Batwoman S01E19-20 Review: Sibling Rivalry

Batwoman, Season 1, Episode 19: A Secret Kept From All The Rest; Episode 20: O, Mouse

Episode 19: A Secret Kept From All The Rest
So as we barrel into the final two episodes of the first season of Batwoman, the combination of the abrupt ending and the knowledge that leading actress Ruby Rose would leave the show come next season does make me really think that Batwoman would probably be better served, in hindsight, to end its first season right at the very natural spot of Kate having put Alice in jail, with the cliffhanger being the fact that she now has to wrestle with the guilt of killing Cartwright and also 'betraying' her sister to land her in Arkham Asylum. Oh well, hindsight, I guess.

Anyway, this episode is still a very solid one with the pieces that have been established all over the board. With Magpie having stolen Lucius Fox's encrypted journal with all the WayneTech and Bat-Tech secrets, the unholy trinity of Alice, Mouse and Hush are completely puzzled as to how to figure it out. Hush really doesn't have any stakes in the whole thing, but Alice is holding his face hostage and he is forced to run around with the very cool-looking bandage-head-mask, abducting cryptographers who are, obviously, unable to crack the code when Alice and Mouse basically demands immediate results while they are strapped to an electric chair. There's definitely a sense of Batman-villain-esque dark comedy here, which I do appreciate.

The episode itself is pretty straightforward, where Batwoman and her team are investigating a string of serial killings, while Team Alice is trying their best to decode the journal. It's mostly relatively general superhero stuff until the climax, although the episode does manage to build up a bunch of B-plots running around in the background. On the side of the bad guys, in addition to Hush being inserted into the Alice/Mouse dynamic (he's exasperated with the fact that they're killing off everyone very quickly while also not happy that they're holding his face hostage), we get a not-insignificant amount of scenes from Mouse that show that he's not quite as happy with Alice's obsession with exacting revenge on Batwoman when they have essentially carved a peaceful life where they can rule in Arkham Asylum without interference.

On the good guys' side, after Batwoman rescues Parker Torres (another welcome reuse of this season's guest stars), we get a couple of scenes where poor Mary is basically not very pleased that there's a different smart girl that Kate has apparently confided her identity in, and she's basically being allowed into the Batcave without much preamble. This one is more comedic (Mary and Parker have pretty great chemistry in their interactions) and doesn't lead into anything huge in the next episode, but it's still interesting to note that despite Mary's inclusion into the Bat-Team last episode, she's still feeling just a mite on the fringes. There's also the Sophie/Kate/Julia love triangle thing, which I really don't really care about, but I do appreciate Mary and Parker's peanuts' gallery commentary so much more than anything that the actual love triangle brings to the show.

More significant is the break-up between Kate and Luke, with Luke being (very rightfully) angry that the journal that his father died to protect got stolen because Kate was careless while sleeping with a random bartender. We get a brief Reagan confrontation, but of course, the Kate/Luke friction is the larger focus of the episode. There are a lot of parts in the episode where Kate could've called Luke and didn't... which ends up proving to be their downfall when Hush kidnaps both Luke and Julia and holds them hostage. Luke being Luke, he of course ends up finding a way to decrypt the journal, but finding out that it's a way to break through the bat-suit, elects to die to protect Kate's secrets. The good guys being the good guys, when Batwoman shows up, she elects to give Alice the magic glasses that will translate Lucius Fox's journal as opposed to letting Luke and Julia die.

And I think the two confrontations between the good guy and bad guy teams are meant to parallel each other. Luke and Kate have a legitimate beef, so do Alice and Mouse, but where Kate and Luke are prepared to lay their lives down for the other if needed be, Alice is significantly more selfish -- constantly pushing Mouse's needs aside and eventually tossing Mouse's doctor flesh-mask into the burning Arkham Asylum in their escape, quite literally burning the save haven that Mouse has so desperately wished they have. The core of the Kate/Luke dynamic is that "there's no Batwoman without Luke Fox", and while the same might be true for the Alice/Mouse dynamic, it's clear that one Kane sibling respects her partner more than the other.

That's not the only things that take place in this episode, though, and I do appreciate Batwoman episodes for being pretty chock-full of content. There's the constant foreshadowing of Safiyah Sohail, next season's villain, and apparently she's the person that Julia was working for in the previous episode, albeit it's a way to get her off of Kate's trail, not aware of what the journal contains. I feel like this little storyline of Julia's maybe-treachery is very much muted, because there really wasn't a point in the season where I believed that she was actually a traitor. Meanwhile, Jacob Kane declares war on Batwoman, basically blaming her on the huge breakout in Arkham Asylum. That's a thing that happens, I guess, and that's part of the Batman or Bat-family formula where sometimes the police just really dislike these vigilante-types. It's not a terrible plotline per se, it just kind of feels somewhat tacked-on. Oh, and the contents of Luke's journal involves something about Kryptonite, which next episode will sort of tackle.

Ultimately, though, a very solid episode. It doesn't really do anything super-spectacular, and the moral of the episode is something that's pretty much expected for any of these superhero ensemble shows, but I do appreciate the pacing of the show in that it's able to move the main plot points along while not making the episode feel throwaway. (Also, Alice being a total dick to Hush when he fails, particularly the mop bit, is the highlight of the episode).

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Episode 20: O, Mouse!
I'm not sure how many more episodes Batwoman had intended to have after this episode, but... well, 'O, Mouse' really doesn't serve as a particularly satisfying one. Sure, it ended at a huge impactful moment, at least on the bad guys' side, but at the risk of sounding like a broken record, I really did feel like the show has had a far better ending with the episode where Alice got shoved in a jail cell. I dunno. That's not to say that we didn't get any good episodes afterwards, because there are certainly a lot of highlights in the post-hiatus episodes, but... I dunno, this is just such an off point to finish a season.

One of the biggest weaknesses of 'O, Mouse' as a season finale (as opposed to the previous episode, for example) is that the A-plot is so... underwhelming. The acting is pretty good all around, but Batwoman hunting around for a random Arkham escapee, Tim "Titan" Teslow, some dude who can't feel pain, is just so bland. There's an attempt at making the villain be somewhat relevant by dragging in a sub-plot about the abusive nature of competitive sports, but ultimately Teslow is such a one-note villain. It's basically a way to get Batwoman and Mary to try and attempt to get Jacob Kane to work alongside them, but turns out that, hey, Jacob Kane's an asshole and ended up using the whole exercise as an excuse to ambush and attack Batwoman.

What I do praise, though, is the acting involved here. There's a very great moment of Mary, nearly in tears but standing up to her father, talking about how if even the Crows' leader's own daughter doesn't believe in the Crows, how could the rest of Gotham? Because as much as Jacob Kane wants to think that he's the law, the rest of Gotham City (and all the audience members) don't really think the Crows are worth jack shit. And with the fact that the past couple of episodes have established that anyone that's not Jacob and Sophie are essentially corrupt in one way or another, Jacob's just being an idiot about it all. Kate also gets a really great moment at the end of the episode where she actually thinks that this attempt at working with Jacob would work, and it's not hard to see this as an allegory for coming out to your family about your 'secret life'. Between the cold-blooded murder of Teslow and their betrayal of Batwoman, though, the Crows have basically set themselves up to be as huge a villain as Alice or Safiyah will be next season.

Meanwhile, while it mostly takes place in the background, Luke finding a way to crush Bruce's shard of Kryptonite into powder is kind of interesting? It does lead to a neat moment where Batwoman reveals that she, too, has her own shard of Kryptonite given to her from Supergirl during the crisis (apparently that blank photo frame was supposed to contain a picture of Batwoman and Supergirl together that the cast and crew are unable to get ready due to the rushed shooting of this episode) and that's the one shard of Kryptonite that she's not willing to destroy. That's neat.

And then, of course, there's the bad guy squad storyline. Hush is mostly off-screen in this episode, with most of the focus centering on Alice and Mouse, with Mouse hammering home his refusal to help Alice on her obsession with vengeance on Kate and just want to escape (with Safiyah's ever-looming presence being a factor that scares poor Mouse). And this eventually leads to the rather shocking scene where Alice and Mouse do this ritual to burn themselves of their attachments to the past... before Alice reveals that she has poisoned Mouse, someone who's essentially her brother and the one who had been her rock while the fought through the trauma of being held captive by a lunatic. It's perhaps testament to Alice's utterly insane logic, that if she can't have Mouse than no one else can... but at the same time there's also a huge moment of sorrow and regret to the whole scene. It's sudden and definitely in-character for both of them, but at the same time the moment also feels just kind of subdued. I do appreciate that this has been building up in the background of all the Arkham episodes, though, so there's definitely a fair amount of buildup to this.

In addition to the Kryptonite stuff and the vague foreshadowings of Safiyah, Alice now has made good on her promise to Hush, giving him the face of Bruce Wayne, which is definitely fun! It's kind of obvious for anyone who knows anything about Hush and sees that he's about to undergo some plastic surgery face-swap, but still. Ultimately, though, while this episode does promise a bunch of new shake-ups in the status quo, I feel like it's sort of just kind of there. It's a good standalone episode, and I can't be too hard since it's not the original intent of the show writers and circumstances dictate otherwise, but ultimately I kind of feel like this is kind of a lukewarm spot to leave what has otherwise been a pretty fantastic superhero season. 

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• I'm not sure if it's just a funky Easter Egg or if it's going to be relevant in the future of the show, but if you pause the episode on the translated page of Lucius's journal, you can read about the Resurrection of Ra's al Ghul, about Talia al Ghul, the Suit of Sorrows and the Order of St. Dumas.
• This whole line is taken from the Wikipedia page for 'Batsuit', so I'm not sure if the whole talk about Suit of Sorrows and Ra's al Ghul's resurrection is canon in Batwoman, particularly since Ra's and Talia have already shown up in other CW-verse shows. 
• Hush's outfit is basically taken verbatim from his first appearance in Batman: Hush. 
• Kryptonite! It's, of course, the only material that can harm Kryptonians, and in the comics, Batman is famous for having a Kryptonite ring as a countermeasure in case Superman ever went bad. In the CW universe, Supergirl gave Batwoman a shard of Krypyonite during the Crisis of Infinite Earths crossover.
• Hush having the face of Bruce Wayne thanks to plastic surgery happened during the "Heart of Hush" storyline, when Bruce Wayne was dead after the events of Batman: R.I.P., and has been more or less the defining characteristic of Hush in a lot of subsequent portrayals.  
• Commissioner Loeb and his very icy relationship with Batman is name-dropped by Vesper Fairchild. Loeb, of course, was the corrupt police chief in Gotham before Batman outed him and allowed Jim Gordon to rise in his place. 
• Safiyah Sohail is the primary villain of Batwoman: Rebirth, a former lover of Kate Kane who runs the pirate nation of Coryana. 

Batwoman S01E17-18 Review: Sins of the Past

Batwoman, Season 1, Episode 17: A Narrow Escape; Episode 18: If You Believe in Me, I Believe in You

Episode 17: A Narrow Escape
It's going to be interesting to talk about Batwoman. Like the other CW shows, its season ended mid-way due to the Coronavirus outbreak, and after a brief hiatus, the remaining episodes that were filmed were aired, with any lingering plot threads saved until filming is safe to resume. Unlike Flash or Supergirl, however... the second season of Batwoman will have major shake-ups due to news that the show has lost her lead, Ruby Rose... and that's going to be interesting moving forward on whether the character Kate Kane would simply be recasted, if we'd have a MCU-James-Rhodes-style "actor's changed, deal with it" mentality, or if they would do something else and work it into the story. After all, Batwoman is a show that coincidentally features a villain whose penchant is in making hyper-realistic faces for disguises. It'd be interesting, anyway.

Still, none of these episodes were filmed with that knowledge in mind, and "A Narrow Escape" feels like a bit of a filler episode. Honestly, with hindsight, they probably should've ended the season on episode 16, which was basically a perfect stopping point for the season, with a huge climactic send-off for Alice and Mouse, while also still promising more from them. These four episodes are definitely going to be kind of interesting to look at, because, unlike Supergirl or The Flash, this show actually had a great, natural stopping point. Oh well.

The episode itself was pretty serviceable, with most of it dealing with Kate basically trying to avoid dealing -- and later forced to deal with the fact that she is Batwoman, yet she's taken a life. She even spends the first half of this episode MIA and hiding out in a drunken mess for a couple of days... except in superhero life, there's no break days. A new villain called the Detonator is terrorizing Gotham City, using a modus operandi lifted straight out of Heath Ledger's Joker, strapping supposedly 'good' people like policemen and doctors onto a bomb, and the only way to defuse the bomb is to cause an explosion that will claim the lives of several others. Of course right as Kate is angsting about the morality of killing -- even a single life -- in comes a villain that plays a sadistic game that involves choosing to kill.

Surprisingly, though, while Kate does have a couple of great moments in this episode, particularly when she decides to take up the mantle and fight again (her going woozy at the sight of the bat insignia is a bit too much though), she's almost a secondary character in this episode. Yeah, she gets a badass moment tracking down the Detonator. Yeah, the moment when she finally sucks it up after Mary gives her a good motivational speech and tells her that she knows about Kate = Batwoman all along was amazing and kind of cathartic... but this episode really is a huge, huge deal for Luke Fox, a character who hasn't really been prominent beyond being the tech-sidekick. The murder of Luke's father is a huge conspiracy and mystery that the pre-hiatus episodes set up for us, and I am just genuinely surprised that it's actually tied up in this episode, making this whole episode far, far more eventful.

Sure, the first half of the episode set this up as basically a typical superhero episode. And while that might sound dismissive, it's not meant to be -- it's a good watch, it just follows a lot of the expected beats. Crazy villain leaves a super-specific clue on his bullets, there's a bit of a red herring when Batwoman goes after the first Detonator's son, not realizing that this one is just someone mimicking an old Gotham lunatic, and the whole aforementioned Kate performance anxiety drama.

But once Luke Fox discovers that the Detonator is actually corrupt Crows agent Miguel Robles, and also the true killer of Lucius Fox. And after the pretty traumatic experience that Luke got after meeting the fall guy that got murdered, you can forgive Luke for throwing all caution to the wind and going off to put a bullet in the Detonator's head himself, morality be damned. This leads to a very, very great moment as Luke walks in just as Detonator callously mocks 'who's asking? His kid?' to Batwoman's questioning of his complicity in killing Lucius Fox. And the argument between Luke and Kate is great, genuinely being pretty well done and leading to a very natural part of the conversation when Kate just blurts out that, no, she, too, has killed someone who did a lot of harm to her family, and she feels absolutely terrible because of it. It's a great bonding moment for them, and hey, the Detonator's eventually brought to justice.

As usual, there are a bunch of B-plots. There's a brief bit with a Batwoman copycat who I don't think is a character we recognize, and the various sources tell me that she's literally just a rando who's trying to basically strike fear with the real Batwoman's absence. There's, of course, the great Mary moment when she tells Kate that she knows all along and damn it woman get your shit together.... which I thought would be a lot more dramatic and involve "secrets are bad zomg!!" CW-angst that would take up at least like three episodes, and I do appreciate that it's cut short. Also, I completely forgot until re-reading the synopsis that Jacob Kane was held hostage and there was this whole sub-plot with Julia and Sophie rescuing him or something.

And, of course, there's always Alice and Mouse in Arkham Asylum. After a brief electroshock session and a re-introduction to Tommy Elliot -- who's obsessed with the delusion that Bruce Wayne is his best buddy forever... was he this insane the first time we met him? A psychopath, sure, but insane? Oh, and via Detonator, we learn that Elliot was the one who hired the Detonator to kill Lucius Fox. Anyway, Alice and Mouse basically decide to use Arkham as their fortress for a while, and kills a doctor for Mouse to take over the identity of. Okay, sure.

Incidentally, and I know it's probably a personal gripe, but I am not the biggest fan, or a fan at all, at the implication that Batman went into retirement because he broke his code and killed the Joker. I do appreciate that the script and the words Luke says are ambiguous enough so that they could go back on it if they want to, but I've never been a fan of adaptations that make Batman a killer. At least this Batman was apparently so broken by the decision that he buggered off for five years in angsty exile. I dunno.

Ultimately, it's not the perfect episode, but one that feels pretty eventful and had all the large thematic ties (Alice B-plot notwithstanding) end up tying to each other and to the larger Detonator/Tommy Elliot connection and some sort of conspiracy revolving around it. Not a perfect episode for sure, but one that I really do like a lot.
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Episode 18: If You Believe in Me, I'll Believe in You

Meanwhile, this one is the big Mary episode, and I do find it interesting that despite all the build-up in previous episodes hinting more towards a huge conflict where Mary finally finds evidence that Kate is Batwoman and is hiding it from her all along, and gets super-angry towards her stepsister. Maybe it's me still having the huge Supergirl/Lena fallout in mind. But hey, having Mary's big moment be Mary actually joining the Bat squad is a far more entertaining hour of television!

The concept of the episode is one that these ensemble-cast superhero shows like a lot. One of the civilian friends wants to help out and is super-enthusiastic about it, but the hero is reluctant of putting someone close to them in the line of fire. It's pretty simple stuff, really, and of course while investigating the plotline of the week -- reclaiming Lucius Fox's journal from the hands of one of Elliot's goons, Johnny Sabatino -- Batwoman fails and gets captured, and it's up to Mary and her unique skill-set to infiltrate Sabatino's club and figure out where Batwoman is and rescue her. There's of course a fair amount of logic hoops (even in-universe) that the episode does to make this work, like why the criminals don't unmask or kill Batwoman prior to auctioning her, but it's a typical superhero fiction logic hoop so I won't be nitpicking too much. The ultimate end result is a pretty fun episode, which is nice. I really don't have much to say here, I do enjoy Mary's character so seeing her do a bit more is definitely appreciated. It doesn't go quite into the zaniness that other CW shows can be, but it's a neatly different tone from the more dour cast -- Mary does play up the socialite part of her character, but how she manages to get in the club and into the mafia meeting makes sense -- befriending Sabatino's cousin because she helped her out in her illegal clinic, and claiming to want to buy Batwoman's suit as what's essentially corporate espionage is good cover.

The rest of the episode, meanwhile, builds up on the characters introduced earlier in the season and sort of crafts this neat network of nice callbacks. After learning about Lucius Fox's notebook, Alice and Mouse end up pressing Tommy Elliot for it, and threatens to use Mouse's newfound doctor persona to declare him to be 'sane to stand on trial'. It's what leads Elliot to contact his buddy Sabatino, who's holding the journal for him. Sabatino, being a gangster, decides to betray Elliot, so Alice lets Magpie out to steal the journal for her. We also get Tommy's demands for his help, which is a 'new face' like what Mouse has, leading to him being wrapped in bandages while some schmuck is given Tommy's face and hung to fake his death. Alice is holding Tommy's new face hostage, which means we'll be seeing Tommy running around in Hush regalia for at least a couple more episodes. Tommy is absolutely fun in this episode, by the way, hamming it up with some glorious lines .

Magpie mostly serves as the third act fight against Batwoman, because once Mary activates the go-go-gadget exploding money suitcase and springs her sister, the takedown of the mafioso is instantaneous. (Also, Julia totally snaps some poor lady gangster's neck) But then Magpie's presence ends up tying in to yet another returning character -- Reagan the bartender showing up was initially something that I thought was just going to be a neat little reuse of a minor character that I wasn't really sure what the show is doing with, but the twist that Reagan is actually Magpie's sister and essentially slept with Kate to steal Lucius Fox's journal is pretty good. So does Magpie know that Kate is Batwoman, then? Or did Alice cook up a story of how Batwoman's working for Kate? Regardless, I do agree with Luke -- that was a dumb move on Kate's part.

I do think that the Alice/Mouse/Hush storyline does classify as one of the main plots of this episode, but there are still a bunch of B-plots running around. There's Sophie and Julia flirting with each other a lot, particularly with Julia being recruited into the Crows or something. I mean... sure? Sophie is still kind of one of the less interesting characters in the show and mostly just being the token-cooperative-cop in the way that Jim Gordon is. Maaaaaybe the love-triangle will be interesting and not be annoying? Knowing CW's track record, I don't have high hopes, but okay, sure. Far more interesting is the implication that Julia seems to be working for someone else to get the journal. Whether this is someone nefarious and Julia's secretly a villain, or if she's like, working for Bruce or Alfred or someone that's good, we'll see.

Ultimately not an episode that was as tense as "A Narrow Escape" and one that serves more as a set-up episode, but the Mary segments of the episode was real fun, and everything else -- Hush, the notebook, Magpie, Reagan, Julia -- really do make for a great example of good serialized superhero shows. We'll see if this show can keep it up next season!

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• The Detonator is a minor Batman villain that was part of the Seven Men of Death, a faction of killers within the League of Assassins summoned by Talia al Ghul and fought Batman, Robin and Azrael to reclaim an item called the Suit of Sorrows. The Detonator is the explosives expert of the group. 
• Johnny Sabatino in the comics is a criminal working for Arnold Wesker, the Ventriloquist. Sabatino is also the husband of Peyton Riley, although the two had a loveless marriage due to it being an arranged marriage to bring peace between two crime families. Sabatino was an abusive man, and attempted to murder his own wife at one point, riddling her with bullets but failing to kill her. Seeing her survival as a sign, and hearing voices from the Ventriloquist's puppet Scarface (Arnold Wesker had recently been murdered), Peyton ended up adopting (or being adopted by) Scarface and became the second Ventriloquist. 
• As mentioned above, the plotline of forcing people to choose between two different bombs is famously the plot of the Joker in The Dark Knight, where he attempted to prove that all people are as twisted and fucked-up as he is. 
• Apparently Batman killed the Joker in this continuity, or at least Luke thinks so, which is why he broke down and retired. A vaguely similar concept is popularized by The Dark Knight Returns, although in that series Batman came out of retirement and subsequently killed the Joker. A similar scene also happened in the concurrently running Titans series, albeit it's in a 'worst timeline' nightmare. 
• The idea of a cowl (or, well, a wig) lined with electricity is actually something that Batman himself employs in multiple occasions in the comics, including perhaps most famously in The Dark Knight. 
• In the comics, Batwoman's cape is actually easily detached to prevent this exact scenario from happening, as seen in Batwoman: Elegy. 
• Hush's obsession with faces, and with Bruce Wayne in general, is taken from his reinvention in the New 52 continuity. 
• Tommy Elliot also faked his death in his original debut to prevent suspicion from coming on to him and allowing him to operate as his alter-ego. His bandage-wrapped face, of course, is taken from his supervillain alter-ego, Hush. 

Batwoman S01E16 Review: An Unexpected Team-Up

Batwoman, Season 1, Episode 16: Through the Looking Glass

Okay, this was the last episode of Batwoman prior to the whole delay in all CW shows prior to the pandemic, and it sure is a pretty decent episode to end on, actually feeling like a huge mid-season finale that ends the huge Alice storyline that has such a massive focus throughout these sixteen episodes of Batwoman's first season. The question is, of course, whether it's a good finale and where we go from here. And... episode 15 gave us a huge, bombastic "wait, what?" moment when Kate Kane, in a fit of anger, ends up strangling August Cartwright to death. And while there are factors regarding that killing -- August Cartwright certainly is a scumbag deserving of death, and the cause of death was the wound being reopened instead of just Kate's strangling -- it's still Kate Kane having to deal with the fact that she killed someone. And questionable live-action adaptations aside, Batman has a strict no-killing policy, which I assume Kate knows about and, considering her stance in the past couple of episode, evidently shares.

And while the episode starts off with the rather gruesome scene of the reunited Kane family hanging out and digging a grave and filling it in with the dead corpse of Kate's murder, and it's interesting how there are definitely some nice, tender, almost familial scenes between Alice and Kate, as well as Alice and Jacob... which is immediately underscored by Alice making use of their distraction to escape. Alice is delighted, above all, that Kate has finally 'awaken' from the 'insanity' of being a superhero, noting that without the moral high ground of not being a murderer, surely Kate will come over to their side since they're both similar and are brought together by both being murderers, right?

And understandably, this episode is very Kate/Alice-centric, and Kate just grapples really heavily with this surprise murder. Kate tries her best to jump straight into being a vigilante, but as she later confides, the fact that she doesn't really feel bad about it is really nagging a hole in her consciousness. As she goes out as Batwoman, this goes into aggression towards some of the criminals she's beating up, and she ends up being consumed by guilt, and it's so, so interesting to see. Batwoman gets a lot of flak for some of the writing decisions it does, but if nothing else, the acting part of the show is certainly very much on-point.

Alice, however, ends up realizing that her luck has ran out. Her base full of evil henchman has been all murdered to the last man by a person called Safiyah, who Alice mentioned a couple of episodes ago, and Alice is desperate and even scare, wanting to rescue Mouse and leave Gotham. Except she doesn't have any friends (other than Mouse), so all she can do is to turn to Kate and strike a deal, banking on their sisterhood (and their shared status as murderers) that Kate will help her out. And, well, Alice actually showing a fair amount of vulnerability and clear fear for whoever this 'Safiyah' is, honestly underlines why Alice is so entertaining as an antagonist. Skirting the line of 'crazy psycho mofo' and 'she's still my sister, right?' comes so naturally to this woman that I can totally buy what Kate did afterwards.

And Kate does agree to do so, under the stipulation of no killing (Alice actually following suit with this throughout the episode is one of the highlights of the raid), and it does lead to a very interesting sequence where Batwoman agrees with a villain, making a deal with the devil, to break a prisoner out. While last episode's killing was certainly one that the audience is far more likely to shrug and go "sucks that her moral compass is compromised, but he had it coming", breaking Mouse out, no matter how clearly terrible and horrifying Arkham Asylum is, is a big no-no.

And while the actual raid in Arkham Asylum is extremely entertaining (particularly with all of Alice's one-liners), it does come with the unease that our hero is doing something that's clearly illegal and villainous, especially when she maimed that one Arkham Asylum guard. Of course, it all turns out to be a glorious, glorious feint, and when Alice jumps into the maximum security chamber to break Mouse out, Kate ends up closing the door to the cell, and it turns out that the whole thing is a sting operation between Kate and Jacob. And while Alice certainly is a villain and a psychopath that deserves to be locked up, you can't help but feel sorry for poor, poor Alice when she's just crying in betrayal and sobbing for Kate and Jacob to not leave her ever again. She does deserve to be locked up, but dang, the show does a great job at making us feel bad for Alice, huh?

The B-plot of this episode is interesting, focusing on Luke Fox in a storyline divorced from him being Kate Kane's sidekick. It's a combination of a bunch of things that took place in the Jacob Kane storyline in the past couple of episodes, which I had mostly acknowledged or ignored, but I really do like how it all comes down together here. So the prisoner that saved Jacob's life in the prison, Reggie Harris, turns out to be the man that was thought to have murdered Luke's dad Lucius Fox, and thanks to a deal between Reggie and Jacob, Reggie's case gets brought up in court once more and Reggie ends up walking free, because Jacob realizes that thanks to the whole corrupt judge system in the Executioner episode, there is a loophole surrounding the Reggie case.

Luke ends up confronting Reggie Harris in a very emotional bit, and I think it does relate thematically with Kate confronting and killing someone who was so responsible for a lot of tragedies in her family. Luke ends up finding out that Reggie... is actually a decent guy, and claims to have been framed for the murder of Lucius Fox. Supporting this, of course, is the fact that Reggie gets fucking gunned down by an assassin just as he's trying to explain that, no, he's not a bad man to Luke. It's all amazingly well-done, and it allows actor Camrus Johnson to really show off more than just being a supporting dude in the Batcave.

Supporting this whole conspiracy storyline is the fact that Sophie and Jacob, at various points in the episode, also get targeted by assassins who want to close anything related to this case, and Jacob ends up bringing Sophie into the loop because hey, maybe firing the only competent person in the Crows because she helps out a vigilante one time isn't the smartest thing to do in Gotham City. I really don't care all that much about Sophie or Jacob at all, but this is an interesting enough storyline for them. And, hey, we get the return of Julia Pennyworth, and that's fun.

The episode ends with a pretty neat scene of Kate confiding with Julia about how she doesn't want to be like Alice before making out, while Alice and Mouse plan their escape. There's also the mystery regarding whoever is trying to kill all the loose ends with the Reggie case, as well as Safiyah, but ultimately, this was actually a pretty solid mid-season finale.

Batwoman S01E14-15 Review: The Joker's Daughter

Batwoman, Season 1, Episode 14: Grinning from Ear to Ear; Episode 15: Off With Her Head

Episode 14: Grinning from Ear to Ear

After the Nocturna bit last episode, episode 14 also stars a villain-of-the-week, in the form of Duela Dent, known better to comic book fans as "Joker's Daughter" or "Harlequin"... except it's kind of an adaptation in name only? I know and respect that Batwoman is going to mainly use villains that fought Batwoman exclusively, or lesser-known Bat-family antagonists like Nocturna or Executioner, but at the same time I really thought that when Duela Dent showed up here, we're going to at least have a brief nod to the bigger Bat-family universe, y'know? And while I do appreciate shining the light on lesser villains, after the rather hectic pace of the post-Crisis episodes, having two in a row focusing on minor villains while the Alice/Kate storyline is put on hold ends up, I think, being a bit less than positive for the season as a whole.

That said, though, for a Gotham City flavoured villain of the week episode, it's a pretty solid one. Duela Dent is introduced as a girl who self-mutilates and is angry that her family would force her to accept 'normalcy' via plastic surgery. It's kind of an all right basis for a character, I suppose, but Duela never really exhibits much of a personality beyond her rantings that she wants to be 'normal' and her normal isn't the same as other people's normal. It's honestly kind of disappointing, even if they're not going the Two-Face's-daughter route, I really wished that there was just a bit more to connect her to the greater world around her. Instead, she's just some maniac psychopath that's hunting down social media influencers because we have to be topical. The actual hunt for Duela in the episode is... it's all right? It's no more or less interesting than Nocturna last episode, and it's just kind of there.

I guess the whole thing with Duela is to tie and clue Kate and Alice in to the existence of Gotham City's most amoral plastic surgeon, a.k.a. the alter-ego of August Cartwright, which is all fine and dandy. Also, Alice ends up convincing Duela to cut off her entire face and give it to her for some face-mask-swapping action which I really do feel is just kind of an eye-roll to me. Meanwhile, because August is a father-of-the-year, he's stuck Mouse strapped to a chair with fear gas shoved into his face. Okay, then.

I'm not sure why I'm a bit more down with this episode because I didn't have any problems with the Nocturna one. I guess part of it is my disappointment at how far Duela Dent is as far as adapting a character goes? Or maybe it's the B-plot of Sophie and Batwoman having some flirt-flirt-no-wait-don't-flirt moment which is just frustrating and going nowhere. I get that some people tune in for the relationship drama, but this one was kind of clunky all season long.
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Episode 15: Off With Her Head
"Off With Her Head" goes straight back into the Kate/Alice bit after two episodes of distraction and villains of the week, and it's a huge part of Batwoman's first season of basically exploring the relationship between the two sisters, and it takes a pretty fun approach of taking a villain with a sympathetic backstory (and also happens to be family to our main character) and basically going back and forth on whether she's redeemable. Alice jumps back and forth between giving us a sob story about her frankly pretty terrifying abduction and then goes off to do some hideous crime, and then does a surprisingly decent thing when she saves Mary one point or something. Most of Kate's drama, on the other hand, revolves more about whether she should be a good superhero or a good sister, and the whole alternate-universe Beth thing is yet another layer of complexity. The way that this has been explored is... interesting, and while not always consistent, Alice is far, far more interesting as an antagonist than someone like, oh, Thinker or Ricardo Diaz.

That said, though, what Alice goes through in this episode's flashback sequence (and after Arrow, it's so dang interesting to have the flashbacks be fully centered around the main antagonist's origin instead of the protagonist's). One of my complaints about "An Un-Birthday Present" is how unneccessary the flashback sequence there is. I mean, it sure adds to our loathing of August that he kills kittens, and makes us understand the adopted-sibling bond between Mouse and Alice, but those aren't things that are exclusive to the flashback, and we did already get those from other previous flashbacks.

Here, though, Alice's flashbacks play back and forth with present-day Alice getting dosed by fear gas by an insane Mouse, and we learn the important part where young Beth isn't just a desperate, kidnapped little girl but rather someone that, to quote Oliver Queen, "had to be someone else, had to be... something else". In other words, this episode's flashbacks is where little Beth Kane drops most of the decent things about her and embraces the villainous mantle of what she would be -- Alice. That said, the evil old grandma, the 'Queen of Hearts', is... she's just kind of there. She's abusive, she pours hot tea on little Beth's hands and she clearly wants to take the pretty ruby necklace that Beth has, but I don't quite think that she's that much worse than August? Of course, in Beth's desperation to look for creamer or whatever, she finds out that August had kept the severed head of her mom in a fridge, and from the dialogue in the episode it's hinted pretty heavily that August's mom wants Gabi Kane's face for her own.

This causes young Beth to snap, and while oxygen tanks certainly do not work that way, it's a gloriously over-the-top moment when young Beth (or young Alice, I should say?) rips off the oxygen tank and proceed to turn it into a flamethrower to murder the Queen of Hearts.

In the present day, though, Batwoman has came across August Cartwright, bound next to the Bat-signal after Alice confronted him last episode. And while Alice spends the episode looking for Mouse (and getting dosed with fear gas because Mouse was over-reacting), Batwoman, in the guise of Kate, brings in her father Jacob to deal with August. Jacob heads off to save Alice from the fear gas and ends up in a genuinely heartwarming reunion (it's just kind of a shame that unlike the other 'dad' figures in CW shows, I don't quite care as much about Jacob Kane as I do, say, Joe West, Peter Gambi or J'onn J'onzz). But as Kate learns about aspects of Alice/Beth's backstory, particularly the mom-head bit, Kate, too, snaps, attacking the bound August Cartwright and choking him, causing a wound that was inflicted upon August earlier in the episode to burst open and killing the fucker. And that after Kate spends a good chunk of the episode convincing Jacob to not kill August, too!

And this sure is an explosive end to the episode, where our hero, Batwoman, straight-up kills a dude! Sure, August Cartwright is... he's utter scum, and even worse than that, he doesn't even think what he did is wrong, trying to deflect blame to his mother for turning Beth into the evil Alice (Kate and Jacob are quick to tell him that it's August's fault for kidnapping Beth that she was exposed to the Queen of Hearts at all), blaming Alice for corrupting Mouse (which, by the way, he left with a lethal dose of fear gas throughout this episode) and generally having such a smarmy holier-than-thou attitude that makes all of his evil deeds seem worse in comparison. The show does a great job at making August Cartwright be numero uno for a person that deserves death. But if you know anything about Batman (and none of that BvS crap) is that a huge part of the Bat-family's code is that they never kill. And it's definitely going to be interesting to see how Kate Kane is going to deal with this.

The episode was rocky, and perhaps I was a bit more impressed with the flashback than I am the present-day storyline, but the sudden twist at the end was pretty great, and I do wish that it'll be handled with a bit more of a slower pace to let us drink in what happened compared to the alter-universe Beth Kane. Good stuff.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Duela Dent, often operating under the moniker of "The Joker's Daughter", is an enigmatic villain who fought the first Robin multiple times, and across her first story she claimed to be the daughter of various Batman villains like the Catwoman, Scarecrow, Penguin and Riddler, before it's revealed that Duela Dent is, in fact, the daughter of Two-Face. Duela would later join some incarnations of the Teen Titans, using the pseudonym "Harlequin" and keeping the clown-themed gimmick. Duela Dent's subsequent appearances in the comics, however, is extremely inconsistent particularly in regards to her age and her allegiance. During the events of Countdown to Final Crisis, Duela Dent is killed by the Monitor, and it's revealed that the inconsistencies regarding Duela Dent's portrayal is because she's originally a version of Joker from another Earth who ended up being retained during the creation of Earth-Prime.
• Duela Dent's face being cut off at the end of the episode seems to be a reference to the darker'n'grittier New 52 reboot version of her, who's a psychotic woman who found Joker's sliced-off face and ends up getting an obsession to truly become the Joker's daughter. 
• Duela Dent's uncle is mentioned to be a "beloved A.D.A.", a very likely reference to Harvey Dent, a.k.a. Two-Face, who was a D.A. prior to becoming Two-Face. 
• The whole scars-that-resemble-a-smile bit, of course, is a reference to the Joker, particularly the Dark Knight version of the character that has a smile permanently etched to his face thanks to scars.
• Scarecrow's fear toxin makes a reappearance once more in episode 14. Scarecrow's fear toxin first made an appearance in Batwoman during the Elseworlds crossover. Scarecrow's alter-ego, Jonathan Crane, is also mentioned in episode 15 as a former colleague of August Cartwright. 

Batwoman S01E12-13 Review: There Can Only Be One

Batwoman, Season 1, Episode 12: Take Your Choice; Episode 13: Drink Me

Episode 12: Take Your Choice
We continue with the next couple of episodes of Batwoman. Apparently there's a month-long gap between episode 11 and 12 when it was originally released? Having two Beths running around feels a bit too fantastical for a more grounded show like Batwoman, and while it's still a superhero show, I do agree that a random alternate-Earth doppelganger does feel like it's the wrong vibe for the show, so one of the Beths must go. Either the good, newly-introduced Beth has to die in some way, or that Alice, after serving her role as the series' first big bad, will get written out while Beth is a way to keep Rachel Skarsten in the show. Legends of Tomorrow has done far, far more convoluted things to keep actors around, after all.

"Take your Choice" puts our main character in the unenviable position of having to choose between her flesh-and-blood sister that's psychotic and is a known murderer and liar, and the what-could-have-been sister that's, well, arguably an impostor, but is a perfectly nice and wholesome human being. While all of this is going on, Sophie has called up a shoot-on-sight order on Alice/Beth, because the Crows need to save space, leading to a rescue and Beth finally learning that Kate's Batwoman. Which, by my count, leaves only poor Mary as the only one not privy to secret identity stuff, but is in the loop about the existence of alternate-universe doppelgangers.


It is, admittedly, a bit odd that the rule that no two doppelgangers can hang around each other in Earth-Prime before they both die thanks to new cosmic rules -- particularly since we've actually seen doppelgangers that are left behind post-Crisis in Supergirl, but okay, I'll buy that the rules work differently now. We get a pretty neat scene of Beth finding out Kate's secret identity, and later on, an also neat scene when Alice waltzes into Wayne Towers to basically find out what's going on and trying to get the panacea she injected into Mary's blood during the mid-season finale. Which... okay, that's a bit of an awkward way to get Alice into the orbit of Team Batwoman, but I'll buy it.

Throughout the episode, though, Kate ends up being forced to basically choose which Beth she wants to pick. And it's an interesting dilemma. Since Alice killed Catherine, Kate has basically hammered down on the fact that she no longer sees her as her sister anymore but as a criminal, but at the same time she's also seeing the what-could-be if she had saved Beth, and that sheer amount of glorious Bat-family guilt angst is eating into her. And while for us, the audience (and for Mary in particular) the choice should be patently obvious, Kate's conflict about actually picking which sister lives and which sister dies is a very well-executed one. The way and honestly sheer suddenness in springing this new plot twist about Beth in around two episodes, we basically get a whole lot of tension and the sense of a race against time is really felt. Kate really hasn't spent enough time with the new Beth, for sure, but that makes her decision and what happens afterwards so much more tragic.

The episode seems to lean a bit more towards Kate foolishly choosing Alice, but she's not that stupid and when Kate chains Alice up to a hospital floor, Alice realizes that Kate chose the alternate-universe doppelganger instead, and everything that Alice thought was real about Kate end up basically crashing down all around her. She's always thought that Kate was "one step away" from acknowledging her as a sister, and to see that Kate basically sentenced her to die in favour of another Beth Kane? Psychopath or not, you can't feel at least a bit sorry for Alice, and the scene of Kate and Alice just crying and holding on to each other, both filled with lost hopes that they could respectively 'redeem' their sister to their side, is pretty well done.

Of course, the B-plot catches up with us. Throughout the past couple of episodes we've had this very banal side-story of Jacob Kane trying to get plastic surgeons to testify about the possibility of life-like masks (you now live in a world where the Elongated Man exists and is a city away, what the hell, you damn Gotham doctors?) and one of the plastic surgeons finally agrees to collaborate after meeting with Mouse... except said plastic surgeon is, in fact, August Cartwright himself, that evil child-kidnapping motherfucker. August basically torments Mouse, calling him a piece of shit for letting himself be manipulated by Alice, then goes off to snipe Alice in the head. Only instead of the real Alice, August ends up shooting Beth instead, abruptly ending the life of this 'good sister',  and, unknowingly, saving Alice's life.

And that's a pretty powerful moment. I could argue on how this could've perhaps been executed better, but personally? I really did like the suddenness of it, and the finality of the Kate/Alice scene that ends up being ripped away when Alice realizes that, hey, she's alive now but there was a moment when her sister was straight-up ready to let her die. Alice whacks a grief and guilt-wracked Kate with a metal tray and buggers off, and it's so, so interesting to see what's going to happen next with this pair of sisters.

As far as the B-plots go, Jacob Kane gets shanked by Dodgson but rescued by some other prisoner. Okay? Meanwhile, Mouse is clearly extremely terrified by August Cartwright, and while the Kate/Alice/Beth drama clearly dominates the main body of the episode, I do appreciate the fact that Mouse, as psychotic as he is, is still pretty damn terrified of August and is still as much a victim of abuse as Alice is. Sophie's also basically getting a bit more desperate and military-minded with how she's handling the leadership of the Crows, which is portrayed by the episode as basically being a huge negative.

I could argue about how the Beth Kane situation could perhaps be introduced to us in a bit better of a way, but the rapid pace of the revelation, and the fact that just like us, Kate and her friends didn't get the opportunity to spend time with Beth before she was so brutally ripped away from us, is definitely well done.
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Episode 13: Drink Me
After that gigantic whammy of an episode that is episode 12, though, we sort of end up getting an interesting 'filler' episode of sorts? Considering how central the Kate/Alice conflict has been throughout the entire season, and how last episode was such a gigantic, explosive and tense affair, it's interesting that we dial back the tension as we tackle something more... trivial? It did start as an intentional distraction as Luke Fox tries to get Kate's mind off of hunting down Alice by bringing up a mysterious new serial killer, someone who styles themselves as a vampire and leaves their victims drained of blood. For both Kate and the audience, this is an interesting way to cope and deal with the death of Beth.

This adaptation of Nocturna is a pretty basic comic book villain, a woman with a unique skin condition who's shunned by the world, took the vampire comparison and ran with it to make it her unique modus operandi. It is admittedly somewhat jarring compared to the usually more grounded Alice, who mostly restrains her wacky Batman-villain-gimmick to quoting Lewis Carroll and maybe a prop or two, but definitely a welcome change to me. The actual chase for Nocturna isn't the most interesting thing in the world, and I definitely didn't care much for the Sophie-shipping-and-jealousy bit. I'm also not sure how I feel about working Alice into the whole thing, but it did give us a bit of a not-quite-team-up between the Kane sisters when Alice ends up as one of Nocturna's victims.

Alice, meanwhile, is completely furious at Kate (who, meanwhile, is also beating herself up with grief and guilt over how she's failed the two Beths) for choosing the good Beth over her, and she's basically ran back to her base of horrors to talk to Mouse and basically plan the next step in taking Kate down... but Mouse is missing, under the mercies of his psychotic dad August Cartwright.

In the B-plot... Mary finally figures out that Kate is Batwoman due to both of Kate's alter-egos asking Mary for help during different parts of the Nocturna case, and Mary, bless her, is intelligent enough to put two and two together and realize that her step-sister is actually the badass vigilante that has been asking her for help every now and then. Mary's just recovered from the bit of conflict that she had with Kate over her initial attempt to believe that Alice could be redeemed, it's going to be interesting how Mary and Kate's next confrontation is going to be. Mary's easily my favourite secondary character in this show for sure. Also, I think the show's hinting at her and Luke getting together, which is neat and actually handled a lot better than some other CW shows I can think of. Luke's pretty much a goldmine for lighthearted banter in this episode, which I definitely approve.

Overall, "Drink Me" isn't the most plot-relevant episode, and more of a fun 'well, let's have a villain-of-the-week for once!' change in formula for Batwoman, but it's definitely a very welcome one, and I'm a fan of how the Kate/Alice/Beth central focus of the show is still touched on without it dominating the episode. Regrettably Nocturna herself is a bit one-dimensional, but what can you do.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Luke briefly mentions the existence of a 'cryogenic tank', which is likely a reference to classic Batman villain Mr. Freeze, who keeps his wife in suspended animation in such a tank. 
• Nocturna, Mistress of the Night a.k.a. Natalia Knight, is an adversary of Batman who was exposed to radioactive laser who drained her skin of all pigment and rendered her sensitive to light. With her lover Anton Knight, and the two unleashed a spree of robbery. Nocturna would later retire from crime, get into a relationship with both Bruce Wayne and Batman, and became surrogate mother to the second Robin, Jason Todd.
• Nocturna's whole vampire theme in this episode is based on a cancelled episode of Batman: The Animated Series, which planned to have Nocturna appear as a straight-up vampire, but the content of bloodletting and drinking blood caused the episode to be shot down by Fox. 

Batwoman S01E10-11 Review: Down the Rabbit Hole

Batwoman, Season 1, Episode 10: How Queer Everything Is Today; Episode 11: An Unbirthday Present

We're still reviewing most of the CW shows, or at least while I try to catch up with them. Batwoman had a pretty solid first eight episodes that ended in a pretty cool quasi-mid-season finale (is there a better way to say "one-thirds-of-a-season" without sounding awkward?) with the situation that befell the Kane-Hamilton family. I'm still not entirely sure about having the Kate/Alice storyline dominate the series to thoroughly, but I can't deny that the two actresses playing Kate and Alice have great chemistry together and Rachel Skarsten does the best job of eating the scenery that I can't even be mad.

Episode 10, "How Queer Everything is Today", is... it's underwhelming? Obviously, a pro-LGBT message is something that's right up Batwoman's alley, and anyone watching this show is very much likely to support said view. But the way that this episode handles it is with the clumsiness of a sledgehammer to the face, and that does take me out of the episode a bit.

A huge chunk of the episode deals with Kate's angst that, thanks to a bit of an inconvenient photograph, Gotham City starts shipping Batwoman with a hot cop dude, officer Slam Bradley, and Kate is angry that the city's seeing her as a straight person instead of the lesbian she is. Coincidentally, this week's villain-of-the-week is a CW original, Parker "Terrier" Torres, a teenage super-hacker whose motivation for hacking trains and threatening to spill the mayor's credit card is because she's frustrated because she can't come out as gay and, verbatim, talks about how the superheroes she sees on television ain't representative of her. Which is... certainly a bit too on-the-nose.

That said, some parts of the episode works well. The whole train sequence with Batwoman using her new Bat-bike's grappling hook is as sweet as it is physics-wise unrealistic, and the build-up and mystery surrounding the Terrier is at least a neat enough break from Alice while she ends up being mostly in the background, at least until she takes over as the main antagonist at the end of the episode.

Alice, meanwhile, butts heads a fair bit with Mouse, a dynamic which we've had a bit of foreshadowing in the first arc of Batwoman. While mostly supportive of his 'sister' Alice, Mouse is developing a severe case of sibling envy towards Alice's reactions towards Kate. Alice is wholly convinced that Kate is going to join her little crazy family after the events of the "Tea Party" two episodes ago, but Kate ends up (obviously, for us sane folk) not appreciating the fact that Alice has gotten rid of the oh-so-evil Catherine Hamilton that has 'ruined' their family. And Mouse, seeing how Alice's read on Kate has absolutely backfired, has put his feet down and is trying to make Alice see -- in their own twisted Wonderland logic. Alice ends up kidnapping Parker Torres and trying to get her to reveal Batwoman's secret identity to the world, but of course Parker isn't a snitch, and instead calls in the GCPD for help instead. Parker ends up seemingly built up as a potential sidekick at some point down the line. Okay, then.

The confrontation between Kate and Alice is a much-needed one after the gigantic cliffhanger of episode 8. After the wham-bam rapid pacing of the events of Alice's master plan, and giving our main characters time to process, Kate has finally basically accepted Alice not as someone to redeem, but as someone to take down... and, ironically, it's basically the same for Alice with the roles reversed. We also get the much-needed Kate/Mary bonding segment, which I do like. Mary gets a brief B-plot in this episode where she's throwing herself wholeheartedly into dealing with basically moving on and taking time to grieve about the absolutely shitty situation she finds herself in.

And then after what seems to be a relatively low-stakes episode where we put Kate and Alice in the right mindsets to finally have a proper good old-fashioned superhero-vs-supervillain showdown... Beth shows up, and, as we'll discover later on, it's not Alice dressed up as Beth, but rather a Beth from a different Earth that got shunted into Earth-Prime because, uh... god damn it Oliver Queen? It's a mighty interesting plot twist and one that seems to be a lot more impactful. (Also, of course Kate's first reaction is to attack her).

Overall, though, it's a decent, if on-the-nose, episode.
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We follow this up with "An Un-Birthday Present", following up on the huge revelation that Beth Kane just showed up in Kate's office, seemingly bereft of any knowledge of her time as Alice... and, of course, while it took our main cast a while to realize who and how Beth and Alice are co-existing, they quickly handwave through the weirdness of the whole multiverse thing by having our characters either already understand the multiverse, or, in Beth's case, already suspecting the existence of a multiverse. Or something. I'm actually glad that Kate's very first instinct was to think that this is yet another one of Alice's many sick jokes, attacking Beth and being confused before figuring things out. It did take a bit of a while for Kate, Luke and Mary (I like that Mary is included) to figure things out and get Beth back before anything happens to her, but I did like the process.

This episode is mostly another Kate-vs-Alice storyline, but with the additional wrinkle that none of the villains realize that there's a new player that looks like Alice is running around. With Alice being captured after the events of the next episode, Mouse goes around kidnapping the children of the mayor as a threat for the Crows to release Alice. For the most part, this is a device to get Alice talking with Sophie and for her to deliver yet another flashback story of how fucked-up Alice's childhood was when she was being raised by August Cartwright, who keeps adding to the "fuck this guy" list by killing the little kitty that little Alice and little Mouse adopted. It's another event that ends up turning Beth from a traumatized girl who finds solace in Alice in Wonderland escapism into, well, the crazy psycho that is Alice.

While all of this is going on, of course, Team Kate ends up befriending Beth and it's so surreal seeing Rachel Skarsten as a completely sane and likable person. There's an interesting layer of guilt-trip going on here when Beth reveals that the car crash did happen in her alternate Earth, but in Beth's Earth, Kate saved her from falling over with the car and their mother, which, of course, adds yet another layer of guilt-hero-complex for poor Kate. And cutting back and forth between the cheery reunion between Kate and Beth to the creepy backstory segment given by Alice really hammers home just how, well, basically for want of a nail, the two Beth Kanes ended up as such differing people.

Mouse also manages to kidnap Kate before she has a chance to suit up, and there's a running bit where the mayor and the GCPD chief apparently refuses to open up the bat-signal because summoning a gay superhero is "too political", despite there being lives on the line, which is kind of ridiculous but also the exact kind of thing that I would believe is the stupid decisions that American politicians would take. Beth ends up getting Luke and Mary to help disguise her as Alice, but apparently just looking the part and spouting random Lewis Carroll quotes isn't enough to fool Mouse, because Mouse and Alice has a bit of a code-word thing going on. Of course, Kate ends up saving both the hostages and Beth, although there was certainly a moment there where I thought that the show's going to kill off Beth almost immediately with her being trapped in a car, which would be exceedingly cruel. I don't think that both Beth and Alice will be hanging around the show together for far too long, though killing her off after half an episode of bonding is pretty dang cruel.

Alice, of course, manages to escape on her own by asking Sophie to bring her the Alice in Wonderland book, and she uses the fishing string that Mouse gave her to repair the book as a weapon to escape. Of course, as all the main characters basically return back to their respective families, both Beth and Alice double over from a splitting headache, which might seem that we're going to have some doppelganger angst in subsequent episodes. It's certainly not the direction that I thought Batwoman would take, or that the show would have such a huge tie-in to the concepts introduced in Crisis on Infinite Earths, but eh.

Ultimately, though, it's an interesting twist to the Kate/Alice storyline, and I do really like that we're still milking that story and not focusing headlong on the far less interesting "let's exonerate Jacob Kane from the false charges" bit, which continues to plod on as the B-plot in both these episodes. It's still kind of rough going, but episode 11 was pretty dang solid.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• The "Scarecrow Incident" is mentioned a couple of times, particularly in episode 10. While Scarecrow is certainly a classic Batman enemy and one that's been referenced in Batwoman during the Elseworlds crossover, the specific incident involving a train station seems to specifically reference Batman Begins.
• An article made by Kara Danvers, a.k.a. Supergirl, shows up as a brief cameo in episode 10, writing the story of how Batwoman came out as lesbian. They're all one big happy Earth-sharing family in Earth-Prime!
• Also, Oliver Queen's death is mentioned on Vesper Fairchild's radio channel. 
• Officer Samuel "Slam" Bradley is actually a character from the comics, a character that first appeared in Detective Comics #1 before Detective Comics ended up being taken over by its breakout star Batman two years later. Like what his comic title implies, Slam Bradley is a gung-ho detective that's able to beat up people as well as being a competent detective. Slam Bradley's stories would be relegated as a backup strip when Batman's popularity took over the title, and he would be formally inducted into the DC superhero continuity in the '80's as a minor guest star in Superman titles, and would make sporadic appearances in Batman and Catwoman titles. 
• Slam is compared to both Captain America and Chris Evans multiple times in the episode, indicating that apparently the MCU movies exists in the Arrowverse. 
• The Terrier is original to Batwoman. 

Crisis on Infinite Earths, Part 5 [Legends of Tomorrow S05E01] Review: What Had Been Many, Became One

Legends of Tomorrow, Season 5, Episode 1: Crisis on Infinite Earths, Hour Five

So this episode starts off after the chaotic end of Crisis on Infinite Earths, Part Four... and I have to preface this review by noting that despite my utterly critical review about the messiness of parts three and four of Crisis... I still kind of enjoyed it to some degree? And, yeah, part of that enjoyment kind of stems from the simple reason that I've just enjoyed a lot of these actors and characters over the years. It's just such a shame that this could've been so much better, both as a crossover, as a huge event and as a send-off to Oliver Queen, their star for the past eight years.

Anyway, after the huge magic fight between Spectre Oliver and the Anti-Monitor, we get Kara waking up in her apartment all stumbling over her glasses and whatnot, and zapping the wall with heat vision by accident when Alex wakes her up. Everything's normal now, Kara just woke up in front of the TV and no one's worried at all about the multiverse-ending crisis or whatever. Also, we never really got an answer whether Alex was counted among the casualties of Earth-38, huh? That would've given all those "Kara angsts for Earth-38" scenes some weight, wouldn't it? And Kara just gets thrusted into what seems to be her normal life, with only her as a person that remembers the events of Crisis. Alex is confused and shrugs it off as just post-battle grogginess, Nia calls Kara and tells her to super-speed her way to the Nobel peace prize and Kara just wants to wing everything for the day before asking Nia about the weird 'dream' she had...

And then we get the bombshell that Lex Luthor is the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize and everyone in the world from Nia to all these random reporters love it. Yep, seems like in this brave new Earth, Luthor's rewritten himself to basically become a villain with good publicity as opposed to the Golden Age era hammy card-carrying villain.

As much as I am frustrated by the way they handled Luthor in this crossover, I do admit that using the Crisis as a way to retool Lex Luthor into the far less boring and far more interesting President Luthor from the comics is definitely a lot more interesting! Theoretically, anyway. Kara watches in confusion and revulsion as Luthor talks up how dangerous the world is and how superheroes are special but Luthor is also special because he's helping people despite not having superpowers. Oh, and also, Kara's attempt to vent about Luthor to Alex ends up causing confusion as Alex, too, is a huge Luthor fan now and the D.E.O. is a subsidiary of LuthorCorp.

Eventually Kara gets to talk to another Paragon, J'onn, who confirms to Kara that, no, she isn't insane, it's just that only the Paragons, who witnessed the new Earth being created, remember all the events of the Crisis. Okay, sure, that kind of makes sense, I guess, and is a neat adaptation of the final arc in the comic-book version of Crisis. Another huge twist? Of course, as everyone predicted, Earth-38 gets finally fused with Earth-1, and basically all of the CW shows are now part of one big harmonious Earth-Prime. In an attempt to stop the supervillain Weather Witch, Supergirl runs into Flash and the two are kind of confused why they are shoehorning on each other's Earth... only for Marv Wolfman (author of Crisis on Infinite Earths) to show up and ask for their autographs, confirming that in the history of this new Earth-Prime, Flash and Supergirl are apparently known to the public since forever.

It's a twist that I personally saw coming from a mile away, but I do appreciate the show actually focusing entirely on Supergirl's cast members for its first scenes. With the huge revelation over, we now cut away to Pariah, who's back as Nash Wells, waking up in the dumb sewer set of Central City because of all the plot points that require resolution in this huge endeavour, it's the god damn sewer runes that they think is burning a hole in the viewers' minds. Nash wakes up with little memory of how he got here. In Star City, Sara is back on the bar and tries to get Ray (who doesn't remember anything) up to speed, and Ray is just baffled at the idea of missing out on a crossover. J'onn shows up, though, and basically uses his martian psychic powers to bring everyone relevant up to speed, which is actually pretty fun and pretty convenient. J'onn has apparently been doing this presumably to all of the relevant characters in each show's primary main cast. Okay.

Sara rendezvouses with the rest of the Arrow cast in the Arrowcave, where Diggle, Rene and Dinah are hanging out and mourning Oliver Queen, because, of course, with the creation of Earth-Prime, Oliver had also forfeited his life. Or had to serve as a ghost-god or something. It's never made clear that that honestly is probably one of the shittiest part of this live-action crossover -- the huge exit and the huge conclusion to one of its main characters is extremely vague and makes no sense to anyone who isn't familiar with Spectre from the comics. Flash and Supergirl also arrive in the Arrow-cave, and the two of them are far more bubbly and excited... before realizing that Oliver isn't back.

In STAR Labs, Caitlin is scanning Nash before J'onn shows up and brings both of them up to speed. I do like the bit where Nash is initially indignant and defiant, before J'onn gets absolutely pissed off at him, being the one who released the Anti-Monitor (it isn't really made clear prior to this episode, really), and the memory dump gets Nash morose and sad again.

And then everything goes to shit as a giant Beebo attacks Star City, and at this point I do feel like Beebo is a joke that the Legends crew think is a lot funnier than it actually is. Sure, it's off-the-walls the one time they used it to fight Mallus in season three's finale or whatever, but at this point it's an overplayed joke. Oh, and also since this is the Legends episode, we get to see the rest of the Legends cast other than Sara, Ray, Mick and Constantine. We get to see Ava and Nate in the Time Bureau eye-rolling at the crossover, while Mick ends up being the first to fight Beebo, who interrupts his book signing. We then get Flash, Atom, Supergirl, Canary and Heatwave fighting Beebo... and being pretty ineffective, only slowing Beebo down. I do like the couple of bits where Flash zips around with cables around Beebo's feet and the giant furby just shakes it off, and good ol' John Diggle's deadpan "I'm not letting my kid watch this show ever again" is perfect. Dinah and Rene being baffled at how batshit crazy crossovers are is also pretty neat. Oh yeah, Batwoman also shows up with a pretty cool dynamic entry, and figures out that the giant Beebo is just a distraction. The heroes then arrest Beebo's summoner, Sargon the Sorcerer, who gets punched in the face by Sara as he tries to rob a bank.

The hero squad then spend time drinking and socializing in the Arrowcave...and it moves quickly without a whole ton of notable dialogue until Nash shows up and moves the plot along. The Anti-Monitor's not completely gone, because the anti-matter is rising in that area. Okay though but didn't they like rewrite time itself? Why did the Anti-Monitor only show up at this specific time period okay yeah don't overthink things, I know, it's just a wacky huge crossover. I get it.

While the rest of the cast do some sci-fi mumbo-jumbo talk off-screen, I do really love the scene of Barry walking up and talking to Sara as she sits on a flight of stairs overlooking a tree. These two are inarguably the closest friends to the late Oliver other than Diggle, and I do love the two of them basically taking a brief moment to reflect on their life, with Sara noting how she used to race with Laurel to the tree and now she's gone from an assassin to a vigilante to a corpse to captain of a time-traveling ship. They both note how they both had connections to their old, pre-superhero life, and for Sara, that's her connection with Oliver. For Barry, that used to be his dad, Henry Allen. And while they know that they have to move on and they've both found new families, it's nice to have a reminder of your past, y'know? That's a pretty neat little scene that I feel is massively lacking throughout the rest of Crisis, and it's scenes like this that give actual oomph to Oliver's death.

Oh yeah and a Shadow Demon randomly shows up to murder them, and we get a badass slow-motion zippy-spin thing. Sara and Barry quickly figure out that the Shadow Demons are hunting the Paragons down... and oh no, Ryan Choi! Powerless Ryan Choi, who is still just a regular dude protecting his baby from ripoff Dementors. The superheroes save Ryan, then they discuss the Anti-Monitor problem... Oliver-Spectre stopped the destruction of the multiverse, but didn't kill the Anti-Monitor. Mick just wants to lob the fool into the sun, while Sara is very confrontational with the fact that Nash is still hanging out with them. Ryan's huge contribution is being a science-bro with Ray, deciding to use a perpetually shrinking chain reaction to send the Anti-Monitor into the Microverse.

Anyway, a fuck-ton of Shadow Demons show up in Gardner Pier, and we get a pretty badass shot of the superheroes walking down the line to meet them. Wild Dog, Dreamer, Spartan, Flash, White Canary, Supergirl, Martian Manhunter, Alex Danvers, Batwoman and Superman. Oh, and J'onn's got a fancy new suit again! We get a fight against the Shadow Demons with the Flash zipping around and the Supers unlesahing eye-beams and stuff, but then the Shadow Demons sort of disappear and reform into the Anti-Monitor? Who still looks like a White Walker from Game of Thrones doing a Halo cosplay or something. The Anti-Monitor spouts generic yelling about how this is their end, and then we get more fighto-fighto.

In STAR Labs, Ray, Ryan and Nash are trying to make the doohickey to trap the Anti-Monitor in a perpetually shrinking state, while Killer Frost and Heat Wave hold the ground against the Shadow Demons... and Black Lightning shows up! He's badass, and he gets a badass entry and I do like the three characters just exchanging barbs and rescuing each other. Earth-BL just got sucked into Earth-Prime, I suppose.

Anti-Monitor quotes his comic-book counterpart about how he's "destiny incarnate, inexorable and inescapable, you are nothing, insects fated to be crushed beneath my heel without a moment's thought", but the heroes are having none of his flowery speech. He uses an eclectic mixture of random beam powers to fight our heroes, while Sara and the others refuse to fail Oliver. There's a pretty cool tracking shot of one of Batwoman's batarangs flying towards the Anti-Monitor before being blocked with his energy shield, and then everyone just unleashes heat visions, bullets and whatever the hell those beams that Dream shoots at the Anti-Monitor's shield, and we get a pretty neat shot of Sara circling the Anti-Monitor and locking eyes with him. A ground-pound from the Anti-Monitor knocks everyone down (poor Rene's just pretty much out of his league, huh) and then the Anti-Monitor becomes gigantic and proclaims the Age of Heroes as being over.

Y'know, the Anti-Monitor becoming a giant might be a bit more impressive if we hadn't seen fucking Beebo do basically the same thing earlier in this episode. Anyway, Supergirl leads the 'sky team' of Superman and Martian Manhunter to fly around the Anti-Monitor and pelt him with blasts and super-punches and it's actually pretty neat. Ray tells Barry to zip back to STAR Labs and use his super-speed to help construct the Atom Bomb, which I think is cool. Flash then zips Ray back to the pier they are fighting, while the rest of the ground-bound superheroes are fighting the Shadow Demons. Anti-Monitor manages to beat the ever-loving crap out of Superman after the flying heroes fly around his head a bit too many times, but eventually we get the pretty cool, explosive entry of Flash and Atom as Barry zips through all the Shadows and Ray flies bringing the Atom Bomb to Supergirl.

There's a pretty cool bit of Anti-Monitor clutching Superman in his arms, then Atom shrinking Superman to save before Supergirl does a "throw it like a girl" moment, chucks the Atom Bomb and shrinks silly ol' Mobius down into nothingness. There is some ominous latin chanting music before Sara thanks Oliver, noting that the Crisis is over. Oh, and also we get the obligatory shrunken-Superman joke.

Ultimately... okay, yeah, this is a far more entertaining fight than the generic beam spam between Spectre and Anti-Monitor last episode, and it's a nice little last hurrah as our heroes prove that they can protect their brave new world. It does really kind of hammer home what a flat villain Anti-Monitor has been, though, since he's barely more relevant than a generic angry monster.

Anyway, conclusion time! A president lady (who I don't think are any of the presidents in the CW shows we know) addressing the public and thanking Oliver Queen, the Green Arrow, for being a hero and an inspiration to us all, acknowledging his death and crediting him as a leader. We go through various families and heroes in their civilian lives, which is neat, and we also see that apparently Earth-Prime also restores Sara Diggle... I've always thought that it's weird that no one ever really comments that J.J. basically replaces Sara and erases her out of existence, so hooray Diggle for getting his original kid back! (Also, Superman and Lois have two sons at least now) We get to see various families together. Sara, Alex and Kate hanging out in Kara's apartment. Barry and Caitlin. Dinah and Rene. Sara, Ray and Mick. Nate and Ava. They're all watching the news, honouring Oliver.

Please ignore the fact that so many other characters like Cisco or Mia don't even get a mention because the actors can't make it to the filming of this episode or whatever.

Anyway, we then cut to a narration by Oliver as we go through space, and apparently the Multiverse still exists -- it's just the CW shows that are merged into one. "In the end, there's a single black infinitude. Then the infinitude found release. And finally the darkness broke, filling it with life, with the multiverse. Every existence multiplied by possibility. And spread out in space and time in infinite measure. Civilizations rose and fell. Life. A precious gift, persevering in the face of every obstacle. until finally the age of heroes was born." As we cut back and forth between various shows and movies based on DC superheroes. A new Earth-2, the new Stargirl show and the Justice Society of America. Earth-12, the god-damn Green Lantern movie. Then more TV shows. Swamp Thing, Titans, Doom Patrol. And Brandon Routh Superman flying into space.

Before we cut to Earth-Prime and a group of superheroes gathering in the warehouse that they used as a base during the Dominator invasion. Flash, Supergirl, White Canary, Martian Manhunter, Batwoman, Black Lightning and Superman. They are honouring Oliver's costume and a flame that they set alight... and we get a speech from Barry and Sara. Barry notes how Oliver believed in him even when he didn't, bringing the best in all of them. Sara thanks Oliver for always being there for her... and then we cut to Jeff just sort of wanting to be included and going "he must've been a good dude". Whatever the case, though, this basically leads to the new Earth-Prime heroes deciding to found a group of heroes, with chairs and emblems around a central meeting table... a Justice League in all but name. Again, for all the problems I do have with the pacing of this crossover, I do love that it eventually ended with the founding of the Justice League formed out of most of the most prominent superheroes in the Arrowverse, and the final shot of the Crisis is panning out of the Hall of Justice.

And that's a wrap. It's... it's all right, I guess. Crisis really struggled, even moreso than previous crossover attempts, in juggling way too many actors and characters while also trying its best to homage the comic-book Crisis, insert cameos to various DC live-action shows and also trying to tell a coherent story. In retrospect it's a gigantic clusterfuck, and I really wished that they had the foresight to cover a lot of the buildup regarding the Paragons, the Monitor/Anti-Monitor and multiverse rules in at least Arrow and Flash, the shows that are the biggest ones with a lead-up to the Crisis. Ultimately it's entertaining as all hell, and I did enjoy the madcap rush of superhero material I watched to get here... but at the same time, it's also kind of a huge mess.

Where do I go from here? Well, for starters, it's sure been a huge trip and I feel I'm tapped out on superheroes for a while. I'm not sure if/when I'll catch up with the rest of the CW shows, but I definitely need a break. How I'm going to handle the rest of the shows, or if I'm going to just do mass reviews for some of them, is going to depend on my scheduling for the next couple of months, which look pretty dang busy. We'll see. Still, for all of you reading my reviews of live-action superhero stuff, I do sincerely thank all of you for sticking through this very late, very clunky review series.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Oliver's "in the end, there was only one, a single black infinitude" speech was taken from the original 1996 Crisis on Infinite Earths miniseries. 
• Marv Wolfman, one of the two writers of Crisis on Infinite Earths, makes a cameo asking for an autograph from Flash and Supergirl. I'm not sure if it's intentional or not, but both Flash and Supergirl were the biggest-name heroes that Wolfman killed off in Crisis. 
• The other co-writer of Crisis, George Perez, is homaged by the location of the fight with the Anti-Monitor, Perez Landing.
• Gardner Pier, meanwhile, is a reference to Gardner Fox, which, while isn't directly involved with Crisis on Infinite Earths, was the person who wrote "Crisis on Two Earths", the first multiversal crossover and the first one who used the term "Crisis" in DC comics. 
• The original Crisis on Infinite Earths did end with a rebooted 'one world' universe where every previously different world was combined into an "Earth-Prime", where all of the histories of the disparate characters are folded into the "Post-Crisis" timeline. In the comics, only a specific group of people remember the existence of the multiverse at all (notably the Psycho-Pirate) although here it seems like everyone important gets to remember it thanks to J'onn J'onzz.
• The Arrowverse clearly only merged the CW affiliated shows, though, with the end of the episode showing that the other TV series and movies are still their own thing.
• Mick's suggestion of tossing the Anti-Monitor into the sun and blowing it up is actually how the Anti-Monitor was ultimately defeated in the original Crisis on Infinite Earths comic.  
• Even more alternate Earths, as part of the new multiverse:
• A new Earth-2 is home to the upcoming Stargirl show, showing off its roster -- Stargirl, S.T.R.I.P.E., Dr. Mid-Nite, Hourman and a female Wildcat, presumably Yolanda Montez -- which is a character that debuted in the 1996 Crisis series. Earth-2 has been traditionally the "JSA universe" in the comics' pre-Crisis timeline. 
• Earth-12 is the 2011 Ryan Reynolds Green Lantern movie.
• Earth-19 is DC streaming service Swamp Thing TV series. 
• Earth-9 (Titans) and Earth-96 (Superman Returns) are also restored, and we get more cameos from different Titans characters. Despite being a spinoff of Titans, apparently Doom Patrol is a different Earth, Earth-21.
• Sara Lance was previously retconned out of existence and replaced with John Junior thanks to the events of Flashpoint. This version of a cosmic reboot restores her while still keeps J.J.
• The STAR Labs facility from the Invasion crossover makes a return and is converted into the new JLA base, and the exterior shot establishes that the building is basically an adaptation of the Hall of Justice from the cartoon Challenge of the Super Friends. 
• Various incarnations of the Justice League's conference table has had the iconic chairs with each member's logo emblazoned on the back. 
• The episode closes on a monkey cage with the name 'Gleek', which is one of the pets in the Super Friends carton, and a variation of the theme plays.   
• During his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Luthor quotes some of the traditional Superman catchphrases -- "fly faster than a speeding bullet" and "leap tall buildings" specifically. 
• They don't appear in this episode, but Felicity is mentioned a couple of times by the Arrow cast, Rory "Ragman" Reagan is alluded to by Rene, and Barry notes how he heard about the Legends' fight with Beebo from Wally "Kid Flash" West.
• Sargon the Sorcerer is the name of several characters in the DC comics. The first Sargon (John Sargent) is a man who came into possession of a mighty Ruby of Life, allowing himself to control most of the things he touches, fighting against mystical enemies and getting honorary membership into the Justice League at one point. He later only made sporadic appearances among DC's other mystics, notably assisting DC's other mystics in Crisis on Infinite Earths. The original Sargon was succeeded by his grandson, David John Sargent, who accidentally stumbled into a fight over demons over the shattered Ruby of Life, and ended up inheriting the remaining powers of his grandfather, guided by the original Sargon's ghost to become a mystical sorcerer. The only villainous version of Sargon is from the New 52 reboot, where a post-humous Sargon was mentioned as having been driven insane with his power