10 Reasons Why Batman Needs Alfred Back
3. Conscience
If Batman has one fatal flaw, it is that he sometimes doesn’t know when to stop. His mission to rid the world of criminals and make sure that no child ever has to suffer as he did, sometimes makes him extremely myopic and he loses sight of the bigger picture. He needs someone to keep him grounded, and that person was always Alfred. Pennyworth was one of the few people who could tell Bruce the unvarnished truth, and he could stand up to Wayne and tell him that he was not only wrong but when he needed to stop. Alfred Pennyworth was in many ways Batman’s conscience.
Usually, Alfred was able to stop Bruce with his words, as he did showing his disapproval of making Robin’s first meeting with the Teen Titans be an analysis by the young man of the other heroes’ powers and how he would take them down. But in The Batman Who Laughs #4, Pennyworth was forced to beat his surrogate son with his fists to stop him from becoming a clone of that Jokerized Dark Knight.
Batman still needs that conscience.
In Batman #98, Bruce was ready to give up the mantle completely and finally have a normal life that he never thought possible. But the Joker Toxin-created hallucination of Alfred slapped sense into Bruce and told him that the story wasn’t over yet.