Batwoman S01E04 Review: The Magpie One

Batwoman, Season 1, Episode 4: Who Are You

Another episode that focuses on a villain-of-the-week, this time another lesser-known Batman villain, Magpie. Secrets and double-life is the theme of the episode, which... it's honestly a theme that most other superhero shows and comics have dealt with at one point or another -- that sometimes you just have to choose between being a superhero or having a civilian life. And sometimes you have to keep a secret, but at the same time sometimes secrets hurt those around you. As Kate's attempted dates and relationships with Reagan keeps getting interrupted by the string of crimes done by Magpie, so has Luke's long-suffering attempts to get Kate to get her head in the game get interrupted by her new girlfriend being a bit of a distraction. It's not the most exciting storyline, admittedly. We get a neat little talk from Luke about how that's the reason why Bruce stylizes himself a playboy, so he doesn't get too attached. At the end of this episode Reagan breaks up with Kate for all of her unexplained disappearances, leaving her walking down the lonely road of being a vigilante in Gotham City. 

Magpie herself is an all right villain, just hammy enough to be a bit more memorable than last episode's Tommy Elliot. She ends up giving us some fun superhero moments like the freezing-room-of-doom or the exploding jewels and whatnot, but ultimately her purpose is to basically be a threat for Batwoman to deal with. It is admittedly kind of anticlimactic how she's dealt with, with Kate just off-handedly yanking her out of the air, with a lot of the tension in the climax dealing with her protecting a little girl from being blown up by the explosive. 

Also, as Batwoman basically establishes herself as a presence in Gotham City, said city -- particularly the disembodied voice of Vesper Fairchild -- wastes no time in comparing just how much she stands up to Batman, and how she doesn't quite end up being the ideal superhero just yet. Vespser Fairchild as this 'voice of Gotham' constantly judging Batwoman's performance is interesting. A huge part of why Kate is so intent on hunting down Magpie is to basically prove herself to the people of Gotham, but I guess part of her journey is to distance herself from Batman and adopt her identity? Vesper, Luke and Kate herself all compare Batwoman to Batman numerous times throughout the episode, but Batwoman is her own person -- even if the episode does lay it on a wee bit too thick with the "the batarang is now calibrated to your shorter arm" metaphor. It

Of course, the Alice storyline is still unfolding in the background, and the huge takeaway that Alice got from snooping around the Kane-Hamilton penthouse is that Catherine Hamilton is behind the report that falsified Beth's death, and that all the skull fragments that were found and gave Jacob Kane closure had been doctored from deer skull bones. She basically lords this information over Catherine in a brief meeting near her grave, and merrily forces Catherine to admit all of her cover-ups to Jacob. And what Catherine did could be framed as a well-intentioned lie for sure, but when the result ended up causing Jacob to give up the search for Beth and lead to Beth being transformed into Alice... and also the bomb that blew up Alice's convoy was from Hamilton Dynamics. Apparently Catherine has been trying to cover up her mistakes and get rid of Alice, and... yeah, secrets are maybe bad sometimes. There's also the B-plot of Batwoman handing over Agent Dodgson to Mary's illegal clinic, leading to them discovering some information about some dude (or gal) called "Mouse" that Alice is working towards, and we get Mary impersonating Alice and quoting Lewis Caroll, which is pretty fun acting from Mary. 

Anyway, it's a solid episode, and the show's still basically taking its time to let its mysteries and fold out while taking slow steps as Kate Kane gets comfortable in her role as Gotham City's new protector. Not the best episode, but still pretty solid superhero material.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Magpie, a.k.a. Margaret Pye is a minor Batman enemy who steals jewels and replaces them with booby-trapped replicas. In the comics, she was a curator who was driven insane by always being surrounded with pretty things she can never own. Magpie was previously adapted into live-action in the final season of Gotham. 
• Classic Batman villain Killer Croc is briefly name-dropped by Kate during a conversation with Reagan. 
• Martha Wayne's pearls, of course, are an iconic part of Bruce Wayne's origin story, with the pearls being scattered across Crime Alley being an iconic Batman imagery.