In the immediate aftermath of Crisis On Infinite Earths, Batwoman took its time getting its bearings. Thankfully, “An Un-Birthday Present” is a great reminder of what this show can do—it’s a real gift, if you will.
The scheduling for The CW’s big crossover was split up by the winter hiatus for the first time, which made a certain amount of sense, given that there are five shows (for now) in the Arrowverse (officially—Black Lightning remains on its own for the most part). The move also ran the risk of stunting the crossover’s momentum, but this week’s Batwoman proves it was the right choice. Beth’s big return manages to feel both surprising and inevitable.
But don’t tell that to Kate, who gives into aggression as soon as Beth shows up. Where Kate’s anger was once directed at Alice’s situation/circumstances, it’s not aimed directly at her twin. But with Jacob Kane in jail and Mary devastated over the loss of her mother, Kate has to seize this moment and get Alice before she escapes. Even though fans might find it frustrating that Kate doesn’t figure it out right away, it seems like a natural response.
Speaking of Alice, she’s locked up for most of this episode at the Crows’ facility. Sophie’s interrogation allows the audience to finally get more of Alice’s story growing up as a hostage in an evil man’s house, which consists of an incident only seen on the likes of Don’t F*ck With Cats. It’s been said before, but the child actors in Batwoman are top-notch. Viewers get to see the exact moment when young Beth goes from herself to her Alice persona, and it’s chilling. Without absolving Alice of the horrible things she’s done, knowing what led her to compartmentalize her real self away in her brain is tragic.
The oddest thing this season so far is probably seeing adult Beth in such a sane position. Alice has been maniacal perfection, and having Rachel Skarsten switch things up as a brunette astrophysicist creates a distinct second character. The characters and audience are all well aware of the differences between Beth and Alice, and Batwoman really leans into that juxtaposition here, especially in the scene where Beth explains how her Earth’s Kate saved her from the car crash where Batwoman’s Kate lost her sister. Directly following that, Alice describes how she was trapped, with the emotion and crazed passion clearly visible in her eyes. The switch is eery and unsettling. The way Alice reacted to Mary—her jealous rage about someone trying to fill Kate’s sibling void—is still so fresh. Catherine’s murder is just a reminder that Alice has no time for mercy when it comes to acting on her emotions. Once Alice finds out about Beth, deadly poison might be a blessing compared to what she’ll cook up for her doppelgänger.
Despite the focus on the Alice/Beth split, Kate still manages to find redemption this episode. No one outside of herself blames her for Beth and their mom’s death. Everyone close to her has said for over a decade that she made the right, safe choice not to go back to the car and save her twin. She, of course, never forgave herself, and hearing that Beth’s Kate saved her on their Earth is a double-punch to the gut. It reopens that wound of losing her sister to madness and confirmed to her that she hadn’t done enough.
Given the chance to save her sister again, Kate doesn’t want to fail. The plan to send Beth undercover as Alice has holes in it, with the biggest one being Alice’s crazed nature. They couldn’t have known Mouse would have a slew of codewords that Beth wouldn’t have knowledge of ahead of time. Kate and Beth’s duplicity may not have worked out, but the scene where Kate has to save Beth from a burning car is expertly done. The stakes were as high as they were in the twins’ childhood—it really felt like Kate might lose Beth again. This Beth is so new to the crimefighting world, and she already doesn’t feel like she should exist at the same time as Alice. Her death felt almost inevitable, even though it would have been the cruelest of jokes.
Now, having saved (a) Beth, Kate finally has that chip off of her shoulder. But as is the rule in the Arrowverse, you can’t have happiness for too long without tragedy around the corner, which Beth’s head pain at the end suggests. Even more ominously, one of the Beth Kanes needs to die in order for the other to stay on Earth Prime. We know which one Kate’s gunning for, but we’ll have to see how things shake out.
Stray observations:
- I commend Sophie for sticking with her resolve when it comes to Alice, but shouldn’t there be a good cop, bad cop scenario going on? It’s just that Sophie isn’t getting anywhere with Alice, and the toughness obviously isn’t working. But I guess nothing would when Alice doesn’t want to reveal information.
- It was a little off-putting to hear Alice mock Sophie’s decision to hide her sexuality, but she is evil, so I guess it does make sense. And she was using it to sort of compare it to her situation. Maybe it wasn’t mocking so much as trying to reach a twisted common ground.
- How shitty do you think the kid of the police commissioner feels, knowing his dad would rather uphold archaic, homophobic beliefs than call on extra help to save his son? Big yikes.
- Did anyone else see Mary try to toast with Kate and Beth and totally get denied? Was it just me? I’m sorry, I’m sensitive to Mary and her ability to make friends so, maybe it’s all in my head. Unless…
- Errant, random, unrelated thought here but: let’s bring Reagan back. She was great.
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Rachel S really hitting it out of the park.
You should go back and watch her as a young teen on Little Men. The show is on Amazon Prime. She plays Amy March’s daughter.
That was a pretty fucked up episode of American network television. When crazy dad killed the poor kitten, and then had Beth sew human flesh, just ewwwww.Also, and this is the only time I’ll say it, but Kara would’ve shut Mouse’s shit down I’m no time flat.
I would get such kick out of seeing Kara go up against Mouse.
I mean, sure Kara was busy fighting robot tigers, but she could’ve found time to free Kate from that car.
I hope that at some point this season Kate will be genuinely unable to personally rescue someone she loves and will summon Supergirl. That would be interesting, as if Kate were not in costume at the time it might lead to people wondering how Kate knows Supergirl. This is like Fury not paging Carol during the Avengers. No emergency need if you can solve it yourself with more easily available resources. The difference being that Kara could get from National City to Gotham in a couple of seconds, whereas Carol seems to have taken at least a few days to get to Earth.
Myself I’d like to see Sara and Constantine get ahold of him for a few minutes. In a locked room.
To have a three-way…?
John probably knows a couple of lords of hell he could set up with Mouse …
Well mouse could be damn cute if he washed his hair (seriously! The scars aren’t that bad at all).
But only at the end of the episode, after her most relevant powers were inexplicably unused for 38-40 minutes.Oh hey look over there, it’s this week’s episode of Supergirl, where she can’t use a combination of super strength and super speed to take out less than half a dozen tiger toys… but suddenly remembers she can travel almost as quickly as The Flash when it’s time to rescue people from an imminent explosion.Honestly, if Kara came to Gotham and pulled her usual bullshit, Kate and Luke would probably give her the most humiliating after-action critique ever.
>That was a pretty fucked up episode of American network television. I take it you never watched Hannibal.
I knew somebody was going to mention Hannibal.
This is where I have to question how much Kate told Luke about that whole adventure. Never mind the universal destruction – how much would it help him to know that Batwoman has a literal group of Superfriends who could be called upon?
I assumed that J’onn let Luke know about the whole Crisis thing, but maybe not about the Superbuddies.
Oh, Mary trying to toast with them was such a perfect moment. I want her to know the truth so bad, I just want her to be included.
I have to think that Mary is eventually going to become Team Batwoman’s version of Caitlin, their medical expertIf they also wanted to give her a sexy metahuman power and suit like Killer Frost’s I would not object to that either
Just imagine her one-liners when punching bad guys in the face!
Maybe like with Alex on Supergirl, they will eventually just put her sister in charge of everything
Mary would be SO GOOD at delegating, organizing, and telling people what to do.
She’s basically this shows equivilent of Bette Kane/Flamebird so she may have a costume in her future.
I actually like the idea of having two Beth’s running around at the same time. They make a good mirror to each other. Of course as it appears Good Beth won’t be sticking around so alas. Was also nice seeing Mary interacting Beth, she finally has a sister who likes spending time with her.Man, Sophie and the Crows are all kinds of incompetent. Than again Alice’s level of combat competency varies by the episode.
So Mary’s totally on her way to becoming a part of Team Batwoman. Her drunken speech laying out the multi-verse was awesome.
The actor playing young Beth just continues to amaze me. That moment when she switched from Alice to Beth was chilling.
A great episode, but the Sophie material still worries me a lot. I spent her interrogation scenes with Alice wishing desperately that she was hyper-competent at her job (instead of the inevitable and predictable course of Alice turning the tables on her). Right now, the only thing really defining her is as Kate’s lost love. And I think it would do the show and character so many more favors if they would find other things to inform her. Being good at her job. Her pseudo-daughter relationship with Jacob. Being friends with Mary. Pretty much almost anything else at this point.Still, that climax was genuinely great. I worried they might kill off Remnant Beth, which would’ve been such an incredibly cruel thing to do.
Still, that climax was genuinely great. I worried they might kill off Remnant Beth, which would’ve been such an incredibly cruel thing to do.me too! now that it’s over it seems obvious that they couldn’t have Kate let Beth die in a car again, but in the moment I was genuinely confused/scared when Kate stepped away from the car to grab the crowbar(?).
So Mary’s totally on her way to becoming a part of Team Batwoman. Her drunken speech laying out the multi-verse was awesome. I want to believe, but Kate’s shrug means she’s still cruelly lying to Mary about everything. What’d Mary do to deserve any of this?
Nothing, she just ended up with the wrong people as her family.
I think Kara needs to have a talk with Kate about what can happen if you hold on to the secret for too long.
Ugh, if they do a “Mary turns low-key evil because no one told her anything” per Lana Luthor on Supergirl, I’m out
Right now, the only thing really defining her is as Kate’s lost love. And I think it would do the show and character so many more favors if they would find other things to inform her. Being good at her job. Her pseudo-daughter relationship with Jacob. Being friends with Mary. Pretty much almost anything else at this point.I think they’ve started to touch on this stuff. She was working with Mary last week and Sophie has always been shown to be Jacob‘s right hand man. The Crows will always be somewhat incompetent because the bad guys need to get away.
I was worried about that as well. I get that Sophie’s career has been built on, and occasionally dependent on, closetedness, and that there are associated anxieties and occasional real-world concerns with coming out, but when she was chewing her lip onscreen after Alice mocked her for being in self-made prison, I was finding it difficult not to yell at her ‘You’re here, you’re q***r, get used to it!’
I think my thing about it is that it would be a really interesting thing to explore in a character (how do you accept being queer raised by a family with such particularly strict values that you yourself struggle to recognize and accept it?) but my primary exasperation extends from the fact that it’s ultimately still about Kate. It’s not “Sophie is struggling with her sexual identity” as much as it is “Sophie and Kate will keep pining for each other over this.”
Yeah, I want to see some of Sophie’s backstory from before she met Kate. That would show her family and give context to why she’s so afraid to come out.Shame the show will probably never get a crossover with Black Lightning, because a conversation between Sophie and Anissa would be pretty interesting.
Holy crap, that totally needs to happen.
It’s becoming sort of impressive how, no matter what situation Sophie finds herself in, she’s always completely unable to handle it. If it’s revealed at some point that Sophie is actually a teenage girl magically dumped into the body of an adult woman with a professional job, and has just been bluffing this whole time because she has no idea what to do about anything, it honestly wouldn’t feel out of character…And yes, I continue to be baffled by the writer’s belief that “bisexual women are just lying to themselves” should be one of the key themes of their show, returned to week after week, with less and less subtlety.
Fantastic episode. I was terrified that we would lose New Beth this episode, that’s how well done that scene with Kate breaking her out was. Rachel Skarsten continues to be the most shining part of this show even as it continues to get better. Of the ending, I’m personally hoping that Alice is killed/dies so New Beth can live. Then let Mouse go nuts and New Beth kill him, setting up that there’s always a darkness in Beth and a slow descent for her into becoming New Alice. I doubt that the show will have that much foresight but I can dream.
I want as much Rachel Skarsten as possible on this show, and the possibility of different versions of Beth interacting with each other, like Tatiana Maslany on Orphan Black. Alice will be the Helena of the group, obviously, the serial killer who secretly just wants to be loved by her sisters
Rachel Skarsten playing Beth pretending to be Alice was a totally Orphan Black moment. I want to keep both.
the serial killer who secretly just wants to be loved by her sisters sestras
So how long before Alice is impersonating Beth? They better mark one of them somehow so they can tell the difference.
Not Petra Beth
-You could just tell from the moment it appeared that cat was gonna die horribly.-At least Kate figures out Beth is an alt pretty quickly.-“Dumb question: do police exist on this earth?” LOL Beth’s new here.- Mary’s description of Alice’s three moves (say something crazy in a sweet voice; say something nice in a scary voice; quote Alice in Wonderland) is great.-Can we somehow keep this Beth after Alice gets defeated for good?-MARY FIGURES OUT THE MULTIVERSE! Tell your sister Kate!-Nooooooooooooooo Beth don’t disintegrate!
Leave it to Mary to so perfectly break down Alice’s entire persona.
This sheds now light on how this Earth Prime is indeed a disturbing universe:People have not, as widely theorised, simply been merged into a single individual comprising all their formerly alternate selves with only one (fake) set of memories. Instead it would appear that Earth Prime is basically just Earth 1 plus some people from 38 plus some people from 73. I’m relieved, actually, as merging 3 parallel people into one identity is the mental equivalent of a rape and murder. This just raises further questions: does the rest of Freeland remember the past events of Earth 1 as their own, or are they now finding themselves transplanted into a world where no one outside the city remembers them? (Not sure if this was answered in 3.10 of Black Lightning.) I’d bet on the latter, based on the fact that 38 Alex had no memories of living on a different Earth. But what about 1 Alex, who we met during Elseworlds? Is she still a separate person? I hope so or she’d be one of the few people to have been effectively actively killed by Oliver’s Crisis solution. Also, this has the potential to do a huge number on Beth. Which Earth is she from? If it’s anything other than 38 or possibly 73 then she’s vanished from her life without a trace, which will have caused huge distress to the Kate she will have left behind (and anyone else in her life), effectively meaning that 1 Kate got her wish by Bethworld Kate being plunged into a version of the same nightmare 1 Kate’s been living all these years. And she can’t be from 38, because the survivors from 38 now all think they’ve been living on Prime forever and she didn’t. I’m thinking that Beth is from 73 and got folded into Oliver’s ‘bring Black Lightning’s city onto Earth Prime’ instruction. This would mean that half the population have no doppelgangers, half the population have exactly one – the survivors of 38 with different memories to avoid life clashes – and the population of Freeland now have up to 2 – any survivors from 38 Freeland, and the intact 73 version on which Black Lightning took place.
Pretty sure that for convenience’s sake the majority of people were merged, with the exception of Alice and probably just a few more outliers the writers figured they could wring some drama out of.If there was a large number of doppelgangers running around on Earth Prime, that would a huge story thread all shows would have to deal with going forward.
I think for the most part we’re only going to get ~oh hey some speedforce shit as the only explanation for how the merger affects non-main, and ~oh hey J’onn gave us our memories back for the leads.I would like to hear a little more about new Beth’s background, like what’s different about her earth besides the outcome of the car crash, whether she still knows Mary in her life, what a Kate not burdened by guilt over Beth’s death/trauma looks like there.haven’t seen BL in a while, but didn’t they kind of set up a dream scenario before Jefferson crossed over? would be kind of surprised if they let it hijack the whole show.
They weren’t merged. The Multiverse was rebuilt from the beginning of time. The individuals from Earth 1, 38 and 73 no longer exist. Instead there is one person representing them with a couple of cases like Beth where alt remnants stuck around.
The previous Earths of the multiverse do not (necessarily) still exist. What we have is an all new multiverse. There’s probably no alt-Kate to miss alt-Beth. And people didn’t really get “merged” either. Everyone and everything was dead and gone. A new, synthesized Earth-Prime is in every way better than the alternative.
Yeah, the general gist — somewhat more explained in the Arrow finale, because of how Oliver restructured everyone to get a happy ending from his own life who’d died, except a couple of key people — was that there was now one-and-only-one person from each of the merged Earths on Earth Prime now.In Supergirl this was somewhat muted because Winn was in the far-future so Present-Winn (Toyman 2) wasn’t a contradition.In The Flash this week, this was explicitly confirmed, as everyone else is gone — all the Wellses, Jessie, etc. — and some of the villains are back (because their doppelgangers from other Earths are refilling the spots opened by their Earth-1 doppelgangers being dead).In Beth’s case, we got what I was actually worried about from the reintroduction, when in Crisis Part 5 they said the multiverse was gone “unless it’s on a vibrational frequency heretofore unknown” — which means everyone on Earth-Prime has the same vibrational frequency. Which has never happened before. Every time a different person showed up to interact with their doppelgangers, they were different vibrational frequencies — so I naturally worried about the Timecop scenario: that Beth and Alice interacting would… be bad.
It felt a little strange for Mary to accept Beth in, especially as no one had seemingly given her the “multiple Earths” speech. Who did she think this Beth was or how she came to be here with Alice still running around? I did like the “extra part in the Ikea set” comparison though, that’s probably the closest thing any of these shows will have to explaining why some folks have doppelgangers randomly appearing post-merger. I do think if ever there was a time to do a one-scene crossover, a quick call to Kara or J’onn on the doppelganger issue would’ve felt right since no one in the Batwoman series is really equipped for this kind of weirdness yet. I also thought Beth had a high probability of dying in that car fire, but that would feel a bit too cruel for the series at this point. The junkyard fight was a series highlight for me, giving Ruby and the stunt team a chance to show off free of gadgets. A trend I’m noticing with Batwoman is that unlike the other shows, Luke is only support up to a point; he doesn’t armchair quarterback like Felicity or Team Flash, and he’s also not eager for field ops like Diggle. I’m sure years on Batwoman will be crowded with sidekicks and apprentices, but for now it’s nice to let Kate deal on her own.
I also thought Beth had a high probability of dying in that car fire, but that would feel a bit too cruel for the series at this point……..right now, I have my money on Sophie shooting Beth, because she agrees with Kate’s dad that they need to just use lethal force against Alice, and no one forgot to inform the authorities that there’s a doppelganger of a wanted fugitive running around the city now.Seriously, shouldn’t someone bring that up to them?!
I do think if ever there was a time to do a one-scene crossover, a quick call to Kara or J’onn on the doppelganger issue would’ve felt right since no one in the Batwoman series is really equipped for this kind of weirdness yet.Kate had no problem calling up Kara to write Kate’s coming out article. But a doppelgänger from a random Earth shows up and she doesn’t bother to call for advice.
And Batwoman again proves it’s one of the smarter CW-verse shows by not killing off the good Beth after only one episode. If we were watching Arrow, Beth-2 would have died in that car for sure.They’ve made it clear, though, that Good Beth will only exist for this one story arc, however long it will be. If only one can exist, the show sure won’t kill Alice.My best hope is that Cisco from Star Labs walks in with a device that can stabilize Good Beth’s molecules or something. Hey, it could happen.
There’s no way a police chief would get away with what that guy was doing, not without a massive protest calling for his head. So why does the show act SURPRISED when this happens? Don’t bring up “they could do it in the backwoods south.” Gotham is basically New York City.So The CW won’t counterprogram against the Super Bowl or the Oscars, but they feel confident to go toe-to-toe with the Grammys? I mean, I’m grateful for the new episode, but conventional wisdom…
They might keep Beth rather than Alice. Mouse is just as deranged and yet he’s also the more rational of the two. He also has no qualms with killing Kate where Alice was obsessed with her.He could easily take her place…and should in my opinion, if only to keep Beth around. It’d be better to keep them both, but that’s clearly off the table (short of some technological intervention as you pointed out).
Or worse, go the Green Arrow and Canaries route and merge the two personalities instantly turning Beth-2 into a villain as well.
I think that’s the likely outome, actually. Alice and Beth merge in some way, giving us a character who has the dramatic potetial of Alice, but is redeemable.
I’d love to see them merged into one, who then turns into a hero instead.
To be fair, the Grammy’s have been terrible for years production-wise.
I mean realistically, Batwoman is a vigilante which is against the law. So the police chief calling her for help would cost him his job in reality
Judging by what was happening to Beth and Alice at the end, it looks the new sister might not be around for long. Expect the usual time whimey explanations about how two bodies can’t occupy the same space-time continuum, or something.
Supergirl had two Winns tonight and they didn’t seem to have much trouble. And how many Brainys did we have last week?
And how many Brainys do we have now?
That would not only be wildly inconsistent with what we’ve been shown so far, but would completely defeat the purposes of merging the Earths and would posthumously turn Oliver Queen into a mass manslaughterer. I’m hoping that that turns to just be morbid conjecture on the part of you and the reviewer, and isn’t based on promos or the writers being similarly spurious about conflict generation. I hope it just turns out that they’re both affected somehow by something being used to target Alice. Edit: now that I’ve been online and seen the promo, I’m hoping that there is a third option in which it turns out the problem is that they are both holding 2 lives in their heads like Jake in The Waste Lands, and that it can be fixed by meeting each other or something.
Boy, I dunno. I seemed to have seen a different show from everyone else. For me, the show has the same plot every week: Kate is ineffectual when it comes to Alice, who will inevitably outwit her somehow. It’s getting tiresome.And Maddow still can’t act.
‘One of the Beth Kanes needs to die in order for the other to stay on Earth Prime’Er…what? Since when? Plenty of doppelgangers have shown up both pre and post Crisis with no such physical law in effect. Unless this has been established somewhere I haven’t seen, I call sensationalist, Rick-Potion-#9-crapsack-world-level bullshit. Two versions of the same person should easily be able to exist on the same Earth without one having to bury the other.
You don’t think you may be making a mistake in expecting some level of continuity or logical coherence from Arrowverse shows? It’s not like intelligent worldbuilding has ever been their hallmark.
I did initially think of it being a multiverse thing, but theyre the same person basically so now I think its probably some sort of medical issue and its hitting them both at the same time
They don’t usually mention previews in these reviews but that’s where the “There can only be one” bit came from.
Oh man, and here I was hoping that Beth would turn out to be Clan Macleod instead.
Thank you. I figured it had to be from a preview (which, I wish reviewers wouldn’t include in reviews, because not all of us want to know anything about the next episode.) I didn’t watch the preview and the episode here mentioned nothing about Highlander shenanigans.
Enormous thumbs down on you implicitly referencing a spoiler from a promo in your article, which is bad enough, but then you made it worse by not explaining the context. Promos are spoilers, and many of us don’t see them. Please refrain from alluding to them in reviews.
This is nitpicky, but Black Lightning is part of this shared Earth and officially part of the Arrowverse now, even if Akil isn’t as likely to do frequent crossovers as the other showrunners. I’d be surprised if BL doesn’t participate in the next annual crossover though.
How shitty do you think the kid of the police commissioner feels, knowing his dad would rather uphold archaic, homophobic beliefs than call on extra help to save his son? Big yikes.Honestly, that part of the episode really just made me go maximum cringe. I guess we get some hint of it from the son’s words, but that whole section was just horribly written. I practically laughed at the question that basically went “Are you letting your son get brutally murdered because Batwoman’s a lesbian”, because that’s the kind of bullshit interview question you get from alt-right parodies about how identity politics is evil (and that they should be allowed to say racial/sexist/homophobic slurs, of course).
And no, it’s not better if the reporter is shown to be right (I mean, who would give a mealy-mouthed “lets not get political” response to an out-of-nowhere question accusing them of being a bigot, regardless of how bigoted they actually are?). It just smacked of the show feeling like it doesn’t need to do anything but say “uh, that character’s homophobic, trust us”, and assume I’m going to be inspired when they play the big song during the equally non-sensical protest.Don’t get me wrong, the rest of the episode was fantastic, even as I’m starting to get tired of the Alice plot and would like a different villain taking over the main plot for an episode or two, just as a change of pace. But that bit, uuuugh.
“An Un-Birthday Present” is ironically set on the birthday of Batwoman & her twin.
At this point, I have no idea why Alice would not be transported Hannibal Lecter style. I know they have to advance things with the inevitable escape but you’d figure they’d do something better than just 2 guys transporting her.
Man the child actors on CW are actually solid. What the fuck is happening?