Batwoman S01E08 Review: Mad Mad Mad

Batwoman, Season 1, Episode 8: A Mad Tea Party

Another series, another mid-season finale that takes place prior to the Crisis on Infinite Earths. And being a new show and one that's relatively grounded in its vigilantism to boot, Batwoman's mid-season finale is decidedly a lot less grand in scale compared to its sister and sibling shows. Throughout the past couple of episodes we've had some build-up with the enigmatic big master plan that Alice and Mouse has, a 'mad tea party' that involves a lot of aspects, one of which including Mouse impersonating Jacob Kane for a huge chunk of the previous episode. And that, of course, is part of the huge plan that they're setting up.

And like a good mid-season finale, by the end of the episode the status quo is upturned, and all the characters are shuffled around in interesting ways. Despite Batwoman's efforts, Mouse, disguised as Jacob, manages to slip a Hamilton-industries super-awesome poison into Catherine's champagne, and as a bonus (intentionally or not), Mary also gets poisoned. Under a terrorist threat, Alice forces Catherine to read out a statement about how she's a fraud and an evil liar and corporte overlord that has no qualms at profiteering from the suffering of other people (her company did make smart bombs, anti-Batsuit coil guns and a venom without an antidote). But that's not all. In a pretty brutal sequence that does remind me a lot of the Deathstroke "CHOOSE" scene from Arrow's second season, Alice gloats in front of a genuinely apologetic Catherine about the whole poison thing, culminating in her putting down a magic antidote that will only work for a single person, and, of course, Catherine forces her daughter Mary to take it. The real Jacob gets framed for the murder, with the evidence planted on him and the motive being involved with Catherine's damning speech.

And the death of her mother and the final moments about her mother being proud of her and all isn't the only gut-punch poor Mary got this episode. Alice has to rib her about her sister inferiority complex, too -- throw in the fact that Kate herself being particularly distant to her this episode, Mouse!Jacob pretending to be a supportive dad trying to prevent a divorce, plus the genuinely heartbreaking, traumatic last moment as Mary has to see her mother die in front of her own eyes, helpless to even do anything, has broken poor Mary. She drives away Kate for not believing in her mother and for holding up a torch for Alice for way too long. Basically, the Hamilton-Kane family is absolutely fucked, and it's going to be interesting to see where we go from here.

And honestly, considering how Kate can stroll in and out of Alice's lair without inciting a fight (to be fair, she's outnumbered, but on the other hand she's freaking Batwoman) and just to exchange vague threats, Mary might have a point. Kate might be a superhero, but she's certainly one that's giving Alice perhaps a bit too much leniency. This is not going to look good when Mary inevitably discovers or suspects that Kate is Batwoman, because that's going to be a huge "why didn't you save my mom" moment.

Both Mary and Alice's actors are easily the highlights of the episode, delivering pretty stunning displays of acting. You really do see Alice briefly struggling with her inner "Beth", the damaged, angry and sad girl who is wrestling with abandonment issues, crack through her veneer of "nyahaha I'm so evil this is a fun fun fun tea party" during her conversations with Catherine and Kate, and it's genuinely fun to watch. That said, though, with her murder of Catherine, I'm pretty sure this is the straw that breaks the camel's back and it's really going to be hard for Kate and Jacob to justify not at taking in Alice into a cell in Arkham. It's interesting how cynical of a tone that this series is taking, which definitely fits with the Bat-family stories. The beginning of the episode has Kate talk about how she keeps choosing 'hope' (Supergirl much?) but that hope gets brutally torn down and broken, leaving Kate's family in shambles and Alice still on the loose despite Kate's best efforts.

There's a B-plot with Sophie and Tyler and whether Sophie has moved on from Kate or not and whether Tyler the 'beard' husband is someone Sophie truly loves as a partner or not and they also get tied up by Alice in the Crows base. It does give Sophie a fair bit more depth than just being an ex-love-interest, so it's something, but I still really find it hard to care about this romantic plot tumour that feels like it's distracting from the far, far more interesting Kate/Hamilton family drama happening in every other scene in the episode. It feels particularly hilarious, honestly, that after the multiple gut-punches of Catherine's death, Jacob being framed and Mary distancing herself from Kate... one of the episode's huge cliffhangers is that "Tyler and Sophie are on a break maybe."

Anyway, a pretty fantastic and tense episode of Batwoman. It does give me a fair amount of hope for the show, and since Arrow's going to conclude at the end of this year, it'll hopefully give us a neat little replacement for a darker superhero vigilante story. I'm relatively surprised in the direction that they're taking the show in, but the Alice/Kate storyline is definitely amazing and well-told, with some great acting talents involved in it. Bring on the rest of the season, I say.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• The Joker and the Riddler are mentioned in passing conversation. At this point, honestly, anyone who reads these reviews definitely knows who most of the A-list Batman enemies are, yeah?
• Alice offers a cure made from a desert rose found in a place called Coryana. In the Rebirth Batwoman comic series, Coryana is a coutry that Batwoman visits, and the Desert Rose is a bar featured prominently in it.