Alright, everyone stop what you're doing! We need to figure out what the heck's happening right now! Batwoman has actually been legitimately solid for the past 3 episodes in a row? Is that even possible? Did I get thrown into another Earth in the multiverse where everything's opposite from what I know? This is insane...and boy am I happy that it's happening. Those of you who have followed my Batwoman episode reviews since the first season will know that I have not been too kind with this show while still struggling to remain optimistic about its future. Well, it looks like that drop of optimism towards the show's potential is finally starting to pay off. At least I hope it is. So, what made this episode work so well for me following what I can comfortably say has been a pretty decent track record recently?
Well, for one thing, it continues to fix one of my major issues since Season 1 and quite a bit of Season 2 which was the show’s severe lack of engaging visual direction alongside its lack of structuring a strong enough sense of energy and stakes within its scenes. With recent episodes, I’ve found myself surprisingly becoming more interested in the story taking place even to the point of anticipating the next episode to an extent. How’s that? Because the recent episodes themselves were slowly starting to inject better direction into both the character centric scenes and overall look and feel of the show cutting away the dullness that I’ve always felt prior. Whether it be a scene of Luke having a great one-on-one discussion with Diggle, Sophie confronting Jacob about controversial police evidence, or a surprisingly effective zombie horror-like sequence taking place in a rundown church at night, Season 2 of Batwoman has finally started to insert the energy boost needed to bring the show to the level of entertainment value that it should've had since the beginning.
So let’s talk about what stood out to me in this episode particularly. Let’s start with everything surrounding Black Mask. Now I’ve been pretty open about feeling rather indifferent about Black Mask’s portrayal on the show since his debut. I’ve always felt that the actor himself seemed pretty capable on his own showing off the villain’s classic “mob boss menace”…when he's not wearing the mask. I felt the same way here in this episode with scenes like Roman having Ryan captured via corrupted GCPD and ex-Crow members and speaking to her directly in a police car. It’s a great scene where Peter Outerbridge gets to show off a bit more dimension with the character with his face and voice being exposed where the sleazy Party City black skull mask would’ve denied.
Having both an unmasked and completely vulnerable and exposed Batwoman speaking to an unmasked Black Mask with both laying out all the secret identity cards on the table was a cool idea. Parallel motivations are shared and discussed between the two and there’s even a drop of understanding and empathy being shown. All of this leading up to Roman leaving Ryan in the backseat saying goodbye while the camera focuses in on our hero looking legitimately scared for her life. The writing, performances, and direction all works in this scene's favor putting this arguably on the same level as some of The Flash and even Arrow’s better hero-villain confrontation scenes. It also adds more legitimacy to why this particular villain is worthy of spotlighting as a season long threat.
Black Mask not only manipulates together an army of ex-Crow agents to fight for him as an extension of his army, but also simultaneously takes over the Batcave via his daughter Circe. Some of my favorite moments in comic book history are what I like to call “A Bane Moment”. Ironically, we’re talking about a Batman related series, but I coined the phrase after loving the way The Dark Knight Rises presented Bane taking down both Batman and Bruce Wayne on various levels all in one jaw dropping swoop of an assault. Other properties soon after have implemented their own “Bane moments” such as The Flash with Zoom physically breaking Barry and taking over Central City parading his lifeless body around to the public or Arrow with Ra’s Al Ghul effortlessly defeating Oliver Queen taking him out of commission.
These standout moments where the villain completely takes over in spectacular fashion are always highly engaging to experience when done right. I think I can officially consider this week’s episode as Batwoman’s “Bane moment” where Black Mask not only took over Gotham City’s authority sector, but captured and nearly killed its titular hero while successfully infiltrating its hero’s secret HQ. This will be the episode that I hold up to high regard as a bar to reach whenever future seasons introduce new enemies. I’m still not entirely sold on the Black Mask design itself and I’m still a little back and forth with his performance, but the core writing in this episode surrounding his character has genuinely won me over to viewing him as a great threat factor.
Following the police car confrontation is Ryan being taken to her parol officer leading to yet another strongly engaging segment of her vulnerability being exposed. Her parol officer disappointingly grills her about her record while Ryan tries to convince her of Black Mask’s manipulation of things. What’s fantastic about this scene is the strong sense of dramatic stakes being presented where both our hero and the audience is aware that Roman’s men can show up and literally shoot her down at any given moment. The scene perfectly showcases that dread with Ryan’s fear and desperation being shown convincing the parol officer of her situation even outing herself as Batwoman before two officers walk in. This leads to a pretty decent enough action scene with Ryan stopping the armed men from killing them both and winning over the parol officer’s trust. But action side, it’s the powerful sense of impending doom lurking around every corner that’s really to admire here. Kudos to both the writer and director of this episode (Carl Seaton, James Stoteraux, and Chad Fiveash) for delivering arguably some of the show's strongest scenes
So, let’s talk about Circe. The character that I was pretty mixed about storytelling-wise having her be a bizarre and convoluted way for the show to keep Kate Kane around without Ruby Rose. However, this episode was exactly what the doctor ordered for me as it showed (much like Black Mask) the legitimacy of having this villain on the show. Circe managing to fool each member of the team in thinking that she’s Kate slowly recovering her memories all leading up to her trapping them and taking over the Batcave was a pretty great turn of events raising the stakes higher. Circe then explores the cave giving us some cool geek out worthy looks into Batman's history (I'll get to that in a bit). Ryan returns to the bat cave and we get our big Ryan vs. Circe fight scene. Now yes, they do throw in the thing that I’ve been complaining about since Season 1 which is the inclusion of awfully cringe inducing pop music for the sake of edginess. Thankfully, the fight choreography and dramatic stakes of the situation was strong enough for me to look above the musical choice. Hmmm…that’s a first actually.
Circe defeats Ryan in a one on one fight (which I’m still a little shaky on as to what Circe was prior that she has these strong combat skills) and casually leaves knowing that the team wouldn’t shoot her after escaping the elevator due to her being Kate. How messed up is that? Luke, Sophie, and Mary looking helpless in a trapped elevator throughout the fight scene may not have been the coolest way to handle these characters blocking-wsie, but I do love how Ryan playfully used Batman’s crossbow weapon (he has that?) firing at them like fish in a barrel. Reminds us just how sadistic this character really is as it's not about any deeper agenda like perhaps Sionis but sheer pleasure in being chaotic. I'm starting to like this character more and more as sort of the Bullseye to Daredevil Season 3. The physical threat side villain that's engaging to watch on their own facing off against the hero while the bigger citywide threat villain brings the larger scope to the conflict.
There’s also the one thing that I did praise from the show early on making its presence known here which is the audience being treated to some cool Batman villain Easter eggs. Here however, it’s not just the use of cool easter eggs for fans but actual storytelling devices which I really admired. Circe finds Batman’s secret room where he kept archived weaponry of previous villains that he took down and steals them all for her father's use. Here we see several villain memorabilia that, on their own, were awesomely presented as the camera slowly panned through them so comic book fans like myself can soak in teases of what the Arrowverse’s version of these characters may have been like. However, we then get Poison Ivy’s flower and Bane’s venom toxin highlighted for the larger story. Safiyah states to have taken Ivy’s flower in order to regrow her Desert Rose and Roman teases the idea of using Bane’s venom for Tavaroff and the other ex-crow members. The idea of new villains using weaponry of old villains have always intrigued me in comic book properties and I absolutely loved the way in which this episode played with that concept to great effect.
So the episode ends with the aforementioned Black Mask’s acquiring of past villain weaponry, Safiyah being stabbed by Alice (I honestly don’t care much about this sub plot but it’s substantial enough that I have to toss it in here), and Circe psychotically marking the Bat suit with a Kryptonite shard leading to who knows what upcoming chaotic situation. Consider me, probably for the first time in the history of the show, legitimately kinda excited to see what comes next. Again…am I another Earth or something?
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