This article contains nothing but spoilers through the most recent episode of Batwoman. We have a spoiler free review here.
With her new show, Batwoman steps into not only the CW’s Arrowverse legacy, but the decades-long cross-media Batman franchise that has touched just about every aspect of American pop culture, and the show knows it. Kate Kane has only been around since 2006, but she’s had a strong history of her own in that time, not to mention joining the Batfamily (or Batman Inc. if you prefer) on plenty of adventures, many of which are referenced on the show.
Here’s how this works. For each episode, we’re trying to find every single Batwoman, Batman, Arrowverse and DC reference packed into the show. But there’s no way we’ll catch ‘em all right out of the gate. That’s where you come in. If you spot something we didn’t, let us know in the comments or on Twitter, and if it checks out, we’ll update this. This article will be updated on a rolling basis after each new episode airs, so please don’t scroll down to new episodes that you haven’t watched yet.
Batwoman Episode 1: Pilot
- Kate Kane AKA Batwoman first appeared in July of 2006, in issue #7 of the yearlong series 52, which focused on the DC universe without Batman, Superman, or Wonder Woman in the afterman of the Infinite Crisis crossover.
Advertisement
If that doesn’t sound quite right, you might be thinking of her predecessor Kathy Webb Kane, who was introduced to quell talk of Batman being a big ol’ gay. Ah, irony. The first to bear the mantle Batwoman, Kathy Kane wasn’t related to Bruce (except for being his aunt by marriage…) and she first appeared in Detective Comics, #233 in 1956. While there are plenty of homages to Kathy in Kate’s comics (and even this show!) they are entirely separate characters with different personalities, physical appearances, careers, religions, sexual identities…you get the picture.
The episode opens with Kate Kane in some other part of the world training. In Batwoman’s self-titled run, Kate’s father Jake sends her around the world to train with his various friends he’s accrued through military service. He did so because he had figured out she was Batwomaning and was worried about her safety. By the end of her three years of training abroad (roughly the same length of time as in the show), Kate realized her father was hoping her training would convince her not to be Batwoman. Jake and Kate have a slightly different relationship here, but it seems like her international bootcamp still applies.
CHARACTERS
- The armored car belongs to the Crows, a private security firm run by Jake Kane and (possibly funded by?) his wife Catherine. In the comics, Jake gathers his old military buddies to help on a mission and refers to them as the Murder of Crows (the correct coollective noun) and each has a number or code name, much like here. He’s Old Crow, his niece is Rook, there’s Crow 1, Crow 2, etc.
- While Jim Gordon appears to be long gone, the Gotham City Police Commissioner is named “Forbes.” Could this be Jack Forbes, the former Internal Affairs Lieutenant who became interim commissioner during Paul Jenkins and David Finch’s time on the Batman: The Dark Knight comic during the New 52 era? We’ll probably find out soon!
- “Mayor Akins” is very likely Michael Akins, another former Gotham Police Commissioner, this one having served during the No Man’s Land story arc, and the current mayor of Gotham City in the comics.
- Kate’s stepsister Mary seems to be standing in for her cousin Bette from the comics – they’re similar in age and enthusiasm. Bette eventually became a hero in her own right, Flamebird and later Hawkfire. In the 1960s version of Kathy Kane (the one that wasn’t cousins with Batman but instead made out with him), Betty with a y was her niece and the OG Bat-girl with a hyphen, back when they also had characters like Bat-Mite and Ace the Bat-Hound.
- Agent Sophie Moore comes straight from the comics, where I feel obliged to tell you her nickname was Sophie “Gimme” Moore and Kate “Candy” Kane. It seems like in addition to Kate’s West Point girlfriend, the CW show is adding elements of Detective Renee Montoya from the comics to Sophie’s character. Renee’s a quasi-law enforcement person who doesn’t know Kate’s Batwoman identity, so it seems like they’ll come into professional and dramatic tension on screen. Plus, there’s the closetted aspect that caused Kate to breakup with Renee.
- Luke Fox is the son of Wayne Enterprises business manager (and beloved Batman armorer) Lucius Fox. In the comics, Luke adopts a superheroic identity of his own, in the guise of Batwing.
- Mary’s low-key clinic means they’ve added comics character Dr. Mallory Kimball to her mix. Mallory treated various criminals on the low to put herself through medical school and also processed evidence for Batwoman. Putting Mary in med school at Gotham University is in keeping with Bette Kane’s backstory, but also ages her up from undergrad, keeps her more in the mix, and as Kate says, belies more depth.
- Kate waking up in the clinic clueless to how she got there is also a reference to when she did the same in Mallory’s clinic after being stabbed in the heart and nearly dying. But with Mallory it was way more awkward because they used to sleep together.
- Jake and Kate Kane’s relationship on the show is a major departure from the comics, where he immediately accepted her for being gay, without any angst, and even saw her refusing to compromise or lie and instead getting kicked out for who she is as the honorable thing, given terrible choices. Kate makes a point of saying Jake wasn’t distant and didn’t drink after Beth and her mother died – they’re incredibly similar. He helped her be Batwoman, even stealing military equipment for her.
- In the comics, the loss of Beth and their mother is more complicated. Kane parents Jake and Gabriella are both special forces and Beth and Kate are kidnapped and held by a terrorist cell. Their parents come to rescue them and Beth and Gabriella are killed in the crossfire, and Batman has nothing to do with any of it. This seems like a good way to keep their television universe tighter, at least for now.
Who is the Batwoman Villain: Alice?
- Most of Alice’s dialogue consists of Lewis Carrol quotes – “Hello said Alice, do we believe the crows will protect us?” works out nicely here. “Well I believe six impossible things before breakfast” is a popular one. Alice is Batwoman’s big bad from the comics. But as Batwoman points out in the comics, Alice isn’t the only Carroll-inspired baddie in Gotham City, joining the Mad Hatter and Deever & Dumfrey Tweed AKA Tweedledee & Tweedledum.
- The Wonderland Gang comes from the pages of Detective Comics, which is where Kathy Kane, Batwoman of yesteryear, originated as well. However, the gang was led by the Mad Hatter while Batwoman’s iconic villain Alice commanded 12 of the 13 covens of the Religion of Crime, a group that involves magical beings including werewolves and gets way more complicated from there.
The fact that instead the writers are borrowing the similarly themed, Batwoman-adjacent Wonderland Gang seems like an indication that this series will not be based on the supernatural, at least not so heavily so early on as the Religion of Crime would mandate. Plus, the Wonderland Gang is a cool as hell name and more thematic to all things Lewis Carroll rather than going off on a tangent to other folklore and myths, which they could possibly hold for potential future seasons.
- How about that Alice/Beth reveal? So about what we wrote before about Beth dying in the crossfire during the rescue mission…she def didn’t. She was never found, a la Beth’s body not being found in the drowning scenario on-screen, however in the comic book incarnation there was the added wrinkle that Jake Kane knew and lied about it. It’s the central theme of the Batwoman: Elegy story, the outcome of which messes up Kate Kane on a pretty permanent level. Who knows how closely the writers will follow it, so spoilers maybe?
You can learn much more about Batwoman’s Alice right here.
RANDOM STUFF
- The Gotham skyline at the beginning of the episode has a W building for Wayne Enterprises and the Bat signal – do eagle-eyed viewers spot anything anything else of note? It’s impressive how much Gotham DOESN’T look like Vancouver or the amalgamated skylines they’ve created for other Arrowverse shows. Instead of a mix of Vancouver, Boston, Singapore, Philadelphia, Tokyo and Frankfurt, or the usual NYC interpretation (oh hey there Joker) the skyline seems to have elements of Chicago, a la the Christopher Nolan flicks.
- Mary takes a selfie with a cute little kid referencing the real-world Batkid!
- The movie showing in the park is the 1920 silent version of The Mark of Zorro with Douglas Fairbanks Sr, in the lead role. Zorro is a recurring theme in bat-mythology (rich guy dresses up in dark clothing and a mask to fight crime and corruption and all that), and since at least 1985’s The Dark Knight Returns, it has generally been accepted that the Waynes were out to see a screening of the 1940 version of the film (which starred Tyrone Power) the night they met their end. There’s even a kid dressed like Zorro in the park!
- We see two newspapers in the episode. I’m not familiar with the Gotham Inquisitor but the Gotham Gazette is one of the major newspapers of the DC Universe, at one time owned by the same media conglomerate that publishes the Daily Planet over in Metropolis. I’m surprised that the Gotham Globe (most famous, perhaps, for employing Alexander Knox in Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman movie) hasn’t made an appearance yet considering all the other little ways this show has paid tribute to obscure bits of bat-ephemera.
- In this telling, Kate learns that Bruce is Batman in the first episode. That’s much faster than it happened in the comics, where she was in the dark for quite some time. He did, however, play a role in her becoming Batwoman. While Kate explicitly declines to pick a specific incident that caused her to become Batwoman, the inciting incident, from a chronological perspective, involves the concept of Batman. Kate was getting drunk after she and Renee Montoya broke up (Kate accused Renee of being closeted, which is true but also an unfair read of the situation). Kate was trying to call Renee while walking home when she was attacked by a mugger, and fought back. After she succeeded, she looked up at the Bat signal and felt like anyone could be Batman, anyone could help. Hilariously, on the flip side, when Batman returned, there’s a whole issue in the style of Batman’s diary entries while he trails Batwoman, appraises her skills, and tries to confirm his hypothesis that Batwoman is Kate Kane.
- The “Welcome to Gotham” sign has been defaced as “Hellcomes to Gotham” which feels like a very slight nod to Batman Returns, when Selina Kyle smashes her “Hello There” neon sign to reveal the words “Hell Here.”
- Batman abandoned Gotham three years ago, which is analogous to the “missing year” from the 52 comics series, in which Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman all disappeared and other heroes had to step up in their place. That’s when Kate Kane first put on her cowl in the comics world, too.
- There are a bunch of different versions of the Bat symbol – the five-pointed one is specific to Batwoman, per the drawings from J.H. Williams III (an artist and writer who was with her from almost the beginning through her best stories) at the end of the Batwoman: Elegy trade.
- Just like Luke and Kate say, Bruce Wayne doesn’t have a commonly accepted middle name (although some have speculated it’s Thomas, after his father). It’s not a Clark Kent situation where he’s absolutely “Clark Joseph Kent.” Batwoman marks the first time the question of Bruce’s middle name has been aired so publicly, so this is likely to become official canon once and for all. And yes, his birthday is indeed Feb. 19, as established by DC’s Bob Rozakis for the DC Super Calendar in 1976.
- Of course the password is Alfred. You…you don’t need us to explain this one, do you?
– Kate’s step-mom is the only person who calls her Katie, just like in the comics. And just like in the comics, Kate hates it.
– Burnside Orphanage is located in, of course, Burnside, the Brooklyn-esque Gotham City neighborhood that Barbara Gordon called home for a little while during her Batgirl adventures.
– You can spot some graffiti in the orphanage that says “Twinkle Twinkle Little Bat.” This is almost certainly a reference to Batman Forever, where Jim Carrey, in his most insufferable performance in a career positively full of insufferable performances, played the Riddler, spouting nonsense like “twinkle twinkle little bat, how I wonder where you’re at.” Batman Forever is very bad, folks.
– Kate’s wealth comes up a bit in this episode – while people (both irl and in the comics) mistakenly assume she has access to Bruce Wayne/Batman’s money, depending on how they know her, but she’s not a Wayne at all – Bruce’s mom Martha was born a Kane. She and Jake Kane were siblings who grew up without wealth, and Kate Kane is only rich because of her stepmom, Catherine Hamilton Kane.
In the comics it’s said that the Hamiltons own everything in Gotham that the Waynes don’t. Jake and Kate aren’t into wealth and Kate spent much of her formative years without it, since her dad doesn’t marry Catherine until she’s college-aged. Still, once she’s booted from the military academy, plenty of people give Kate a hard time for swanning around on someone else’s dime, which she can’t refute without going all, “I am Batwoman.”
– So about those tattoos…they’re from the comics, too! Not the specific designs, necessarily, since actor Ruby Rose has plenty of her own, they seem to be just rolling with them. It remains to be seen whether they’ll add in Kate’s red and black star on her back or the special forces symbol on her bicep. This episode seems to be keeping the same timeline for her tattoos, placing them after Kate gets kicked out of military school, during her lost years when she drinks a lot, stays out late, and gets the idea to become Batwoman.
– The “generic military college” flashback here plays out almost exactly like it did in the comics. The exceptions are that in the comics, they were explicit in calling it West Point, Lt. Dan Choi who advised on the issue was included in a nice hat tip/cameo, and for whatever reason Kate’s girlfriend was never accused (and the reasoning behind that never explored), so it wasn’t a double betrayal. That said, this definitely makes for better television writing.
– Those are indeed Martha Wayne’s pearls on display at Wayne Enterprises. The pearls have long been significant and symbolic in depictions of Batman’s origin story, none more so than in Frank Miller, Klaus Janson, and Lynn Varley’s The Dark Knight Returns and in Miller and David Mazzucchelli’s Batman: Year One. Using them as a kind of “key” to the Batcave is new, though.
– Incidentally, is this “THE” Batcave, which is normally depicted as being directly under Wayne Manor, or is it a kind of auxiliary urban Batcave? In the comics, Kate has her own Batcave (not that she would ever refer to it as such), courtesy of her father, who also created her suit.
– Those black ridge things on Batwoman’s forearms are lifted directly from her original comics design. The first costume we see on her in the episode is a bit of a rough draft, which makes sense thematically. It doesn’t have any of her iconic red yet, like her wig, boots, forearm cuffs, or even the Bat insignia, which her father gives her in the comics, “so they’ll know whose side you’re on.”
Read more about the Batwoman TV series here.
Delia Harrington a freelance writer and photographer focusing on social justice and pop culture through a feminist lens. She loves post-apocalyptic sci-fi, historical fiction, and feminist comic books. You can follow Delia @deliamary.
Read and download the Den of Geek NYCC 2019 Special Edition Magazine right here!