980s, a decade when most cartoons mainly served as extended commercials for corresponding toy lines, Batman’s adventures were pulse-pounding and iconic. Heck, it’s the series that made Mr. Freeze interesting, and the one that birthed the character of Harley Quinn, who shot up the ranks of identifiable DC Comics characters in a way not seen since the 1940s."