TV Review: Batwoman Season 2 Episode 1

Batwoman Season 2 Episode 1 “What Happened to Kate Kane?”

Director: Holly Dale

Starring: Javicia Leslie, Rachel Skarsten, Meagan Tandy, Nicole Kang, Camrus Johnson, Dougray Scott, Sam Littlefield, Christina Wolfe, Warren Christie,

Rating: TV-14

Runtime: 45 minutes

2020 was tough on a lot of TV shows, but The CW’s Batwoman got dealt an especially bad hand. Not only was the show forced to conclude its stellar first season prematurely due to pandemic lockdowns but soon after it was announced that lead actress Ruby Rose was leaving the role of Kate Kane. After a brief time of uncertainty about what the future held for the show, the creators announced that rather than recast the part, Kate’s absence would be written into the plot and a new character, Ryan Wilder, played by actress Javicia Leslie, would take over the role of Batwoman.  Obviously, that last hardship is one the creators chose to take on, but it still added pressure onto what was already going to be a difficult start to Season 2.  Given everything the season premiere had to accomplish, it’s pretty impressive.  Kate’s disappearance kicks off an interesting central plot, the supporting characters’ reactions to it lead to some good development and acting, and Leslie makes a decent, if unspectacular, debut as Ryan.  But it’s an unavoidably awkward episode at times and there is a sense of missed opportunity, as it is apparent that this is not how the show was supposed to go.

Ryan’s introduction and the explanation for Kate’s disappearance occur simultaneously. Sitting in the van in which she has been living, Ryan is close to the crash site when a commercial airplane goes down in flames.  After resuscitating one survivor, she finds Batwoman’s suit among the wreckage.  This sequence is intercut with Mary Hamilton (Nicole Kang) and Luke Fox (Camrus Johnson) hearing about the crash back at the Batcave before they slowly come to realize that it was Kate’s plane that went down. Kate had been flying back to Gotham from National City after visiting Kara Danvers/Supergirl to get permission to destroy the Kryptonite shard Kara entrusted to Kate during Crisis on Infinite Earths.  Although the fact that Kate’s body is not found leads some, including Luke and Kate’s father, Jacob (Dougray Scott) to hold onto hope that she is still alive, her other loved ones, including maniacal twin sister Alice (Rachel Skarsten) are shaken to their cores.

The most pertinent question about this premiere is, of course, “Does the new Batwoman work?” The answer? Sort of.  Showrunner Caroline Dries personally handled writing Season 2 Episode 1 and her script handles the dual tasks of making Ryan a sympathetic and interesting character while also fitting her into the show’s established continuity relatively well.  A homeless black woman fresh off a prison sentence for a crime she didn’t commit, Ryan brings a new perspective to the show.  Both the scene of her telling her ignorant parole officer why having prison on her record makes it next to impossible to get a job or housing and her speech to Luke and Mary about how the system doesn’t care about people like her are strong indictments of structural racism and make her a character worth rooting for. But although she definitely has potential, Leslie doesn’t seem totally confident in the part yet.  There’s a timid quality to her performance, especially in the more serious scenes, that doesn’t match the assertive character the writing designs Ryan to be and consequently neither character nor actor makes as dynamic a debut as they could.  Leslie does stronger work with the comedic material, with a scene of her getting flabbergasted while trying to outrun the Batmobile in her van being a highlight.  Hopefully, her dramatic work will improve as she settles into the role as she does seem like she could be a strong lead at her best.

But while some aspects of Ryan herself need work, the way she is folded into the show’s ongoing narrative is, again, pretty impressive.  Arguably the smartest move the episode makes is to treat Ryan as just another character in her first outing.  At some point, Ryan and Leslie will need to take over the show to a greater extent but for now, they’re just pieces of Batwoman‘s larger puzzle.  It’s revealed that Ryan’s foster mom was killed by members of Alice’s Wonderland Gang, who they found squatting in their new apartment.  Not only does this give Ryan a compelling reason to fight crime (when she first dons the suit she’s simply intent on killing Alice) and connect her to the show’s main antagonist it also gives her common ground with Mary, who also lost her mother to Alice.  The fact that Ryan was wrongfully arrested by the Crows specifically is also another important link to parts of the cast and should hopefully lead the show to more thoroughly explore how corrupt the Crows are.  However, as the title implies, this episode is most devoted to exploring the ramifications of Kate’s disappearance, and Ryan succeeding her as Batwoman is only one part of that.  This allows Ryan’s entry into heroism and Leslie’s entry into the show to both be handled gradually, and consequently, gracefully, while also giving the show’s strong supporting cast significant time to shine as their characters reckon with the loss of Kate.

Moping because her plans to get revenge on Kate have been ruined, Alice, in an amusingly petty move, tells Jacob that Kate was Batwoman, while also mocking him for not realizing it sooner with how obvious it was.  Jacob immediately tells his trusted lieutenant Sophie Moore (Meagan Tandy), the one other important person in Kate’s life who didn’t know, which leads to additional drama.  Jacob calls in both Luke and his own step-daughter Mary for questioning and he and Sophie are outraged that they weren’t told.  It also leads to conflict between Sophie and Julia Pennyworth (Christina Wolfe).  Julia follows in case of emergency instructions Kate gave her and opens her safe, finding a letter Kate wanted to be delivered to Sophie. The letter was meant to tell Sophie Kate was Batwoman in case of just this kind of situation and declares that Kate will always love Sophie. After reading it, Sophie breaks off her relationship with Julia. Julia asks if it’s because Sophie doesn’t trust her anymore because she didn’t tell her about Kate being Batwoman prior or if it’s because she’s just not Kate. Sophie replies that it’s both. Tandy does a great job of conveying the mixture of heartbreak and resolve Sophie shows throughout the episode, with Sophie’s tearful reaction to the letter being especially good. Wolfe also captures Julia’s pain at being dumped well although I hope going forward the show also delves into her own feelings about Kate’s disappearance more considering they were quite close as well. Mary and Luke have always been the heart of Batwoman, more so than even Kate herself really was, and Kate’s disappearance thrusts them even more into the spotlight, which is welcome. Luke blames himself for Kate’s death as he was the most insistent on destroying the Kryptonite. He feels that if he hadn’t called for it so strongly Kate would never have been on the plane and Johnson makes the character’s tremendous guilt palpable. Despite going through yet another tragedy Mary remains more optimistic because Mary is awesome. She’s quick to put faith in Ryan due to their similar histories with Alice and she comforts Luke, reassuring him that all he ever tried to do was protect Kate and Kang absolutely nails all her material as usual. It’s not all Dougray Scott’s fault (though he is often a little flat) but Jacob continues to be the show’s major weak link. However, his story is the one that’s arguably altered the most drastically by the shift away from Kate. This obviously wasn’t the path the show intended for the Kane family, as Kate’s disappearance seems to lead Alice to essentially give up on her vendetta against her father so I’ll give the creators a little time to set Jacob up with a new purpose.

Leslie’s was the most important but wasn’t the only major cast addition the premiere had to focus on. The closing moments of Season 1 saw Alice creating one of her flesh masks for Tommy Elliot, the supervillain also known as Hush.  The mask makes Tommy look exactly like Bruce Wayne, the childhood friend he’s become obsessed with and Warren Christie takes over the role from Gabriel Mann and on top of everything else going on Team Batwoman is almost torn apart from the inside when Tommy pretends to be Bruce returning from his long absence. For now, Christie isn’t actually playing Bruce, just Tommy-as-Bruce, which he does a decent job of, but his casting is still very significant for the future of the Arrowverse.  Should he actually play Bruce himself at any point he wouldn’t be the first person to do so in the franchise.  Legendary Batman voice actor Kevin Conroy made his live-action debut as the character in the Batwoman episode of Crisis on Infinite Earths.  But that Bruce was from an alternate future Earth that probably doesn’t exist anymore and his personality was anything but a traditional portrayal of the Bat.  We now know that the present-day, Earth-Prime Bruce looks like Christie, so it seems like should that version of the character ever actually appear it will be his part to lose.  I’m not guaranteeing we will ever see that Prime Arrowverse Batman but it does seem much more likely to happen now than it ever has in the past.  In regards to Tommy himself, his part winds up being less significant than I expected.  He manages to fool Luke, probably because of the latter’s distressed emotional state, but Julia quickly pegs him as an impostor and confirms her suspicions by analyzing a fingerprint he carelessly leaves on a glass. However, by then Tommy’s already gotten Luke to give him the Kryptonite shard and found the Batmobile (kept in a secret room in a wall in the Batcave).  He plans to hunt down Ryan and take the Batsuit for himself but Ryan dons the suit and beats him, surprisingly easily, with Luke and Mary helping over radio.  After a few punches to the face the flesh mask comes off and Tommy’s brought back to Arkham.  Presumably, this means if the character should return he would once again be played by Mann.

And then there’s Alice.  Skarsten’s character was consistently the best part of Batwoman in Season 1 and all signs point to that continuing to be the case.  Alice’s part here is rather meta, as she grapples with how Kate’s disappearance upends her plans, much like the creators must have done when Rose left the show.  She spends most of the episode drinking and moping, donning an elaborate black mourning outfit, even though she claims to only be mourning her plans and her loss of purpose.  She gets a new one when she receives a note from Safiyah, the mysterious villainess both Alice herself and Julia were shown to be terrified of in Season 1.  In it, Safiyah claims responsibility for Kate’s crash, which she intended as a favor to Alice.  It doesn’t have the desired effect as Alice resolves to take revenge on Safiyah.  She claims this is because she stopped her from getting the revenge she originally intended on Kate but it’s clear she actually is heartbroken by the loss of her sister.  Really, this episode provides a perfect example of what makes Alice such a uniquely compelling character. Skarsten makes her both a supremely hammy villain who is often quite funny, and a thoroughly broken, sympathetic human being.  But then the character goes and does something truly horrid like when she snuggles up next to Mouse’s (Sam Littlefield) corpse, which reminds the viewer how truly deranged and horrifying she is.  Alice is a truly fascinating creation and it’s worth watching the show just for her, even if there are plenty of other reasons to do so as well.

Aside from Safiyah’s note the other big tease the episode leaves us with is the reveal that Hush’s Kryptonite bullet did in fact penetrate the Bat-suit during his fight with Ryan, and she now has a glowing green wound. This is a clever way to make sure Ryan gets back into the orbit of Team Batwoman even after she turns in the suit, believing she’s not the kind of hero Kate was and could lead to some interesting stories. Maybe Ryan will gain some temporary superpowers.  Dries did work on Smallville, after all, where Kryptonite was responsible for almost every powered person on the show. It’s definitely a bit weird for a Batman-adjacent show to be relying this heavily on Superman mythology but it works.

That sentiment applies to the whole episode.  “Whatever Happened to Kate Kane?” is definitely a strange hour of TV, due to the unusually difficult tasks it needs to accomplish. Shifting the show, which up until last episode was about a privileged white woman to being about a homeless black woman does lead to some awkwardness, for example, with a lot of Ryan’s scenes coming across as blunt because they have to work so hard to introduce new ideas to the show.  Still, it’s not like Batwoman is completely new to exploring ideas related to race.  Much of Sophie’s arc has revolved around her not being in a position to be as open with her sexuality as Kate was due to the former’s lack of privilege as a black woman.  And Mary definitely defies a lot of stereotypes about Asian women.  So I’m confident that Ryan’s material will become more natural and nuanced as time goes on.  That’s mostly because Batwoman as a show radiates confidence.  Making Ryan’s role as the lead feel natural will take some time and the show likely won’t hit the same heights it was hitting late last season until it does, but Batwoman is still an engaging, smart series that approaches superhero stories in unique ways.

Notes:

• The description for Ryan’s character described her as a lesbian and Leslie is herself a member of the LGBTQ community like Ruby Rose is but unless I missed something I don’t think there was any reference to Ryan’s sexuality here.
• The episode’s title is a reference to several famous DC Comics stories, the most well-known of which is Alan Moore’s Superman tale, Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?
• Once Ryan settles into the Batwoman role I hope the show moves away from putting so much emphasis on the Bat-suit.  It gives the show an Iron Man vibe that doesn’t really work for the Bat-Family.
• Dries has confirmed that the annual Arrowverse crossover event, which had previously been announced to feature Batwoman and Superman and Lois, has been cancelled for this season due to the productions’ COVID protocols.  But the shared universe element won’t be totally absent from the 2021 seasons, as Arrow‘s David Ramsey will return for appearances in every show except Black Lightning.  Most of his appearances will see Ramsey reprising his role as John Diggle but in Legends of Tomorrow he’s set to play an unidentified other character.  He’s also set to direct multiple episodes across the franchise. Given where Arrow left Diggle it’s very possible this could lead to the introduction of the Arrowverse’s version of one of DC’s most popular franchises.  Regardless, it will be interesting to see Diggle interact with the Batwoman cast as he’s never met any of them and only barely knew Kate Kane.