Wow, it feels great to be back here with you all! Thank you so much to the TV Team for swooping in and covering for me while I recovered. I’m feeling great and it’s a good thing because Batwoman refuses to get off my neck; every episode with more energy than the last. This episode in particular had the kind of one-liners and quick dialogue that made me want to just paste every line into this recap. Don’t worry, I’m not even going to attempt to do justice to these actors’ delivery, but suffice it to say, they are unmatched.
Previously on Let’s See How Many New Character Combinations We Can Try, the team busted a child trafficking ring led by Kandy Karen, we learned that Alice is a 90 Day Fiancé stan, Mary and Ryan became roomies, we met Ryan’s ex Angelique, and Ryan finally remembered the green glowing Kryptonite wound from episode one that’s surely very chill and much fine.
A mysterious spider-like figure flies down into Gotham to kick off this week’s episode. I had to rewatch this scene a few times to be sure mine eyes weren’t deceiving me but yes, Vesper Fairchild confirmed that Wolf Spider changed the light on one of the buildings into an emoji like some kind of Banksy. Meanwhile, Jacob Kane meets with a man who tells him that a group called The Collective has the Jack Napier painting. Before he could give any more information, the man is speared by one of Safiyah’s goons from Coryana. Batwoman flies in and lets Big Daddy Kane know she’ll get to Kate before he does. AND THEN, Ryan points out massive “ACAB” graffiti and says “All Crows Are Bastards” because this show really really loves me. (Spoiler: that was only the first of many times I yelled during this episode. I’m so glad these apartment walls aren’t thin.)
Okay listen, I know the stereotype. We all know the stereotype. So it shouldn’t have surprised me to see Angelique making breakfast for Ryan, and yet I couldn’t help but scream when I saw it. (Yell count: 2) The two spent some quality time “reconnecting” the night before, and Angelique tries to convince Ryan to play hooky and spend the day with her but Ryan won’t budge. I need to pause quickly to talk about the lewks Javicia pulls off in this episode. Homegirl flawlessly goes from robe to flannel to Batsuit to Mary’s Balmain zipper dress and back to Batsuit like it’s NOTHING. We are truly blessed.
Okay, back to Angelique. She finally apologizes to Ryan for the 18 months Ry did for her and offers her a gift. Two bracelets, one for each of them. It could be because I watch A LOT of television, but something about this feels off to me. I want to trust Ang, but my first thought was that there’s some kind of tracker in the bracelet and Angelique is actually working with Alice or something. Or maybe I’m paranoid and happiness is a real thing that exists and they’ll live happily ever after. It’s anyone’s guess, really!! I can hand wave many things about superhero shows, but there is no way after a night of reconnecting, Angelique only notices Ryan’s Kryptonite wound the next morning. NO WAY. *side-eye*
Thanks to Angelique’s prodding, Ryan finally goes to see Mary about her wound but doesn’t give her the whole picture of her symptoms. Mary gives Ryan the antibiotics that Kate took whenever she was injured, and encourages her not to compare herself to Kate. It’s interesting that Mary didn’t give Ryan the Desert Rose miracle cure though. Since antibiotics clearly didn’t work on the Kryptonite, I wonder if Desert Rose would… But I’m getting ahead of myself!
Down in the Batcave, Ryan and Luke discuss what to do about the Coryana goon they have tied up (and not in the fun way). Ryan wants to literally starve him until he’s ready to say just about anything to get some food, while Luke would rather Ryan use one of 92 forms of martial arts she’s trained in.
Meanwhile at Crows HQ, Kane and Sophie interview Evan, an old friend of Kate’s and a big player in the art scene, in hopes of finding the painting and ultimately saving Kate. Evan reminisces about his time with “Katie Kane”, how she saved his life by helping him come out and exuding the kind of queer confidence he could only dream of possessing. Evan confesses that his knowledge of the painting is limited to the legend; one night Joker murders someone in their home and throws their blood and guts all over a canvas and voila! Art! Sophie accuses Evan of being involved with The Collective and offers immunity in exchange for information, but Evan doesn’t bite. After he leaves, Sophie volunteers to grovel at Batwoman’s feet… I mean ask Batwoman for her help.
So you agree? You think you’re really pretty?
Finally we get some Alice Time! She’s outside The Burnside Motel where Ocean is staying. She still can’t figure out how it’s possible to both know him and know that she doesn’t know him. Y’all, I’ll probably never stop yelling about how incredible Rachel Skarsten is as Alice. It wasn’t until she was placed into a normal setting like a bar that I realized just how larger than life that portrayal has been. Her level of being unhinged was dialed down just a couple notches, but remained high enough to dismiss a man by telling him how she killed her Mouse. (Yell count: 3) Apparently, Ocean was as impressed as we all were because he applauds and agrees to drink with her.
Dear show, if you don’t want me to ship Ryan and Sophie, stop putting them in emotionally charged scenes together! I’m kidding, please never stop. The two rendezvous at Sophie’s request to discuss a deal where in exchange for information about Safiyah and Coryana, Sophie wants access to the prisoner. Batwoman is not about that Crows life (ACAB, yo) but Sophie pleads with her because Kate is the LOVE OF HER LIFE, apparently. Somewhere, Julia feels her heart twist probably.
Girl, don’t make me regret this.
Back at Wayne Tower, Ryan emphatically makes her case against teaming up with the Crows despite Luke and Mary’s insistence that it’s their only option. Ryan storms out and VERY DANGEROUSLY sits on the building’s ledge. Luke joins her soon after, and they take turns sharing their Crow horror stories. Ryan details the night when she took Angelique’s drug stash in hopes of straightening her out. She was in the street and upset, and a Crow catcalled her so she flipped them off. They used that as a reason to search her and found the drugs. Luke replies simply by telling Ryan that although indirectly, the Crows killed his father. I loved this scene, and found myself getting choked up watching these two Black friends work through the very real trauma that the Crows were responsible for. The Crows are corrupt and represent everything that is wrong with policing. But what do you do when the organization responsible for your more painful experiences, is the only one who can help you?
My heart!
After Luke convinces her, Ryan brings Sophie and Kane to get information from the prisoner. He lets it slip that the painting and Coryana’s location are connected and immediately activates a cyanide tablet and dies. Sophie finds out The Collective is holding an event to auction off Joker’s painting and Ryan jokingly offers to be her date (Yell count: 4) before insisting that she goes in alone without any interference from the Crows unless she says so.
Back at the bar, Alice and Ocean are getting to know each other; Ocean describing growing up in nature and Alice detailing her childhood kidnapping? I guess? After they take five shots (!!) and go their separate ways, Alice tries to break into Ocean’s room before getting rudely interrupted by his fist in her face.
Ocean’s got Alice tied to a chair and is somehow surprised that she was sleeping for half the day, despite literally knocking her out. She’s been through a lot! Let a girl rest! I know I said I wouldn’t quote the entire episode to you, but Alice’s blunt response to why she had the knife took me OUT: “Some lunatic on a far away island is holding my sister hostage and she won’t hand her over until I gut you and airmail the evidence.” (Yell count: 5) It turns out, Alice’s isn’t the only sister involved in this; Safiyah is Ocean’s sister.
Reader, I’m just a girl, standing in front of the CW, asking for a web series about Mary and Ryan as roommates. Can you imagine the shenanigans??? Mary’s helping Ryan get ready for The Collective’s party, including letting her borrow the famous Balmain zipper dress (also seen on the CW’s Charmed) that she wore last season. (Yell count: 6)
Mary mentions that both she and Evan spent their younger years competing for Kate’s attention, but Evan was just a bit shinier. No one is shining as bright as Ryan though because even Luke can barely get a sentence out when he sees how stunning she looks. Yes, Javicia absolutely SLAYS in this scene, but I think my favorite part was the genuine laughter between her and Nicole Kang once Luke picked up his jaw from the floor. I say this every week, but there is so much chemistry in this entire cast and it’s so much fun to watch them having so much fun.
Anyway, thanks to Wayne Enterprise’s and Hamilton Dynamics’ excessive private jet usage, the crew is able to get access to the private hangar where the party is being held. Once she gets to the hangar, Ryan’s plan is to offer the batarang for display in the exhibition and hopeful entry into the party. She barely finishes quipping with Evan at the door when security starts to haul her away. But none other than Angelique (looking smashing, if I do say so myself) swoops in just in time to save Ryan. Before they go in, the only question Ryan has for Evan is “Pronouns?” I’m going to say that one more time.
An out Black character, played by an out Black actress, asks another character for their pronouns. And as easily as Ryan asks it, Evan answers that his pronouns are he/him or they/them; he just goes with the flow. I’m a cis woman whose pronouns are she/her so I can’t provide personal commentary as to the gravity of this moment, but I am so happy that this scene exists because someone somewhere was able to see themselves represented in Evan’s journey. And that my friends, that is everything.
Angelique answers the question on most of our minds by telling Ryan she’s at the party selling drugs to partygoers. She’s been clean for four months, but a girl’s got to make money so she does this on the side. When Ryan checks in with Luke and Sophie, Soph gives her shit for being late until Ryan informs her that her ex (her “she” pronoun ex, for the record) held her up. Our girl Soph is INTRIGUED!
Anyway, the Napier painting is front and center so Ryan puts on glasses (Yell count: 7) to scan it, and then checks the residue with a super fancy fingerprint scanner disguised as a compact. As she finishes, Evan comes over and the two have an incredibly loaded conversation where he calls out Ryan for her need to have others’ approval. *ouch* I felt that one. While they were talking, Luke analyzed the data Ryan sent over and homegirl is going to have to steal the painting because the map to Coryana is completely obscured by the blood.
Glasses make a person hotter. That’s just science.
Back at the motel, Ocean insinuates that Alice is a terrible assassin, much to her chagrin. I’m so used to Alice always having the upper hand, so it was kind of nice to see her caught off guard a bit this week. There’s a very good chance that she’s been in control this entire time and will kill Ocean the next chance she gets, but I don’t know. Rachel is very deliberate with her facial expressions, and I think there’s part of Alice that believes her connection to Ocean is important and meaningful and she wants to figure out what it is. The two realize they were both on Coryana five years ago and as Ocean touches Alice, memories come flooding back to him.
“It’s all coming back, it’s all coming back to me now.”
“There were moments of gold AND there were flashes of light?!”
Back at the party, as Ryan’s changing into the Batsuit, she’s momentarily slowed by THE PAIN IN HER SHOULDER FROM THE KRYPTONITE WOUND. Girl, I swear. If you don’t talk to Mary… Anyway, while she’s changing, Wolf Spider flips and cartwheels into the party and steals the painting before Batwoman has a chance. The two fight (shout out to this fight choreo) before Wolf Spider sprints away. Batwoman is slowed down once again and asks Sophie to send her guys after Wolf Spider. The Crows chase him in their “tank of toxic masculinity”, run him over, recover the painting, and refuse to call for medical. When Batwoman arrives on the scene, she unmasks Wolf Spider and reveals him to be Evan.
I guess Ryan hasn’t forgotten that her new roomie is a doctor, because she brings Evan to Mary at the clinic. When Luke asks what happened, Ryan deflects from talking about her and instead unleashes on them about their team decision-making. She’s the one out there getting shot at (sometimes by Kryptonite. No, I’m not letting it go.), she’s the one wearing the suit, and in order for their team to function, she’s going to need Luke and Mary to listen to her when she has a bad feeling about something. She pushed her feelings aside because she was so focused on being compared to Kate’s Batwoman. But no matter how much they miss Kate, Ryan isn’t her.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how the show has dealt with Ruby Rose’s departure and I really love the way they’ve managed to keep Kate’s spirit alive while integrating Ryan into the team. You can’t help what an actor decides; that’s just how making television works. But rather than killing Kate and acting like she never existed, the writers found a way to stay true to Kate Kane while opening the door for the hero we need right now.
Alice and Ocean are still trying to outquip each other until Alice confesses how she ended up with Safiyah. They realize that Safiyah must have erased very specific memories from both of them but they don’t know why. Before they can get any deeper into it, they’re attacked by assassins (the Many Arms of Death) that the two easily take out. Before they run out, Ocean tells Alice “you’re dark” in a way that’s both impressed and maybe a little bit terrified? This entire time, I found myself rooting for Ocean to be someone Alice can trust, and then realized that Alice is supposed to be the villain. That’s how powerful Rachel is. It’s how powerful and complex Alice is; I want to root for her, I can’t help it.
Up on the roof, Sophie throws the badges of the two officers who injured Evan at Batwoman’s feet. It’s supposed to be some kind of peace offering or show of solidarity, but Ryan sees right through it. It’s not enough for two officers to lose their jobs when an entire organization is corrupt. You need to burn the whole thing down, but Sophie still believes in their mission. I spent a large part of Sunday catching up on blackish, and in one episode Dre spends time teaching one of Bow’s white cousins about systemic racism.
The cousin was on board with everything in theory, but didn’t want to take his own kids out of their elite school and send them to public school because in his eyes, it was a risk he wasn’t willing to take. I was reminded of that when listening to Sophie because as much as I want to believe she can enact change from the inside, as long as she’s unwilling to remove herself from the Crows talons, she’s complicit in every single thing they do. And that’s a hard pill to swallow; it’s hard for me to watch two Black women have this conversation. But it’s important, and I’m so glad that it’s happening even though it means I’m kind of mad at Soph right now.
Meanwhile, Mary and Evan have a competitively friendly catch-up, during which Mary informs him that all of this was for naught because the painting he tried to steal was actually a forgery. And where is the real painting, you might ask? Well it’s in the hands of Ocean and Alice who are speeding away from the motel with bruised arms and fractured memories.
I don’t know if you remember, but Ryan’s wound is getting worse. Our girl is at home in all kinds of pain as we see the wound get greener and glowier and throbbier AND RYAN I BEG OF YOU PLEASE TALK TO MARY NEXT WEEK. (Final yell count: 8)
I wonder if Mary knows Lena. We’re gonna need all hands on deck.
Whew, what an episode! How are we feeling about Angelique? Do we trust her? I know I’m not the only one with crackpot theories about that Kryptonite wound; what do you think is going on? Sound off in the comments and I’ll see you next week on the same Batchannel!
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MARY, CALL LENA LUTHOR STAT
Ohmygod, I would love to see Lena flirt with Mary about science
I did not know I needed this until reading this comment. Oh my gosh, yes, would love to see those two interact, collaborate, be science besties! (I don’t think I ship them, but if they ended up flirting I wouldn’t complain.)
Just realize this was also in the last image caption. Thank you, Nic, for planting this idea in our brains!
Ryan was super hot!!!
Mary, you are extremely friendly or you are into Ryan after all? 😏
But where’s Julia?
I love these recaps so much! I always pop over here as soon as I finish the episodes, it’s as good as getting to watch it all over again :)
I ain’t gonna lie, THIS was the BEST recap I’ve seen/read (much better than those YouTubers)! I’m gonna come back for more!! The humor and personality of this writing style is EXACTLY what Batwoman needs!
I was also immediately concerned about a tracking device or something in the bracelet. Javicia and Rachel are incredible to watch.
I actually had a problem w/ this ep. To me, it almost seemed like “Supergirl” writing infected it!
Let me clarify: one of the problems w/ “Supergirl” in recent seasons [NB: still a massive fan—Supercorp Ride or Die!] is that w/ the introduction of Kelly Olson, and “Danson” (Alex & Kelly), Everything Sexual ***happens off camera***.
From Batwoman S1, what could we count on? Even if the relationship wasn’t great, two women could “Make the Beast with Two Backs” ***ON CAMERA*** (without even modesty tanktops getting in the way! ;-) )
I la-la-LOVED Episode 4…especially the ending. But from seeing Ryan and Angelique hook pinkies together (“Truce?”), I was expecting to some…oh, say, WOOING involved? And THEN them falling into bed together (rightly or wrongly, vis-a-vis this particular ‘ship!), and On Camera?
Instead, we got ambiguous Morning After (I say ambiguous, because they didn’t really say that they Did It, only that Ryan might need a big breakfast, post-“reconnecting”—an all-night conversation? Seriously, what kind of make-up sex could they have had, where Angelique didn’t even see that humongous Kryptonite wound?). And not even a KISS! They got Dansonized. No likey!
…what I continue to LOVE about this show, continues to be MaRyan! Every time Javicia and Nicole share screen time together, I KNOW we’re going to get quality content! [Gotta say again, though: is LUKE down w/ Ryan being gay? Because he gawks at her in a way that’s not cool. (Though if it’s just Camrus gawking at Javicia: hey dude, ***I get it***. Just not serving the plot though!)]
But beyond that, the plot of this ep was just all over the place. As incredible as Rachel Skarsten is, not feeling Alice & Ocean [Yes, he’s boy-pretty. But can he act? With chemistry?] “Wolf Spider”? Isn’t that basically a different comic “EU”? […the one that “does whatever a spider can”?]
And just HOW OBLIVIOUS can Sophie be? To a *second* Batwoman? Who goes to an assignment, out of disguise? Whom she knows from busting repeatedly? [And how ineffective is her gaydar? “He”? Seriously?]
Yeah, as I was saying: not the strongest ep. BUT…I think next week looks better. Here’s hoping! See y’all then.
Evan is a treat and I truly believe he is the only person in the multiverse who gets to call her Katie.
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It feels like Mary is treating Ryan like the sister she never got to have in Kate.
This is clearly a healthy coping mechanism and won’t cause any problems. (That was sarcasm).
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Ocean mansplaining assassination techniques to Alice like … is he still flirting with her?
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It would have been a fun bit of cross show continuity if Lillian Luthor had been in the background at the art show. Just green screen her in to get around the Covid restrictions.
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I’m going to place my bet now that when they do find Kate, she won’t have her memories. If Safiyah were cruel, she’d wipe Kate’s memories all the way back to the crash…
Evan was a nice treat, and a bit comic accurate if I may say so myself. Wolf Spider NEEDS to come back, I think the presence of Evan Blake alongside Kate’s loved ones looking for her would be essential to the plot.
However, Evan is NOT the only one that calls Kate “Katie”; if you will recall, in season 1 Catherine calls her Katie (as Catherine does in the comics as well). The backstory of Evan and Kate was nice and felt authentic to the story.
Ocean IS a pretty boy and ya know what they say about pretty boys… BEWARE! I feel like he can’t be trusted a hundred percent either and his (forgotten) history with Alice will be a dynamic storyline….
Our girl was just a tiny bit hypocrite critizing the crows for running over a guy for stealing a painting when just two episodes ago she herself knifed a guy in the leg for selling drugs…
I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and the thing is vigilantism and policing are part of the same logics, you can hardly criticize the latter and not the former… unless maybe the vigilante in question thinks real hard about what is actually harmful vs what is criminalized in order to control populations and maintain the capitalist order. I don’t know what kind of vigilante comes out of that reflection process, but i’d love to find out.
Excellent point! I dare to hope that the show will take us all the way there… 🤞🏽
I like the idea of comparing vigilantes to police, esp when they go all oliver Queen and start doing murders, but I really don’t find them comparable in the long run since police and the crows have so much more power and influence and longevity, but also many more people with far less accountability.
I actually think vigilantes and police operate on really different moral planes too. Mainly because Batwoman only has to decide what morality means for her, and then she can chat with the batfam about it, but ultimately she’s the one out in the streets. The Crows have moral codes I’m sure, but they’re also a paramilitary organization with deadly weapons and no real ties with non-wealthy citizens in Gotham. They’re allowed to prioritize paintings over human lives because they’ve done the cost assessment.
Vigilantes are individuals whose powers are pretty much limited to one person with superpowers or supersuit, some money, and maybe martial arts training. They’ve really only got the time of their own lifespan, tops, and they aren’t paid or reimbursed by their cities. The damage they inflict varies, but probably stays limited to where they have their biggest fights. They help who they can, and any damage they do is on them, so while they evade capture, everybody will know if Batwoman picks up a habit of killing people or even damages an antique vase.
The Crows are an elite paramilitary organization with what seems like 100+ people with military grade gear, paid for by the richest among Gotham to uphold their interests and floated a little more by Hamilton dynamics offerinf weapons, can cause property and structural damage, but is probs well insured, and while they haven’t been around as long as GCPD, they might just not ever disband???
Police can afford millions of dollars in civil suits for violating rights and killing people, but the institution doesn’t waver. Generations will feel the effects of bad and unjust policing, but whatever good or bad Ryan does, and what Kate did, just won’t have the same lasting impact or even individual meaning (ie everyone in Gotham deals with a Crow, not everyone meets BW).
I totally respect your take on this, but for my money, Ryan’s not at all a hypocrite, although every hero should for real be forced to ask when and where and why force should be used against people. Esp when fancy dangerous tech comes into play.
Also, i think that in this specific example (knifing a drug dealer v running down an art thief with an SUV), Ryan correctly went after someone doing greater harm while the Crows were just carrying out Jacob’s to-do list.
Hey,
thanks for your thoughtful reply, most of which I agree with! I didn’t say police and vigilantism are the same thing, for exactly the reasons you explain, but that they participate in the same logic. Where do the people batwoman stops end up you think? arkham or somewhere else in the system. The approach is fight the person physically and lock them up. It’s punitive justice, not transformative justice, not looking at the big picture, considering what is actually harmful and why is the harm happening and what needs to be transformed in society.
Where I strongly disagree is in your assessment that ryan “correctly went after someone doing greater harm”. I’m not sure where to start with this. I believe it’s people’s right to do what they want to their bodies including using “drugs” (the whole concept is a pure fabrication given it includes things as wildly different as cannabis and heroin, but not alcohol which is more harmful than the former), they shouldn’t be illegal or criminalized, the only reason it is is because it’s a tool for controlling populations (esp bipoc and poor people), countries were even “hard drugs” aren’t criminalized like portugal actually have less use and less harmful impact like overdose or social isolation because the money for policing drug users is used instead to support them (health care, housing etc). I’m not saying substances can’t be harmful (they can also be helful, see cannabis and anxiety or shrooms/ectasy and ptsd), but i do think most of the harm that we associate to it comes from it being illegal and crimininalized.
So yeah nope, knifing someone for selling drugs is essentially, in my book, assaulting someone for engaging in a transaction that is no one else’s business but the persons engaged in it. And the attitude behind it “i know what is best for people and feel entitled to use physical violence to make them comply” is very much that of the police state.
But to be fair I think that’s more on the writers than on ryan’s part, they just haven’t thought that deeply about it… But yeah when two episodes after they have her criticizing the crows for doing the same thing, aka doing physical harm to someone who wasn’t themselves physically harming someone, yeah I’m gonna call her an hypocrite. Though obviously running over someone is waaaay worse. But same logic.
I’d be really interested in some non-binary folks’ thoughts on the pronouns moment. I don’t identify as non-binary, but I use she/they, and the way they wrote that moment didn’t feel great to me. Of course, it’s a big deal to explicitly acknowledge that some people use they/them (and that some people use multiple sets of pronouns) and not make it a big deal. But I felt that the way/situation Ryan delivers the line “pronouns?” is framed as a quip, rather than a genuine ask. Ryan and Evan are set up as adversaries, and she’s essentially won the interaction by having a way to get past him, so this is where the hero delivers her parting quip! And I didn’t appreciate that the way Evan’s pronouns are framed is that Evan “goes with the flow.” I’m assuming Evan is intended to be gender fluid, but the phrasing seems like a stereotype about non-binary people being unsure or not committed, and feels like it invalidates the pronouns that Evan just gave. They’re implying that their pronouns don’t actually matter. And then this is compounded by the fact that everyone uses he/him to refer to Evan throughout the episode. If this were real life, this would be totally fine–if someone feels comfortable to “go with the flow” with their pronouns, that’s awesome and great to say! It just feels less great as the ONLY mention of they/them pronouns in this show or on most of television, where the show is modeling how to ask for and respect pronouns for viewers who may not be familiar with the idea.
That was just my reaction though! I’d really love to hear how others felt about it!
This is a really great analysis and I’d also love to hear from someone who is non-binary. I didn’t go too deep into it in the recap itself because that’s not my experience, but you made some really great points here!
non-binary person here!
I use they/them, but in the past used multiple pronouns and the one thing that bugged me about the treatment of Evan in this episode was none of the characters using they/them pronouns for Evan. Not even once! From personal experience it’s a real bummer.
Also why did everyone immediately start using he/him for the Wolf Spider when they didn’t know who it was?? Ugh, i guess baby steps. I’m just crossing my fingers for next time.
As for Ryan’s “pronouns?”, I actually thought it was cute! Maybe I’m just desperate for representation haha but it just felt good to have that kind of casual respect shown on a tv show like this.
It is a little strange that the question only went one way though. It would have been nice to have Ryan share her pronouns as well.
Welcome back Nic! We missed you!
Love how this episode took the time to explicitly focus on the choices that the two Crows in the car made and their decision-making process. It really gives weight to Ryan’s argument for systemic racism later and makes Sophie’s “But I’m trying to change the culture!” statement ring pretty hollow.
As much as I love Ryan getting all swoony over Angelique, I know that we cannot trust Angelique to break her pattern of addiction so easily 💔
I loved Alice’s weak excuse for being a shoddy assassin: “I just needed answers before I could kill you!” Lol ok girl. Whatever you tell yourself.
As much as I love that the CW does those ambitious crossovers, it really throws a wrench in the rest of their individual seasons for why they’re not calling each other all the time. If Kate Kane was missing, after everything that happened in Crisis on Infinite Earths, and now that they’re all on Earth Prime, Kara would absolutely know about it, would not be resting until Kate was found. Same thing for Ryan’s Kryptonite injury, the reasonable, logical thing to do would be to contact Supergirl (who should definitely be made aware that there is a new Batwoman in town), or Superman.
Speaking of Superman, they had announced that the next crossover was going to be Superman/Batwoman, but that was before Ruby Rose said she was leaving. I’m guessing whatever that story was supposed to be got scrapped, but if they do still go through with it, could that be how Ryan gets her injury healed?
That’s a good point. Most of batwoman doesn’t make sense when you think about kara being on the same planet, but it especially doesn’t in this case.
Welcome back, Nic! These character pairings keep hitting for me, and I’m absolutely with you about how effective this season has been at keeping Kate’s spirit alive and making her impact be felt in her absence. It’s really driving almost every major and minor character in fascinating ways.
I’m gonna go ahead and say I ship Ryan with whatever one woman she’s alone in a room with (same for Sophie tbh), but I want a Mary and Ryan roomie webseries. Don’t even care what they do. Give me like a five minute clip of them just hanging out on a day when nobody has an open wound or kryptonite poisoning.
I’m thrilled that it looks like Ryan will keep pushing Sophie on her affiliation with the crows. There’s an ep in season 1 where, after arguments with both Kate and Tyler (Sophie’s ex husband), Sophie gets needlessly rough with a suspect in a way that I always figured she’d just forget. It’s actually something I’ve always wished Alex Danvers and J’onn J’onzz had to deal with w/r/t the DEO.
There have been plenty of other sprinklings of police/Crow brutality but its so often enacted by Jacob himself that I lowkey thought it wouldn’t be addressed, but Sophie’s role in it feels different to me. I know Jacob Kane loves brutality because I watched him murder a Black man in the s1 finale and watched him try to murder most of his kids multiple times. Dude just loves shooting down his problems.
I want Sophie to be different and better than the example set by Jacob Kane, and even if she hasn’t put it to words, I think she wants that, too. And in some ways, she personally is. She rescinded a shoot to kill order on Alice, and she let Batwoman slip and slide out custody 50 million times, and you know she fired those two Crows when Jacob was probs too preoccupied to care.
Still, being personally better or kinder doesn’t mean anything systemically. Sophie may claim she wants to change the Crows, but I’m desperate for whatever comes from Ryan holding up a mirror and showing Sophie how she can’t pretend to be seperate from whatever harm the Crows visit upon Gotham. Just because she means well doesn’t mean she isn’t functioning as a tool of systemic violence.
Putting police violence in the hands of a hero doesn’t make the violence heroic, or even justifiable, and I’m excited to see how Sophie deals with that.
I am late to the party, however… Thanks for the recap, Nic! You are doing a great job!
Didn’t love the pronoun-moment. I am non-binary, and my pronouns are they/them. All in all, I absolutely agree to what Slay wrote.
The non-binary people I know do not “go with the flow” but care about other people using the correct pronouns for them and that they are gendered correctly. I agree that Evan not caring about it contributes to a stereotype of non-binary people not being committed, and also that their identities are not taken seriously.
When the question of pronouns came up by Ryan, everyone in that scene should have shared what their pronoun are, and not only the one person who is “different.”