Batwoman - starring Ruby Rose - premieres Sunday night at 8 pm ET, right before Supergirl, which moves to 9 pm. If you watched last season’s “Elseworlds” crossover then you’ll have already seen the character and her alter ego, Kate Kane, in action. As I said previously, I thought Ruby Rose’s Batwoman was pretty good, but her Kate Kane could use some work. Let’s see if she’s got the chops to sustain an entire series.
There are also a crap-ton of short trailers since the CW are understandably heavily promoting this. I’ll just link to the YouTube playlist: null - YouTube
Here’s the summary for the series premiere:
S01E01 - Pilot
SERIES PREMIERE - Kate Kane (Ruby Rose) never planned to be Gotham’s new vigilante. Gotham is a city in despair, the Gotham City Police Department have been overrun and outgunned by criminal gangs. Enter Jacob Kane (Dougray Scott) and his military-grade Crows Private Security, which now protects the city with omnipresent firepower and militia. Years before, Jacob’s first wife and daughter were killed in the crossfire of Gotham crime. He sent his only surviving daughter, Kate Kane, away from Gotham for her safety. After a dishonorable discharge from military school and years of brutal survival training, Kate returns home when the Alice in Wonderland gang targets her father and his security firm by kidnapping his best Crow officer - and Kate’s ex-girlfriend - Sophie Moore (Meagan Tandy). Although remarried to wealthy socialite Catherine Hamilton-Kane (Elizabeth Anweis), who bankrolls the Crows, Jacob is still struggling with the family he lost, while keeping Kate – the daughter he still has – at a distance. But Kate is a woman who’s done asking for permission. In order to help her family and her city, she’ll have to become the one thing her father loathes – a vigilante. With the help of her compassionate stepsister, Mary (Nicole Kang), and the crafty Luke Fox (Camrus Johnson), the son of Wayne Enterprises’ tech guru Lucius Fox, Kate Kane continues the legacy of her missing cousin, Bruce Wayne, as Batwoman. Still holding a flame for Sophie, Kate uses everything in her power to combat the dark machinations of the psychotic Alice (Rachel Skarsten), who’s always somewhere slipping between sane and insane. Armed with a passion for social justice and a flair for speaking her mind, Kate soars through the shadowed streets of Gotham as Batwoman.
I liked the pilot, all things considered. I thought maybe it could have benefited from being a two-parter, as it got rather too heavy on the backstory what with two different flashbacks - one with Kate being kicked out of the military academy and another with Batman failing to save her mother and sister. Aside from that, it was mostly a paint-by-numbers origin story, mitigated by the charisma of the two leads, Ruby Rose and Rachel Skarsten. I officially rescind my doubt about Ruby being able to play Kate Kane. Rachel, of course, is having fun playing the psychotic Alice. Also, two unexpected twists - Kate’s seemingly spoiled stepsister Mary actually running a free clinic, and that reveal about Alice at the end.
It was serviceable. I liked the fact they’re keeping Batman out of the picture, though the Alice in Wonderland villain is just more of the same. The final twist did make it interesting, but I think that Alice is going to grow tedious very quickly.
If they’re going to have an extra ongoing villain, at least make her more like Tobias Whale – someone with a little bit of depth other than being a standard boring psychopath.
I’m going to give it another chance, but I thought it was pretty weak. I also though the “twist” was incredibly obvious.
Though I am a poor judge for these shows, it is going to have to add some humor or I’ll be out. Thus far only The Flash and Legends have kept me watching and they both use more humor than the rest of the rest of the DC shows. Most are dark and Supergirl runs on angst. Actually Legends now runs on the rule of funny and I enjoy it the most.
I checked it out last night. I’m not quite on board yet, but it was ok. I’m not a comic reader so can someone answer this, is the “Batman disappeared for 3 years so we need a Batwoman” a thing in the comics?
LEGACY - Back in Gotham, battling Alice and the Wonderland Gang from the shadows, Kate Kane continues to be haunted by the events surrounding her sister’s death 15 years earlier. While the city holds on to hope that Batman has returned, Jacob Kane and the Crows up the stakes trying to take down the villainous crew. Kate continues to look to Bruce Wayne’s legacy for guidance as Luke Fox inadvertently gets pulled into Batwoman’s vigilante heroics. Sophie and Kate are forced to team up, while Mary finds herself in Alice’s crosshairs.
Wow, I thought they’d draw out the whole “Is Alice Beth or isn’t she?” plotline until the mid-season if not the entire season, but pretty much everyone knows about it now, even Mary’s mother. The only one who doesn’t know is Jacob Kane. Or rather he knows, but just refuses to believe it.
Things definitely picked up from the pilot, but I think the show is hewing a bit too closely to the Arrow (season 1) formula, what with the flashbacks and the journal and the voiceover. The sooner Batwoman can get out from under Arrow’s shadow, the sooner this show can truly shine as its own thing. At least we’re finally getting the red hair next week.
Some random observations:
Vesper Fairchild, the radio show host who comments on the appearnce of Batman or lack thereof as the case may be (and name-dropped Robin), is played by Rachel Maddow.
Dodgson, the ex-Crow who is Alice’s #2, is named after Charles Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There.
Well, of course.
I heard his name in the first 5 minutes, saw that “Alice” was a criminal and thought “well, he’s obviously a bad guy, too. right?” They couldn’t have made it a little less obvious.
Also, I’m kind of annoyed with the DNA thing. You have the DNA of a criminal going by an alias. Of course you should run her DNA, just to see if it matches any other crimes you happen to have with DNA evidence. There shouldn’t even be a question as to whether you run it at all - only whether you try to match it to Kate’s. The debate was stupid.
I think that they didn’t have a sample of her DNA. The point of the knives (both of them) was to get a sample of blood on which to run a DNA test. The first knife was recovered by the fake Wonderland gang. The second knife I lost track of, but probably wound up at the bottom of the river along with the GCPD van.
GOODBYE TO THE BAT - As the city waits impatiently for another visit from who they think is Batman, Alice continues to taunt Kate with a secret but also sets her sights on Jacob and Catherine. Kate is visited by Tommy Elliot (guest star Gabriel Mann), a childhood friend of her cousin who has finally realized his lifelong dream of being wealthier than Bruce Wayne and throws a party so all of Gotham can celebrate his success. Mary gets an unexpected new bestie when Sophie is assigned to protect her. Luke and Kate work together to uncover who may have taken a valuable weapon from Batman’s arsenal. And as Batwoman faces a new enemy, Kate realizes she must either walk away from her new role or fully embrace the mantle as Gotham’s new hope.
Given what happened on the premiere of Arrow, I’d say that the Crisis is already upon us, so I’ve started a separate thread for the crossover here: Crisis on Infinite Earths.
Finally, the red wig. This show is moving the plot along at quite a good clip. Word is that “Elseworlds” was supposed to be set between episodes 3 & 4, so we might be in for a time jump next episode.
We got a villain who isn’t Alice, but he’s got a thing for Bruce Wayne. Or rather he’s got a thing for Batman, who he somehow knows is Bruce Wayne. I’m assuming he’ll break out of Arkham at some point in the future, and we’ll see him again. Someone I know whom we’ll see more of is Regan, Kate’s new bartender friend. I hope she wasn’t introduced just to stir up trouble between Kate and Sophie. That girl has some issues; she just needs to come out of the closet already. Mary’s facial expressions reacting to Sophie’s excuses were pure gold.
ALL THAT GLITTERS - A new villain with an eye for all things that sparkle drops in on the city. Kate attempts to find a balance between her personal life and her new role as Gotham’s guardian. Catherine has an uncomfortable encounter with Alice who always seems to be one step ahead of the Kane family. Batwoman pays fangirl Mary a visit to ask for a favor. Meanwhile, Jacob and Sophie try to piece together who was after their prisoner. Luke continues to finetune Batwoman’s arsenal of weapons as the pair track their unwelcome visitor and discover she has more sinister plans than snatching shiny objects.
What’s Catherine’s up to? What does she hope to find by exhuming the body of her husband’s child from his first marriage? Or rather why is she digging up an empty coffin? She knows there’s nothing in there, right? I’m not sure that’s even legal since she’s not related to Beth in any way, not even by marriage since Beth died even before she was involved with Jacob Kane. That she came clean with Jacob about faking the DNA results was certainly unexpected.
Mary is rapidly becoming my favorite character. So far she has:
[ul]
[li]Come home from running a free clinic all night and pretended she was out clubbing[/li][li]Participated in the most awkward elevator ride ever[/li][li]Pretended to be Alice to extract information from the guy who tried to kill her[/li][/ul]
Too bad about Reagan; I liked her. Since she was so quick on the uptake, she probably saw right through Kate’s lame excuses and was just hoping Kate would come clean. She’d probably figure out that Kate was Batwoman right quick if they had kept dating. Sophie certainly did.
BECOMING ALICE - Alice takes Kate down the sad, winding road of her life in the days after the accident as Jacob and Sophie attempt to track them. Mary has an argument with Catherine which sends her looking for Kate at Wayne Tower, but instead she becomes unwelcome company for Luke.
Aha! Luke made a direct reference to the breakout at Arkham having occurred two weeks prior, which pins the Elseworlds crossover to having been between episodes 4 and 5 as well as giving us an idea as to how quickly they’re advancing time in this show.
And so we get Alice’s secret origin story or, at least, as much of it as Alice chose to reveal. Talk about Stockholm syndrome! She and Mouse seem to be especially twisted together.
Jacob finally believes that Alice is Beth. All it took was her stabbing him in the gut. He seems to have recovered quite quickly though.
I’ve finally realized why Catherine was digging up Beth’s coffin. They buried the deer bones, and Catherine was trying to hide the evidence.
NOTHING AS IT SEEMS - A disturbing death has Gotham reeling and the city reaches out for their new vigilante hero. Luke confides in Kate, while Sophie asks Jacob for a special assignment. Alice continues her nefarious plot against the Kanes, with Catherine being a conduit to part of her plan. Batwoman pays another visit to Mary.
Some outstanding questions have been answered in this episode:
[ul]
[li]Lucius Fox is dead, killed by an unknown assailant. [/li][li]GCPD is still around, but Commissioner Gordon is no longer in charge. Also, they seem to divided up jurisdiction in the city with the Crows.[/li][li]Sophie most definitely knows that Kate is Batwoman.[/li][li]Mary still has no clue.[/li][li]Alice has some weird co-dependent relationship with Mouse.[/li][/ul]
Lastly, HCN does indeed explode at ~6% concentration in air. But if you were breathing in the stuff while it was being pumped into the room, you’d be dead long before it got to 6%.