Batwoman S01E06 Review: Executioner's Hood

Batwoman, Season 1, Episode 6: I'll Be Judge, I'll Be Jury

Another episode of Batwoman, another one that focuses on a villain of the week. Taking a different spin on the Executioner, a very obscure nobody-villain who only rose to prominence thanks to the Gotham TV show, and I guess it's just as well that Batwoman's not introducing, like, the Riddler or the Penguin or Harley Quinn or someone that the audience would be more hyped about so as not to distract from the Batwoman/Alice storyline.

The episode does kind of feel pretty procedural, which I suppose is needed between the very backstory-heavy episode 5 and presumably episode 7 and 8 finally going to wrap up or at least give a conclusion/cliffhanger to the whole Alice storyline. There's a neat bit of argument, because the Executioner goes around killing members of a corrupt cabal of judges and lawyers, and in true Batman villain fashion, goes around with a modus operandi of choosing methods of killing that represent how criminals are executed. We learn later that the Executioner is, well, an executioner who's absolutely haunted by the fact that so many of the people he's killed are actually innocent people who were framed by these people. There's a brief attempt at argument where Luke Fox insists that they certainly can't be evil, one of the lawyers or judges fought tooth and nail to get justice for the murder of his father (Lucius nooo), but ultimately the whole sequence is kind of procedural. It's entertaining superhero stuff, of course, but ultimately it's just kind of there.

Instead, a good chunk of the tension of the show sort of hinges on the Kane family. Jacob's all sorts of crazy as he has to contend with the fact that Kate is right all along, that he did abandon the search for Beth under false pretenses, and has to deal with the fact that Beth is alive -- something that Kate had five whole episodes to come to terms with. Jacob's not working at optimal capacity, even though he's throwing himself head-long into work, and that scene in the end when Batwoman asks him why he hates the symbol so much -- that it's a distraction from the gripping guilt he has -- is a neat character moment.

Even better is Kate herself, who goes through the realization that she, too, has been deflecting her own personal guilt at her father, which is the cause of the falling-out she had with him earlier in the episode. Kate Kane is a character that is mostly stoic, a character that's more Oliver Queen than Barry Allen or Kara Danvers, but that doesn't mean flat and I do appreciate moments like this where we get to see her actually grow as a person.

While all the Executioner stuff is going on, there's also Alice and Mouse going around doing god-knows-what as they build up to some psychotic Gotham City Villain master plan, and Mouse is an interesting foil to Alice. Mouse's definitely the show's version of "Jane Doe" from the comics, as he spends a chunk of the episode masquerading as a Hamilton Tech scientist to worm his way and steal things that Alice needs for her huge master supervillain plan. While Mouse is initially seemingly subservient to Alice, content to take orders from him, but at the same time he's also pretty insane, and clearly has his own agenda. Like many other 'jealous' Batman villains in the past, Mouse isn't willing to share Alice with Kate, and he's absolutely angry that Alice is so fixated on Kate instead of him.

As he sneaks around Hamilton dynamics and considers the state of events, Mouse manipulates Alice with his voice impersonations, 'playing' Alice into basically revealing that, yes, she has a soft spot for Kate, and also that Kate is Batwoman. Alice and Mouse reconcile at the end of the episode, in the twisted and insane way that two madcap Arkham inmates can, but as proven by Mouse's casual murder of the Hamilton tech man he was impersonating, Mouse isn't a yes-man to Alice and he views himself enough of an equal to protest and even throw a monkey wrench into Alice's plans if need be.


There is a B-plot with Sophie that's... that's interesting? I really wish we had more context to who Sophie is as a person, but she's starting to suspect that Batwoman is Kate... but at the same time, we really don't have too much to go on beyond "she used to date Kate but is now married to a man and there's some unresolved romantic tension going on". She's not quite as flat as Supergirl's Kelly Olsen, but I do wish that she didn't just completely revolve on how she reacts to the romance and stuff. At the end of the episode, though, Sophie has been smart enough to figure out that Batwoman is Kate, and that's going to be interesting, at least, moving forwards?

What else? Mary gets awesome lines, calling Sophie out on treating Kate like absolute shit, and presumably is the impetus in making Sophie not reveal Kate's secret to Jacob just yet. Even if Mary is mostly not super involved with the rest of the episode. She, I feel, is fast growing into the Tommy Merlyn or Reverend Holt of the show, where she's not super-duper relevant (yet) but easily one of the more memorable side-characters whenever she's on-screen.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• The Executioner, a.k.a. Bertnard Eldon in this show, is based on a very minor Batman villain that appeared in a single issue in the '50's, a prison warden called Willy Hooker who broke villains out of Gotham's prisons only to hunt them down and kill them to claim their reward money. Of course, the most prominent character to bear the mantle of Executioner in DC's media is a Nathaniel Barnes, a policeman-turned-recurring-villain in Gotham. 
• The Joker in this show is established to be called Jack Napier, the real name and alias given to the otherwise-nameless supervillain in the 1986 Tim Burton Batman ego.
• A "Mayor Cobblepot" is mentioned, which, of course, is a reference to Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot, better known as classic Batman villain The Penguin. Thanks to the movie Batman Returns, various incarnations of Penguin has ran for the position of mayor of Gotham with varying results. 
• The Commissioner in Gotham City is mentioned to be "Forbes", not Gordon. He's presumably based on Jack Forbes, a corrupt GCPD police officer in the comics who cooperated with Carmine Falcone's mob and was a minor antagonist in the 2011 Batman: The Dark Knight comic series. 
• Longtime Batman ally Lucius Fox exists in this universe, but is apparently post-humous. As far as I can tell, Lucius Fox has never actually died in the comics. 
• A street named Rucka Avenue is mentioned, clearly named after Greg Rucka, a veteran DC comic book writer most well-remembered for a highly-acclaimed stretch of Wonder Woman comics.