Your reading of Alfred was spot on. Well done.
I’m just very much in love with this version of Alfred, I love the fact that he isn’t perfect, that he is this flawed person who admits that he doesn’t have a child and doesn’t know much about how to be a parent, but he tries, and honestly that’s so much more interesting to watch than just Alfred fixes everything and always knowing exactly what to do and say.
The way it feels to me, the popular version of Alfred that’s been portrayed over the years, it honestly makes me less and less likely to believe that the perfect Alfred could raise a boy to become a future Batman - that he could mess up raising a kid so badly that it manifests into something that is realistically unhealthy for anyone to do - I mean, how the hell do you raise a kid who grows up to dress like a Bat and fighting crime and you somehow allow it? The Alfred of the popular view, it just doesn’t jive with me that the man who always seem to know what to say and take care of Bruce would be that blind to allow a child to grow up with that unhealthy obsession and not done something about it.
But with this Alfred, it makes perfect sense to me and I can see just how this will lead to Bruce becoming Batman - this is more of a Alfred that I can see raising a boy who’d fight crime, who’d dress up as a Bat running around and jumping off rooftops - this Alfred makes me believe that Bruce will turn out like the Batman we all know, this Alfred does mess up, this Alfred isn’t the perfect guy to raise a child, this Alfred has the edge and enabler in him to allow a child to grow into the Batman maybe without even realizing that he’s leading him down this road.
So I love this flawed Alfred, I love being able to explore how he deals with raising a child, how this man who isn’t a parent struggles through one of the hardest things that even actual parents have difficulties figuring out how to navigate, much less a man who’s suddenly had this duty thrust upon him.
I LOVE this Alfred, he’s real, he’s human, he’s believable, he’s not a Mary Sue who knows exactly how to fix Bruce’s problems.