Batwoman S01E02 Review: Sister Act

Batwoman, Season 1, Episode 2: The Rabbit Hole

As we continue with the second episode of Batwoman, we jump head-long into the Kate/Beth sisterly storyline, and it's... it's interesting? It's not the first time that a superhero show has had the hero's missing, long-thought-dead relative end up being a villain (see also: Emiko Adachi, Astra, half the cast of Gotham), but I do think that the way that these first two episodes of Batwoman did go through the expected beats pretty well. The surprise revelation at the end of the pilot is a huge cliffhanger, and a good chunk of this episode has Kate -- and because she couldn't keep her mouth shut, the rest of the cast -- trying to figure out if Alice really is Beth. And as the audience, we know she 100% is, because to pussyfoot out of that revelation would be anticlimactic as hell, but Kate doesn't know that. And there's just that delicious bit of ambiguity when Alice whispers to Kate about how she might be Beth, or she might just model herself after what she read online. That's actually pretty well-scripted.

A lot of "The Rabbit Hole" makes use of this connection with Kate's past not to just establish the connection between Kate and Beth, but also how Kate connects with her father Jacob, her step-sister Mary, even with Luke and Sophia, and it's... it's pretty interesting. There's still a huge chunk of uncertainty to what Kate is doing as the (still-unnamed-in-the-show) Batwoman, and unlike CW's five other superhero shows, Kate doesn't see being Batwoman as her true calling or The Mission for the rest of her life. Sure, she's very focused in solving the Alice problem, and she's not taking the cowl off any time soon, but I do like how she acts pretty dismissive about claiming the title of Gotham's protector or what Batman's presence meant to the city. The episode doesn't shove it down our throats, but we do get enough scenes and background noise (quite literally, with Vesper's radio show) showing that Gotham City is hungry for a new Batman-like figure, while all Kate cares for at the moment is just Alice.

Of course, when Jacob reveals that they have shoot-to-kill orders for Alice, Kate quickly blurts out over breakfast about how "Alice is Beth", and Jacob sort of dismisses it as a particularly crazy fantasy by his daughter, who refused to move on... although looking at the scenes of the flashback to how the two of them coped after Beth's accident, it's not hard to see why Jacob is so unwilling to believe the fact that Beth might have survived -- particularly due to how unrelenting little Kate is in trying to find her sister, and the very tear-jerking scene when little Kate is just crying about why she didn't try harder to save her sister. Survivor's guilt at its finest.

Alice, meanwhile, continues to be in tiptop comic book villain form, quoting her Alice in Wonderland lines a lot more in this episode, set to the backdrop of murdering a bound old couple who now lived in the old Kane house, or to the dramatic confrontation that happens around halfway through the episode near the waffle stop. Alice/Beth is clearly insane, and she's all too happy to throw in doubt and fuck with Kate's mind... while also sending her minino Dodgson to murder the 'spare' sister. What a crazy, possessive lady!

Mary's storyline was seeded throughout the episode as something that was neat world-building but ultimately felt like it was just there to sort of set up the character for later. Oh, she's got an illegal clinic, clearly an interesting locale for a vigilante show. She ends up getting attacked and eventually rescued by Batwoman, which is pretty awesome... but then at the end of the episode, when Mary finally meets Kate again, we learn that Mary's been really trying to get close to her cold, aloof older step-sister but all Kate is concerned about is chasing the ghost of Beth. That's some pretty neat acting.

There's also the climax of Batwoman driving off to save Alice from drowning when her prison convoy got attacked with a bomb, with a neat showcase of Chekov's Bat-Rebreather, but ultimately it's a scene that raises more questions than answers. Is it part of Alice's huge gamble to escape? Is it a third party in play, and Alice just happens to get caught in the crossfire? Something else? Complicating matters is the fact that the final scene of the episode reveals that Kate's step-mom Catherine Hamilton (who's conspicuously absent after the little family breakfast scene) is apparently the one who hired the hitmen to attack Kate and steal the incriminating knife. Pretty interesting twist!

Family's clearly the huge theme of this episode, whether it's the interactions between Kate and Beth, Kate and Mary, Kate and Jacob (both past and present)... but the other parts of the show also work pretty well. Luke Fox is trying his best to live up to both his father and Batman's legacy, pointing out just how gung-ho Kate has been about everything, and he's an interesting 'guy in the chair' supporting character. In contrast, though, I felt like Sophia's storyline was a bit underwhelming. Nothing really wrong with that, of course, and I do like just how hard of a decision it must be for Sophia to move from her loyalty to Kate as an ex-girlfriend or to inform Jacob that Kate might be doing something stupid, but ultimately I find her character a bit too flat for my liking. Ultimately, though, it's still pretty fantastic superhero fare. I wouldn't go as far as to say that Batwoman so far has been like, revolutionary or anything, but it's definitely a very solid storyline and acting so far.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Kate casually name-drops Wonder Woman, which I'm 99% sure is the first time we've ever had any mention of the charactr in an Arrowverse show, other than Themyscira showing up as a cameo in Legends of Tomorrow. 
• Vesper Fairchild name-drops Robin while sarcastically noting that Batman might be at Robin's high-school graduation, confirming that at least a Robin exists in the Arrowverse. 
• Loeb Bridge, is either named after DC comics writer Jeph Loeb, or after the in-universe corrupt police officer Gillian B. Loeb, the commissioner of Gotham City before Gordon. 
• "You have our father's eyes" is taken straight from a conversation between Beth and Kate in the comics during one of their first arcs. The waffles thing is also from the comics, where going for waffles was a significant part of the comic-book Beth and Kate -- the incident that separated the sisters was being kidnapped during a trip to get waffles.