written by Kate Danvers
Kate faces off against Magpie again, Mary faces off against mob bosses, and Tommy…
SPOILER WARNINGS ARE IN EFFECT
Kate interrupts a black market organ deal which is also human trafficking, because those organs are currently still in people. I’d like to point out something about this fight scene: Batwoman leaps from the top of a container, over the armed bad guys, and behind their cars. She’s drawing them away from the people in the shipping container before she fights them. I love seeing superheroes doing their best to prevent collateral damage and keeping people from getting hurt.
Mary tries to celebrate with Luke and Kate, but gets shot down by their seriousness. After she leaves, Kate makes it clear she doesn’t want Mary to be part of the team. Luke suggests that Mary just wants to be part of Kate’s life. Kate turns her attention toward finding Lucius’ journal. Sophie and Julia haven’t turned up anything, so Kate visits Tommy Elliot at Arkham. After mashing the “you aren’t Bruce’s best friend” button a few times, she gets nowhere.
Tommy has another visitor – this one in his cell. Alice and “Dr. Butler” (Mouse) threaten to hand Tommy over to the Crows to stand trial for Lucius’ murder (he’d previously been declared mentally unfit to stand trial). They want to know about the journal. Tommy tells them it contains designs for a weapon to destroy the bat-suit if it ever falls into the wrong hands. Haven’t we done this already? Alice wants to know why Wayne R&D would have something like that, and Tommy tells her Gotham’s worst-kept secret.
My ultra-rich cousin who owns an R&D company is the vigilante with a seemingly endless resource of high-tech gadgets that my sister just happened to inherit? WHAAAAA?
Seriously, how does she not know?! Why was she going after weapons that were specifically designed to penetrate Batman’s suit if she didn’t think Batwoman’s was designed the same way? Anyway, she offers Tommy his freedom and a new face, then Mouse unmasks to prove it’s possible. He’s going to ask to look like Bruce, isn’t he?
Luke tracks a call from Arkham to a mob-run nightclub, which is in a building that Tommy owns. Mary helps Kate get ready, but Kate won’t let her go. Instead, she takes Julia, who Kate notices is a little cozy with Sophie. Kate also runs into Reagan, who’s working the bar. Julia gets Luke access to the security system and kills the power so Kate can sneak around in the bat-suit. Julia is captured by guards, and Kate falls into a trap which is triggered when she takes the journal from the upstairs office.
Jacob and Sophie go to arrest Tommy, but they find him hanging in his cell. Alice is wrapping the real Tommy up with bandages because she’s already skinned his face for his dead double. She’s just waiting on the journal before she gives him a new face. Alice promises “a whole new you.”
Luke recruits Mary to monitor him while he goes in to rescue Kate and Julia, but she wants to go in instead. Luke doesn’t like the idea of more people being put in harm’s way for the journal his dad died for, but Mary convinces him that she can do it.
Tommy gets a call from Johnny Sabatino (the club’s owner) about the captured Batwoman. Sabatino is holding onto the journal because Tommy understated its value. Tommy ain’t happy about that and throws a little tantrum, but Alice has a thief of her own – she and Mouse released Magpie.
At the club, Mary runs into an acquaintance – Sabatino’s cousin – who gets her access to him. He’s holding a little auction of both Batwoman’s gear and Batwoman herself, with many of Gotham’s crime families in attendance. Mary jumps in with a bid of ten million, claiming Hamilton Dynamics wants the suit. She’s got $2.5 million with her and promises to wire the rest, but Sabatino wants cash. He does offer the suit once they kill Batwoman. Really selling that suit at a loss, ain’t ya?
Jacob visits Alice. He asks her about Tommy, but she won’t tell him anything. Instead she describes the electroshock treatments and pleads for her freedom. Jacob says he can’t because he’s “protecting the daughters he has left.” Alice threatens him with an unspecified but terrible revenge.
Julia is being interrogated. Sabatino’s people want to know who she’s working for. When she tells them SRR, they check – she hasn’t worked for them in six months and they consider her a traitor. Uh…what? Julia escapes, and the interrogator begs for her life, saying she won’t tell anyone who Julia is working for. Julia says she knows, and then kills her. OKAY, that’s going to be important later.
Worth pointing out that she was repeatedly punched, fought off two armed people while handcuffed, and she only has that “just got out of bed” look–NO, BAD KATE. SHE’S PROBABLY A VILLAIN.
Mary’s case full of money explodes and she uses that distraction to free Kate. After a fight, Julia joins them and is tasked with escorting Mary to safety while Kate heads up to the roof to cut off Magpie, who has the journal. They fight, Magpie tosses the journal off the building, and then she escapes when Kate dives off the roof after the book.
Kate thanks Mary for saving her and apologizes for shutting her out so much. She’s just afraid of losing her other sister too. But she lets her join the Bat Team. Kate offers Reagan a ride home. Reagan declines in exchange for a different ride. They head back to Kate’s place. The next morning, Reagan is gone and so is the journal. Later, Reagan hands the book off to Magpie – her sister.
At Crows HQ, Julia takes a call from whoever she’s working for. She talks about setbacks, but promises to get the journal soon.
And at Arkham, Mouse and Alice find out that the journal is useless to them because it’s written in code.
“This Batcave is bitchin’.”
That went places. We got our sort of comic-accurate Hush (though I still want to see the face that Alice sewed for him). Only weird thing about that subplot is if Jacob suspected Alice knew something about Tommy’s suicide, why didn’t he check the body for a skin mask?
Reagan being Magpie’s sister wasn’t a completely unexpected twist. I was waiting for her to turn out to be some kind of villain and as soon as Kate took her home, I knew where things were going. Julia being a traitor isn’t something I expected, though. I have two theories on who she’s working for: either Bruce or Safiyah. I think the latter is more likely because Bruce wouldn’t have anyone killing to protect his identity.
I’m so glad Mary is part of the team now. I loved her enthusiasm when Kate said she would see her in the Batcave, and then when Luke actually showed Mary the cave.
If I’m going to level a criticism at the episode – and you know I have to – it’s that they’re going back to the “weapon that can destroy that Batsuit” well. Tommy had the one that Wayne R&D actually built in his debut episode, Hamilton Dynamics built one of their own, and now Lucius Fox apparently wrote a top-secret journal detailing how to build one. It’s just a bit repetitive. The suit doesn’t make Kate invulnerable; it just makes her bulletproof. Have the journal point to something other than “the one and only gun that can kill a Bat.”
Next time: Hush terrorizes the city and Kate is kicking in doors looking for the journal.
Batwoman airs Sunday nights at 8 Eastern/7 Central on the CW. Kate just turned 38 last week, so listen to her complain about how superhero landings makes her knees hurt on Twitter @WearyKatie.