The beginning of Batwoman’s first season was heavy on the story. It was all about Batwoman vs. Alice vs. The Crows. Alice still figures heavily into the plot of most episodes, but the show is more comfortable with her not being the main bad guy each week. It’s introducing more minor villains to Gotham City and a superhero TV show needs that. A movie can do the one villain at a time thing. A full season of TV needs the variety. So in the last episode, we had a vampire and this one starts with… oh, that’s messed up. We open with a flashback to 2011. A girl applies makeup, but sees only a distorted frown looking back. She breaks the glass and carves a smile into her face. It’s definitely a creepy image for the show to come back on.
In the present, Batwoman isn’t yet aware of the supervillain heading her way. She’s more concerned about her rooftop makeout with Sophie. Both she and Sophie can’t keep from smiling the next morning. Interestingly, when Mary tries to discern whether or not Sophie knows who Batwoman is, Sophie seems more sure now that Kate isn’t Batwoman. Does that mean Kate’s gotten better since military school? Luke encourages Kate to break things off lest someone she cares about gets targeted. Kate makes it about halfway through the breakup when Sophie kisses her. Even that doesn’t last long though, because Sophie’s mom shows up for a surprise visit. Kate’s love life can’t catch a break.
Ruby Rose as Kate Kane/Batwoman and Meagan Tandy as Sophie Moore — Photo: Katie Yu/The CW
She’ll have to put the Sophie situation on hold for now though, because there’s a slasher in town. The girl we saw at the beginning of the episode is attacking models and slashing smiles into their faces. Kate asks Mary if she knows anything the victims had in common, and it turns out they all share the same plastic surgeon. And what a coincidence, it’s Ethan Campbell, the guy who got Jacob Kane out of jail and is also secretly Mouse’s face-stealing father. As Batwoman, Kate sends Sophie to ask Campbell some questions. At his office, she figures out that the slasher is probably giving the models the same injuries she has. Campbell now remembers that he once treated a girl with those injuries: A teenager who’d carved a smile into her own face. Her name is Duela Dent. (Harvey’s niece, apparently. Interestingly, he’s still referred to as a beloved ADA. I guess this version of Gotham never found out about the whole Two Face thing.)
The Campbell connection, of course, brings Alice into the story. It’s all a little too convenient. She’s lamenting her sparse obituary, and comes across a story about Dr. Campbell and Duela. She figures out that Campbell is Mouse’s father and that he must be the one who kidnapped Mouse. She decides to use Duela to get to Campbell, and raids Mary’s clinic for supplies. This is where I start to get a little wary of what the show’s doing with Mary’s story. Alice reveals that she gave her blood to save Mary’s life as a message to Batwoman. Mary has known Kate is Batwoman since the last episode, but Kate hasn’t told her yet. When Mary asks Alice if she knows, Alice says she does and taunts Mary over it. So it looks like they’re setting up the whole birth-sister vs. step sister again. Alice knows Kate is Batwoman, and Kate won’t trust Mary with that knowledge. We’ve already seen the higher-stakes version of this beef. And the alt-Beth arc was supposed to resolve it. Kate made a choice, and she chose good Beth (and Mary by extension). If we’re getting back to this why-not-me story for Mary, what was the point of any of that?
Rachel Skarsten as Alice — Photo: Bettina Strauss/The CW
On the bright side, at least the actual villain storyline this week was good. It’s comic book-y as hell, but that’s what I want these CW superhero shows to be. Batwoman and Sophie team up to track down Duela, and they make a great team. They have different resources at their disposal, and they can pool their information to figure out where Duela will strike next. They find the next target: an old classmate of Duela’s who has since changed her name and face entirely. They track her to a makeup factory where Batwoman really benefits from having a sidekick. There’s no need to juggle helping the victim and fighting the bad guy. Sophie fights Duela and Batwoman saves the girl, who is slowly being lowered into a giant vat of acid. Now that’s a classic Batman villain move, and it’s so cool to see this show use it without a hint of irony. That silver age comic book stuff can be great if you just let it be.
Even the way Duela tied into Alice’s story was satisfying in the end. Batwoman and Sophie leave Duela tied up for the Gotham Police to deal with. Alice gets there first, though. She makes a deal with Duela to get revenge on Dr. Campbell. We don’t get the details right away, but they become clear soon enough. At first, it looks like Alice helped Duela escape. As the police investigate further though, they find her. She looks up with them and she’s missing her face. Alice took her face to get into Campbell’s office. I know this isn’t the first face-removal we’ve seen on this show, but seeing the full bloody result is an image that will stick with me. The CW doesn’t usually get this gory, so it has an impact when it does.
Jeryl Prescott as Diane Moore and Meagan Tandy as Sophie Moore — Photo: Katie Yu/The CW
Meanwhile, Batwoman lays out the realities of her situation to Sophie. That once the mask comes off, she’s a real person. Not a superhero or a symbol. That means they’d be in a real relationship with all the baggage that comes with it. Laid all out like that, Sophie isn’t sure she wants it. They part ways with Sophie going home to think about some things. Relationship or no, she decides to come out to her mother. It doesn’t go well. Her mother is visibly disappointed, and it’s a hard scene to watch. I feel like this scene was just as important as Batwoman’s public reveal earlier this season. Not every coming out story is a happy one with a glossy magazine cover. Sometimes the people you love will let you down. Now we have to see what Sophie does now that she’s decided to be honest with herself and those around her.
Jacob Kane could certainly use that honesty right about now. His was the most disappointing story of the hour. This episode tried to do a little too much with it’s runtime and this story got the short end of the stick. It’s trying to build a storyline that’ll be explored in future episodes, but it doesn’t ever get to any sort of hook. There’s no breakthrough or development to make us excited for what happens next. Jacob hears that the conviction in Lucius Fox’s murder (that’s some heavy exposition to just dump on us in a throwaway line, by the way) may have been coerced. He finds some suspicious payments to cops known to be corrupt. Meanwhile, the agent who handled that case is telling him to ignore it. That’s all we get. It’s enough to make us feel like something big should happen, but the story fizzles out before anything does. It feels like we got a half-finished arc.
Ultimately though, this was an enjoyable episode of Batwoman. Despite some story problems and troubling character regressions, this was an exciting villain-of-the-week episode with a classic comic book feel. It’s amazing what a good villain can do for an episode. The Alice storyline made me interested in what’s going to happen to Mouse for the first time ever too. When Alice demands to know what Campbell did with Mouse, he laughs. The show cuts to Mouse tied to a chair, forced to inhale a tankful of Fear Toxin. Are we getting Scarecrow out of this? I’d be OK with that.
Batwoman airs Sundays at 8 p.m. on The CW.
Previously on Batwoman:
- Batwoman Season 1 Episode 13 recap
- Batwoman Season 1 Episode 12 recap
- Batwoman Season 1 Episode 11 recap
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