Batwoman Season 1 Review

Major Spoilers are included in this season review. Please read with caution.

Originally, I had been watching this series weekly since its premiere last year—October 2019—but then I took a break from it after the Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover event concluded. Picking it back up on October 22, 2020 and finishing on October 24, 2020, I decided to finish to prepare myself for season two despite Ruby Rose having exited out of the title role.

Initially I had my reservations about this series upon learning it was green-lit during the Elseworlds crossover event, but the main characters—and certain aspects of the plot—ultimately grew on me.

One-Sentence Summary: Three years after Batman and Bruce Wayne have disappeared from a struggling Gotham, Kate Kane (Ruby Rose)—his younger cousin—returns to defend her city as Batwoman.

While nothing was wrong about this show’s premise, the main issues actually lay in the poor execution of the story idea. One of my favorite sayings, from The Vampire Diaries’ Damon Salvatore, is, “There’s no such thing as a bad idea, just a poorly executed one”. A lot of the early season one episodes suffered severely from a poor execution of its story elements. In my opinion, the first major mistake was the show circling backwards from her character introduced in Elseworlds instead of picking up where we left off with her.

The show could’ve easily picked up where we left off with Kate Kane in Elseworlds—instead of playing unnecessary catch-up with an origin story startup—and fill in the gaps when necessary as the story progressed further.

Batwoman also followed the Arrow formula way too closely with its character types and certain story elements. For example, Luke Fox (Camrus Johnson) playing funny smart guy against Kate’s dark brooding type personality is overdone at this point in the Arrowverse, then Catherine (Elizabeth Anweis) and Mary Hamilton (Nicole Kang)—her step mother and step sister—really resembled Moira and Thea Queen from Arrow. Even their drama and secret-keeping had familiar story beats with those characters’ personal arcs.

Honestly, saying Arrow was too Batman before made sense, but saying “Batwoman is like Arrow” just feels both interesting and confusing to say the least. Aside from the exhausted superhero tropes though, Batwoman did have an issue with one character in particular. Kate’s ex-girlfriend Sophie (Meagan Tandy) is a badly written Black character, and I’m starting to believe—after watching countless The CW shows at this point—that it’s a Writers’ Room issue with a lot of The CW shows in general.

Kate and her father Jacob Kane (Dougray Scott) felt like a huge opportunity missed. I heard the comics made them partners—her being the crusader while he provided backup with his military support—and that kind of dynamic actually would’ve been really awesome if they had tried to recreate that on the television. The one they have on the show is the typical police-superhero one—the “vigilantes are a menace, so I’m going to hunt them down” type dynamic.

It’s a shame Ruby Rose had exited the series, because she was perfectly casted as Kate Kane and made the show worth watching. Most of Kate’s character arc centered around the struggle to live openly as who she is, and how keeping her secret identity affects how she feels about hiding it from others. The arc also connects with how she views herself as a hero, and how she’s careful never to cross the thin line between hero and villain.

Of course, I should mention Batwoman does improve over the course of the first season—mostly after the Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover event concluded—with more compelling storylines being introduced and organic connections to the other Arrowverse shows like Supergirl. However, I must say the “villain of the week” wasn’t the best with the lower-tier villains they used, with only Alice—the main antagonist—being a consistent player due to her personal connection with Kane.

Alice is the Joker to Kate’s Batwoman. She was also a hit-or-miss for me throughout the first season, but the hits consistently happened whenever the story decided to focus more on her tragic background rather than her supervillain performance. Learning what she had to go through, how she adopted the “Alice” personality to survive a hellish abusive situation, and why she abandoned her innocence as Beth Kane—twin sister of Kate—was when she was the most compelling.

Overall, Batwoman had a rough first season given a second chance to do better with a new Batwoman taking over for Ruby Rose. Javicia Leslie had been casted as the new Batwoman named Ryan Wilder, so I’m looking forward to seeing how season 2 handles Kate’s exit and Ryan’s introduction. Season 2 still has a chance to be amazing with this switch-up, especially with all the other major characters still involved for next season.

Thanks for reading this season review, everyone! Batwoman returns in January 2021 alongside the rest of the Arrowverse shows. Are we excited? I know I am to see how the superhero show will change with this new main protagonist inheriting the Bat-mantle.