BATWOMAN - SEASON 1.20

REVIEW:  BATWOMAN - SEASON 1.20:  "Oh, Mouse!"

Gotham City is under siege, and the crazies are loose from Arkham!  Thanks to Alice, Mouse, and Hush, some of Gotham's nuttier residents are loose on the streets.  Meanwhile, the Crows are looking to contain them, as well as the Lady Crusader.  However, not only does Alice now possess the means in which to kill her sister, Batwoman now has to deal with the very threat of her own father killing her.  While in the background, there's an unknown villain waiting in the wings once all this gets resolved, who's all too eager to kill the bat, as well as Julia Pennyworth.  It's a powderkeg with a short fuse...so let's see how things will go BOOM!

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What did we learn from this season finale...as well as the season itself?  That the city is full of nutcases, we have a woman TRYING to fulfill the boots of her cousin, who abandoned his post as Gotham's savior for who knows why, her crazed sister, who's seeking revenge against her family for being abandoned for years, a younger half-sister looking to reconnect with her, and an old love whom she found out was married, only to question her love and who and what she is---and a man who has a vendetta against capes---especially Bat ones.  And little does her know that that cape he hates, its the daughter he loves.  

Batwoman's season finale gave us the set up for what is surely going to be an explosive end to this story arc when the next season rolls around...and THAT is going to be a LONG wait.  This show is going to be going through a MASSIVE change between now and next season, and we'll cover that shortly.  Right now, let's recap what we saw in the finale, and see where next season takes us:

This season finale featured one of the Arkham inmates, a man named Tony the Titan, because he was a massive college football player.  He had been put into Arkham because he got upset during a game, and killed a referee.  He escaped and carried two machetes with him, entered a train, and proceeded to slice up a man with white hair.  When Kate and Luke go to try and find him, they discover that he's bumping off people who had been supposedly responsible for his condition.  He next targeted his younger brother, who we see working out at the football stadium when Batwoman shows up to inquire about his brother.  Tony's brother recalled the referee incident, and said that he USED to be a nice guy before football destroyed him.  Titan shows up, and beats down Batwoman, and tosses her aside before he nails his brother with one of the machetes in his back, thus crippling his brother.  

Batwoman returns to the Cave, where Mary patches Kate up, and she feels she needs to get ahold of Tony again.  They discover through his records that he suffered from CTE, and the doctor, who turned out be the old guy he killed on the train, falsified his records so that he could continue to play, through his coach's orders.  Kate feels she needs to stop him, so she comes up with the idea of reaching out to her father---which Mary vehemently goes against, considering that he HATES Batwoman.  Mary offers a plan to go out and reach her father, and uses the Batsignal atop the GCPD to get his attention.  After nearly being arrested by her father's agents, she tries to reach out to Jacob, and tell him that the city NEEDS Batwoman, that she inspires hope.  Batwoman shows up, and offers a truce:  work together to stop Tony the Titan before he kills again.  

Meanwhile, in the Gotham sewers, Mouse and Alice are hiding out, while Alice is trying to dissect Lucius' journal, and trying to figure out where to get this interesting radioactive rock called Kryptonite.  Mouse isn't thrilled with Alice's obsession with destroying her family.  Mouse thought they had it good at Arkham, and now they're living like rats, and he had better aspirations for them...their own Wonderland.  Hush invades the scene, not happy with the face that Alice had for him.  So, she decides to go and get him a new face...but she's also got an alternative plan:  find the rock.  

She pays a visit to a college professor who specializes in geology, but he has no idea what she talks about at first...but then he understands what she means, and says that he can't get the Kryptonite for her, because someone else has it....Lucius Fox, and it's at Wayne Tower.  She's not thrilled, and ends up killing the geologist for not helping her.  

Batwoman and Jacob are at the stadium, where Tony's former coach said he would apologize to him for his mistakes.  The team is prepared to take him down should he go off and kill the coach.  Tony then starts picking off members of the Crows.  Back at the HQ, Sophie and Julia are talking about what has been going on with her, and Julia tells her about Saryfina, a very dangerous crimelord whom Julia worked with to get information, but she betrayed her, and now has a mark on her back.  Julia gets a folder, and it shows pictures of her and Sophie out and about---against Julia's wishes, she's gotten Sophie dragged into her mess.  They also find out that Jacob and Batwoman are at the stadium...and that unsettles Sophie, because she knows Jacob is going to take down Batwoman as well.  At the stadium, Tony is hacking his way to the coach, whom Batwoman lands down and sends off running, while she goes after Tony.  Tony easily handles her, and is about to kill her, when she reaches him, by saying that she knows what happened, and she knows he used to be a good person.  Tony relents on his attack, but is immediately shot by Jacob and the Crows.  Batwoman asks what he's doing, and then all the guns are pointed at her.  Jacob said that he said the next time he saw her, they were at war, and this is what war looks like.  

Jacob then has his team fire upon Batwoman, who's suit manages to protect her from the bullets, and she ends up using her cable to zip off and escape.  Sophie and Julia show up, and Sophie has it out with Jacob.  She's disappointed.  Kate returns to the Cave, heartbroken that she will never be able to tell her father who she really is.  Mary tried to warn her, and that no matter what, they have each other.  Luke, who'd been spending the episode trying to figure out how to destroy the piece of Kryptonite that his father had kept (and the one that Alice had been working for).  He eventually does it.  With it destroyed, Batwoman can continue to fight crime in Gotham.  However...Kate goes to a picture in her office, and shows them both yet another piece of Kryptonite...the one she took from Bruce Wayne on Earth 99, and held onto it for Supergirl.  They want her to destroy it immediately, but she says she has to talk to her Kryptonian friend first.  

We see Mouse and Alice again in the sewers, and he's had enough.  He tells Alice he's leaving.  He can't handle her vendetta anymore, and he's going to seek out their paradise.  She asks him how he thinks he'll survive out in the world, and he says he survived for five years in Arkham without her, without one visit from her.  He asks her to leave, but she says she can't.  He says it's time to let it all go.  She agrees, and they perform some kind of ritual to shed them of their troubles.  However, as it turns out, Alice poisoned Mouse.  She can't let him go...and he dies in her arms.  She says she HAS to go through with her revenge.

We later see her with Hush, and she finishes his face...and it turns out she has one more job for him:  to get into Wayne Tower to retrieve the Kryptonite.  As we see, she gave him the face of....BRUCE WAYNE!  This is how we end Season 1.

WELL...do we have A LOT of things to unload from this first season, and the MASSIVE change that's coming up.  

Kate and her father are destined to be on opposite sides.  No matter how much she wanted to tell her father who she is, and despite Mary's misgivings about that plan, Jacob will always hate ANY vigilante...especially any BAT vigilante.  The one thing that has nagged me about this show is how they made out Bruce Wayne and Batman to be.  Kate and Alice's story is a plausible one, but the fact that Batman's part in their story seems to make him out as careless.  For him to just use his bat cable to hold the car in place, while he went Joker chasing makes him look like a careless ass who disregarded the ONE thing he--as a hero--is supposed to do:  protect the innocent.  So, with him being gone, we get the real reason later on, when Luke tells Kate that Bruce killed the Joker.  Batman thus violated his ONE cardinal rule.  It's just not a good look for the Dark Knight Detective.  In the Arrowverse, Batman is a major dick, and it's terrible.  This is where the show gets the negative for me.  Now, had it been something ELSE that spurred the accident that killed Kate and Beth's mother, and separated them, I could be down with it...but because it involves Batman's carelessness...it just spits in the face of who Batman is.  If he had left because he killed the Joker and the job got to be too hard, I get it.  But this didn't sit too well.

Kate spent the season growing into her role as Batwoman...and she got A LITTLE better as the season went on, but still didn't come off as a true badass like she should be.  There were some parts of the season where she DOES come off badass in her fight scenes, but outside of that, she takes a TON of lumps.  Also---the fight choreographers could've staged better fight scenes...the ones on this show kind of fell flat.  For a gritty show like Batwoman, they should've had the Arrow team come over after THAT show wrapped, and work on this one.  It's something I hope they improve on next season.  Any bat character should instantly be an intense badass, and not a snowflake.  

The Bat "Team" took all season to assemble, but the pieces are there---somewhat.  Luke is obviously in the fold, and now so is Mary.  Julia is an outlier, and Sophie is on her side, but not really a 'team' member.  That should change in Season 2.  Jacob Kane is a long in the tooth security guy who has FAAR too much power for a security firm.  They are NOT the police, and if the GCPD is accepting of Batwoman, his ass better get on board.  I just can't see his character lasting much longer.  I feel that when Season 2 starts, Alice needs to kill him, and be done with it.  He's had his good moments, but his whole hatred of Bat people has gotten stale.  But I guess it's a way they keep drama between Kate and her father.  I feel at some point, Sophie is going to make a choice and quit the Crows to join Batwoman...even if it's some freelance muscle or something.  

Relationships:  the family dynamic in this show is dysfunctional as hell.  Kate's sister is a homicidal maniac---but I LIKE that part!  Alice is the best thing ON the show.  Rachel Skarsten has killed it all season with her performance.  You see Alice's highs and lows, and you're on that rollercoaster ride with her, as she screams out in bloodthirsty glee.  Kate's relationship with her has waned, but deep down, Alice still wants her sister.  But we'll see if her lust for revenge takes precedence---right now, it does.  Mary and Kate's relationship had some mending to do, and it got mended---especially when she finally put the pieces together, and found out she was Batwoman.  

Sophie and Kate's relationship was an up and down affair.  Sophie is the love of Kate's life, but she has to let her go because of 1.  Her marriage (which eventually fell apart), and 2.  Batwoman.  Sophie had Kate dead to rights, but Kate managed to weasel out of that pickle.  But now we have a true love triangle, where Kate still loves Sophie, but Sophie's found a new love interest in none other than Julia Pennyworth.  Julia's part on the show I felt was only going to be for an episode or two, but now she's firmly entrenched into Batwoman's war...especially now that she didn't get the diary for this new villain, Saryfin.  We'll find out about her later.  Safe to say, though...all the relationships on this show suffer from too much dysfunctionality, and needs to be straightened out.  I love a little drama, but let's not overload us with it.

Sad we only got some mentions of Batman's infamous roster of rogues.  Joker is dead, no sign of the Penguin or Riddler, no Poison Ivy.  They drop several easter eggs all season, but it appears we're not going to GET any of the heavy hitters for this show.  Hush  is the only real big villain of Batman's to be featured.  And the villains Kate faced were...okay to meh.  They need to give her a challenge outside of Alice.  

Two things to wrap up this first season blog:  As we saw at the end of the episode, we finally got to put a face to Bruce Wayne (and we know it's Hush as Bruce...we're not stupid), but for them to have an actual face for Bruce Wayne is HUGE.  Here's hoping we actually get a SMALL version of Bruce at SOME juncture.  The other...and this is MASSIVE NEWS;  While this show had it's rough patches throughout while trying to gain legs and an audience...it's going to have a NEW star to helm the title role in 2021 (when the CW expects to have their DC Universe shows to return), as star Ruby Rose is VACATING the role of Batwoman---which is a first for the DC CW shows.  I am curious about how they will handle all the flashbacks, and what will happen from here.  Many people were pissed off when she got cast, and now, the show COULD be treading water IF they don't find a replacement for her.  The search is currently on, and they DO intend to cast an LGBTQ acrtress in the role.  So this is going to change the dynamic QUITE a bit with a new gal taking over the lead role.  And what about flashbacks?  Do they recreate those with the new actress?  I'm wondering if this show will even GET to have a 2nd season...virus aside.  But we DO want to thank Ruby Rose for her contribution to the DC Universe, and wish her luck in her future endeavors.  

It's quite a bombshell, and it puts this show on official life support now.  Lots of hardcore DC fans have been disappointed by ALL the shows as of late, but Batwoman's been the one with the target on its back.  Lets hope that the show creators give us a satisfying end to the Alice story, as well as a new villain or villains to plague Batwoman next season.  I did enjoy the season overall, and I DO dig the batsuit.  The characters are EXTREMELY flawed and hypocritical at times, but they're a good cast.  Just now without Ruby Rose.  Alice was the best thing about this season, but she does need to go away for awhile once her arc is finished.  That way, we can miss her, and then be happily surprised when she returns...which shouldn't be for a couple of seasons.  The fight scenes need improvement, and cut back on the melodrama a little bit...I get these people need issues to deal with, but don't bury us in it.  

That's all I have for Season 1 of Batwoman.  I hope you guys enjoyed my reviews, and we'll be back here once again when we have production begin anew.  

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Okay kids...YOUR thoughts on Batwoman:  Season 1?  Subscribe and leave a comment below.  What ideas would YOU have to improve it, and your thoughts on WHO should don the cowl, now that Ruby Rose is gone?  

Until next time....the Signal is OFF!