Batwoman S01E05 Review: The Flashback One

Batwoman, Season 1, Episode 5: Mine is a Long and Sad Tale

Okay, that was unexpected. Once last episode established that Alice is in fact Beth, and that something happened to cause the years-long search for Beth to come up with nothing, it's pretty obvious that there's something shady that went on with it. And while it might perhaps not be quite as over-the-top comic-book-y as Beth being kidnapped and trained by a secret society of assassins (that'd be Sara Lance in Arrow), what happened here is arguably a lot more unsettling. After two episodes of Alice and Kate's stories moving more or less independently of each other, the two finally meet each other as they take a ride down memory lane -- or, as Alice puts it, down down down the rabbit hole.

And like so many Batman villains and fictional characters modeled after child-like gimmickry, things take a darker turn as Alice reveals to us what's behind the looking-glass of her shattered, Lewis-Carroll-quoting psyche. The series have been showing us just how demented Alice can be and how willing she is to trick Jacob and Kate into sympathizing with her, into thinking that good girl Beth is close to coming out, before stabbing them in the back (or in the gut, as what happens to Jacob in this episode)... but it's not hard to at least sympathize with Alice's backstory.

So the reason young Beth was unable to be found? A freaking creepily calm man and his disfigured son has taken Beth in, seemingly rescuing her, and the unnamed father is creepy as all hell, delivering the appearance of someone who seems to be kindly if soft-spoken... before turning out to be something completely and utterly fucked-up. No, it doesn't go into the dark topic you expect when an adult kidnaps a younger child, but the father refuses to let Beth out, is apparently skinning and collecting faces to 'fix' his disfigured child, and wants to keep Beth around to be a friend and sister to his son. Who, by the way, also has the creepy ability to mimic perfectly any voice he's heard.

While the Father is pretty clearly off his rocker, Beth at least manages to forge a friendship with the child, Johnny, who is nicknamed "Mouse". Despite being locked up in a dingy room, Mouse sneaks books (like, of course, "Alice in Wonderland") to Beth, and ends up being the one secure thing that Beth was able to latch on while in captive. There's some Stockholm Syndrome thing going on, but Beth never latches on to the Father, who she knows is 'the enemy', of sorts. The breaking point for poor Beth is when she actually manages to pick the lock to her room with a nail, manage to get a call out to Jacob... only for the Father to shut it down.

And we learn that back then Jacob Kane went as far as to arrive at the house, having traced the call, and demand that the Father give Beth back... but the excuse of having a son that can perfectly mimic voices ends up becoming a pretty believable excuse, especially when Mouse demonstrates it to Jacob. What made Beth really angry is that while she isn't allowed to call for help under the threat of the Father killing both Jacob and Kate, Kate was very near to Beth, separated only by a wall, and yet didn't push any further -- something that in her twisted mind felt like a betrayal of the supposed 'twin intuition' or whatever.

All of this story is told as Alice and Kate take a bit of a ride through town as Kate attempts to understand what drove her twin sister into something so fucked-up, and Rachel Skarsten is amazing in this episode, flawlessly balancing a lifetime of hurt and betrayal with someone who's trying to commit into the crazy-supervillain persona. Alice ends up drugging Kate and dragging her to the house she was held captive in for god knows how long. While all of this is going on, Jacob Kane tracks down a call that Kate made to him, accompanied by Sophie (they get to beat up Dodgson), and it led to another confrontation with Alice -- and this time, confronted with the knowledge that Catherine faked Beth's autopsy and Alice really dredging up some very specific memories, Jacob is willing to believe that Alice is Beth... way too late for Alice, who stabs Jacob in the gut. A bit of a hostage standoff leads to Alice and Mouse leaving while Kate and Jacob sort of bond over their shared knowledge that, hey, they might have a chance to save Beth maybe? Except Beth is now Alice, she's got a new sibling in her 'brother' Mouse, and they have lots of mad mad plans for Gotham City.

The B-plot is... not particularly exciting, but it does allow Mary a lot of acting moments and I enjoy Mary a lot! Catherine ends up telling Mary about the fabrication of Beth's death, and Mary is suitably utterly disgusted, and she feels absolutely terrible as she is desperate to hunt down Kate, thinking that she's going to lose her step-sister and try to apologize. Also, she's drunk, and it ends up amplifying a lot of her feelings of... sibling envy, I guess. Kate's distance over losing Beth has always been a bridge that sort of stood between Kate and Mary having a loving relationship, but now that Kate's obsessed with hunting down psychotic Alice instead of spending time with her, 'the good sister'? Her breakdown to Luke is pretty dang heartbreaking. Luke's combination of annoyance in wanting to help solve the Skin Pirate case and also trying to comfort Mary without revealing any of the Bat-guy-in-a-chair secrets is pretty neat.

I'm still not entirely sold about the "kidnapped and ended up developing extreme Stockholm's Syndrome" backstory, but it's something that is surprisingly mundane for a supervillain origin story, and is definitely something that'll break a mind. We've peeled back a large amount of what makes Alice tick, and I for one am very interested to see how this will develop not just between Kate and Alice, but also between Jacob and Alice.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Jonathan "Mouse" Cartwright, in addition to drawing from "Mouse" in Alice in Wonderland, is a gender-bent version of Jane Cartwright, otherwise known as minor Batman villain Jane Doe, a master of disguise with the power of mimickry. Jane Doe recently showed up in live-action in the final Gotham season.
• The characters mention an "Arkham break-out" which was covered up, which I'm going to assume is the one that happened in last year's Elseworlds crossover which Batwoman participates in -- I'm not sure how this will play into Batwoman's timeline since it kind of means that episodes 5 through 8 takes place over the course of a year, but maybe we can handwave it with Dr. Destiny mucking up the timeline? 
• Bludhaven, Gotham City's sister city most associated with Nightwing, is mentioned here as part of the search network for Beth. 
• The night vision goggles gives Batwoman solid-white eyes, which is how most animated depictions of Batman and his associated characters look like.