Batwoman has spent a good chunk of its first season in morally murky waters. There are plenty of superhero stories that complicate the idea of what it means to be a hero when dealing with personal demons, but what’s been interesting here is the show’s handling of its villain, Alice. Batwoman has refused to tell us, one way or another, how we should feel about her. Our understanding of who she is, who she used to be, what she wants, and who’s responsible for her turn to villainy, has changed numerous times across the first season. It’s been interesting to watch, if not exactly coherent in a narrative sense.
In other words, the show has had its ups and down regarding Alice. Drawing a complicated character can lead to convoluted storytelling, and that’s happened a lot this season. The show has mostly done a good job of presenting Alice as a character that deserves both our revulsion and sympathy, but it hasn’t always managed to use those conflicted feelings to craft meaningful episodes. There’s a lot of telling rather than showing, the show relying too much on exposition and not enough on the complex character dynamics.
That’s all to say that this week’s episode feels like the payoff to all that messiness. “Off With Her Head” is a focused, character-driven hour of television that finally gives Alice the full attention she deserves. Finally, we understand Alice in a deeper way, and then the show uses that understanding to complicate our feelings about Kate. This is Batwoman not just telling you that “heroes and villains are complex people,” but instead doing the character work and making us feel it.
Where the previous flashbacks have felt clunky, the ones in “Off With Her Head,” which are a mix of hallucinations and actual narrative flashbacks, are substantial. We’re no longer in the realm of watching Beth come to the realization that she won’t be reunited with her family. We’re into the part of her life where she turns into something more evil, where she’s forced to harden in order to survive. The catalyst is the appearance of Cartwright’s truly awful mother. She lives with them for awhile, unable to take care of herself, and she’s quick to abuse Beth at every turn, pouring hot tea on her hands when she’s dissatisfied.
Or at least, Cartwright positions her as the catalyst for Beth’s change into Alice, but that’s just a ploy to shift the responsibility from himself. He brought Beth into this mess, exposed her to his mother, and as Kate points out, he’s the one that, you know, trapped her in a basement and forced her to make skin masks.
Anyways, this is all part of a twisty plot that serves to show how easily one can slip into anger and rage when confronted with traumatic events, and how difficult it can be to recover after. For Alice, she’s changed forever when she finds her mother’s head in Cartwright’s fridge, and there’s a symbolic killing by fire that signals that change. Alice is forever haunted, the hallucinatory demons she battles here just the manifestation of the ones she’s been battling since the accident.
But the trauma she experienced isn’t experienced alone. After all, she was Beth before she was Alice. She had a family, and now that family is having its own wounds exposed. Jacob and Kate press Cartwright to reveal where he’s holding Alice hostage, and Jacob heads out to save her, still hoping that he can reclaim some her humanity in the process. But while he’s out, Cartwright pokes deeper into Kate’s own wounds, revealing the story of her mother’s head in his fridge. Kate, having spent so much time preventing her father from killing Cartwright, loses it and kills him herself, strangling him to death.
None of this storytelling is particularly new. Almost every superhero story has its hero cross the line at some point in order to grapple with the ethics of this whole vigilante business, but it’s still nice to see the show handle the familiarity well. There’s something to be said for using a tested formula to deepen your character work, and that’s what “Off With Her Head” accomplishes.
Stray observations
- I’ve been down on Jacob’s character for most of the season, but his vibe in this episode is very “detective in a ‘40s noir” and I love it. I mean, when Cartwright wakes up after being knocked out, the first thing Jacob says is “rise and shine you son of a bitch.”
- “I wasted my life with a man who never loved me and who took too long to die.”
- That staple gun scene was all sorts of icky.
- Your regular Batwoman reviewer will be back next week! Thanks for reading me in the meantime.
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– Even as a girl Kate was wearing suits.
– Alice went down rather easy.
– The Queen of Hearts is covered in burns and has an oxygen tank. I wonder how this is going to go down.
– It’s nice that Kate placed a glass right there so that he could grab it.
– For a cut on the jugular, that doesn’t seem to be bleeding much. Is it just supposed to be for show?
– Mary is good at this investigative stuff.
– Mary sassing Luke about Batwoman is everything.
– Batwoman got there fast. (Ah, it’s just in her mind.)
– That was a nice speech, Kate.
– Mary trying to find the entrance to the Batcave is hilarious….but you’d think that Luke would catch on that something is up.
– Jacob seems strangely interested in saving Alice now.
– “Live. LIVE….so I can choke the life out of you again.”
– Ruby doing a distraught, shaking Kate was great.
– Everybody’s been talking about Alice getting redemption by season’s end. We never thought that it was Kate that would need it.
– So this is how the sisters come back together.
– I was ambivalent about this episode during the first half, but it REALLY came back.
Mary trying to find the entrance to the Batcave is hilarious….but you’d think that Luke would catch on that something is up.
I got the impression she sent him to the desk to distract him with license plates specifically so he wouldn’t catch on to what she was doing.
I don’t have any real basis for this, but I feel like Luke doesn’t think it is his place to get between the sisters (Kate and Mary) as they work out their issues, including the secret identity thing & he just is waiting for them to talk about it (he was surprised in this episode that Mary hadn’t talked to Kate about the lead on the car) Having a fun Mary-Luke team-up was a great counterweight in this episode to the heavy, grim stuff with Alice and Kate. I especially liked Luke sincerely apologizing to Mary for ever doubting her, and her taking it as her due. And them holding hands at the end as she comforted him about his guilt over failing to protect Beth.
Yeah, I really liked Mary holding Luke’s hand and not having the characters (or the episode) really call attention to it. I was sure they would have one of them look down, see they were holding hands, then both of them pull their hands back and look awkward – like every other sitcom ever.
“Jacob seems strangely interested in saving Alice now.” I assumed this was because as far as she knew she had been killed – he saw the body. Part of it may be that he thought he wanted her dead and had no feelings for her as Beth, but now that he realizes that she’s alive again it’s like a second (third?) chance and he wants to try and save her this time.
-“Sorry, doctor-vigilante confidentiality.” enjoying the Mary+Luke time.-HORK HORK HORK HORK the head theft I’ve been down on Jacob’s character for most of the season, but his vibe in this episode is very “detective in a ‘40s noir” and I love ithard agree- it sure beats his usual note of moping around being wrong about things.-not sure how I feel about Kate being a killer, especially this early. we’ll see how it goes…
It is like I don’t even know who Jacob is, if he isn’t moping and being wrong about things. He came up big for Alice when he saved her from Scarecrow’s fear gas though. Even Alice seemed grudgingly impressed
yeah, Jacob saving her from the fear gas was cool. maybe they’ll salvage him yet.
Alice must be his reverse blind spot
Just one of the many victims of this show not developing anyone besides Kate & Alice.
thought they did a pretty good job with Sophie’s mom visiting/her coming out last ep. hopefully that and Jacob here are good signs for developing other characters in the future (and of course I’ve always liked Luke+Mary).
The one thing I don’t think they mentioned: If they’d have turned Cartwright over to CCPD and his real identity had been revealed wouldn’t that make his testimony that got Jacob out of jail rather suspect?
ooh, you’re right, that could’ve been a disaster.
They said as much when they were first talking about what to do to him.
As interesting as this is I think I would have preferred Alice to have been a Cult leader like in the comics, because at least then it would have justified Kate dealing with her constantly if she’s fighting a different Cult member each week. And on that note what happens with Alice once this season is over? Because if she’s not going away what’s she going to do from now on? Be on Team Bats? (Bet you she’s there before Mary if that’s the case) Be a regular citizen? She terrorized the city for months. There needs to be some actual redemption here if she’s going to keep being a thing.Cartwright kept Gabi’s head in a fridge for years and expected to put her face on his mom. He’s a real shitty surgeon. No wonder he needed a kid to do the work for him. I don’t know how he spent years as someone who can actually do the job without anyone noticing.
I did not notice that Sophie wasn’t in this until the very end. Not a good sign that I immediately forgot about her the moment she went away.
I think that Alice will neither be redeemed nor captured by season’s end. I think that it will be Kate that will get redemption by the end of the season, and she’ll bring on Mary as part of it.
Well that still raises the question of what happens to Alice then.
Could be similar to what happens to Eobard Thawne over in Flash. Comes back for a mini-arc or a single episode once a season, but basically shelved until a future showdown.
Mary already knows, right? Did I miss an episode where she found out – or (unlike Lena Luthor) has she put the whole mystery together and the show is just being coy?
Yeah she knows, she pieced it together like 2 episodes ago during the Notpire episode.
She’s not absolutely sure, but she put the pieces together in the Nocturna episode and is 99% sure that Kate is Batwoman.
It was within the last couple of episodes. She figured it out after Beth was killed. Part of it was Kate howing up drugged at the clinic and it being the same drug the villain of the week was using. Then there were other things they montaged when the lightbulb went off over her head at Kate’s bar.
Maybe they could do something similar with Alice that they did with Malcolm Merlyn. Go away for a season or so, then come back as a regular, and hang around as a kind of frenemy/necessary evil of the team.
Yeah that wasn’t good at all. Malcolm’s presence caused a lot of problems in those later seasons.
But Malcolm was great in the Legion of Doom!
After being useless for three seasons on Arrow and became a villain again.
I think maybe do a sort of Catwoman thing. Slightly bad, eyes in the underworld type.
Alice can have a Hannibal Lecter presence at the Asylum, helping Kate solve cases.
She’d have to start solving cases for that to happen.
Lector definitely seems like the obvious option. I’m not sure it would work that well – that sort of thing tends to lead to a lot of time being wasted on Ominous Interviews, and to a lot of silly coincidences where the Alice/Lector happens to know every psychopath in Gotham. But it does make a lot of sense as a way to keep Alice on the show without implausibly redeeming her overnight, and it fits in to the existing mythology and timbre of Gotham really well (and the way that every classic batman villain arc ends), so undoubtedly they must have at least considered it.
I agree with your guesses on Alice. I’m glad that we got all this backstory but personally I wish Earth-Whatever Beth had survived and Alice died because trying to keep Alice in the show is crazy. She can’t just be redeemed and start helping out on cases or be the Robin to Kate’s Batwoman. Or just be free and murdering or stuck in Arkham. They needed a huge way for her to truly go out so having Beth be the one to survive could have allowed the character to go on without having to explain why Alice is still out and about (and killing) and neither Batwoman or the Crows are really doing anything about it.
My goodness, the Cartwrights are just an ouroboros of awful aren’t they? I’m curious if they’re setting up Mouse as the end boss of the season.
Mary status: still the best.
I may be just really down about the news right now, but this has become so horrifying I may have to drop it. Also, I can’t imagine any viewer actually being sad that Cartwright is dead, after watching everything he did, and I certainly don’t care about Kate’s soul in all this.
Nobody is watching this show and feeling sad that Cartwright is dead. Why would you think that?
I agree that no actual viewer is sad about it. But the person whose inner life we’re supposed to be following is/was conflicted, which suggests that the show wants the viewer to also be conflicted. My point is: we’re not.
The viewers care about Cartwright being dead only in that they care about Kate killing him and feeling bad for killing someone. And Kate isn’t upset that she killed him specifically – she’s upset that she killed a person.They may also feel bad that Alice didn’t get to kill him, since she probably could have used the closure.
“Doctor/Vigilante confidentiality.” And Mary was so close to finding the entrance to the Batcave. Maybe next week…Debra Mooney was a fun pick to play evil grandma.I’m forcibly reminded of The Vampire Diaries – especially in its first season. Heavily focused in on only three characters, with almost everything else getting minimal screentime. I had mixed feelings about it there, since I wasn’t always as interested going so hard in on the Damon/Stefan/Elena/Katherine drama every week. And even though I’m enjoying it somewhat more here, I’m also starting to feel more and more like I wish the show would spend time developing non-Alice related elements as well.Also, they’ve run in circles so many times with Jacob and Kate saying they’re giving up on Alice, only to come right back around again, that I’m starting to get dizzy.
Yes, I’m torn because I really like Alice and I find her backstory interesting but it seems like they’re neglecting to explore the other characters in a similar way.Also, they’ve run in circles so many times with Jacob and Kate saying they’re giving up on Alice, only to come right back around again, that I’m starting to get dizzy.I think they want to give up on her but every time it seems like there’s a chance she might be redeemable they get sucked in again.Mary is the best. Her scenes with Luke were great. I saw they were holding hands at the end. There have been other hints this season that something might happen between them. How long before they get together and what will Kate think?At first I wanted Kate to tell Mary she’s Batwoman, but now I’m hoping Mary figures out how to get into the Bat Bunker and goes in and surprises Luke and Kate.
I know they’ve hinted at the possibility of Luke/Mary romance, but I think I’d actually be happier with them just being friends (ala Felicity/Diggle, Caitlin/Cisco).
The idea of Jacob* and Kate wanting to give up on Alice but repeatedly giving her another chance is absolutely psychologically realistic in terms of how people do deal with family members with, say, addiction problems.Unfortunately, it’s also really bad television. Real life often doesn’t have a compelling narrative arc, but it’s hard to create a watchable 20-hour TV story without one…*I’m really impressed that Jacob Kane managed to transition to being a fascist police chief after, you know, inventing streaming video, and all that unfortunate business with his daughter and the film star, and his son being one of interpol’s most wanted. And it’s totally believable that he’d move out of Neptune. But why did he stop going by ‘Jake’? Is it because ‘Jacob’ has more gravitas in his new line of work?
But why did he stop going by ‘Jake’? Is it because ‘Jacob’ has more gravitas in his new line of work? He was sick of getting confused with the Veronica Mars character.
Surely you’re not suggesting that they’re different people!?
After the premiere, The Wonderland Gang hasn’t come off as that big a threat to Gotham City in general. If they’re the only crooks running around, it’s ridiculous that the
GCPD, Crows, & Batwoman haven’t shut them down yet. They need to
pepper in more villains of the week to sell that the city’s crime
fighters are stretched that thin. All the villains who aren’t Alice suck though. (Maybe some can be developed later.) So instead of feeling like a dangerous city that churns out unique supervillains the law can’t handle, Batman being missing for years doesn’t feel like a problem that needed solving.
First mention of Jonathan Crane, yes?
Scarecrow was referenced during Elseworlds & the inverse of Seinfeld’s “The Outing,” but this is the first time they’ve used his real name.
Nothing about how Mary continues to be the best? Because Mary continues to be the absolute best. Her disgust when Luke kept up the pretense of working in real estate and her revenge after the phone call from Batwoman were equally delightful.
She really by far one of the things that keeps me tuning in each week.
We can cut him some slack; he’s not the regular reviewer
I, for one, think it’s commendable that Batwoman murdered the guy that drove her sister insane by keeping her as slave for years!
Yeah, not to get all “Texas” or whatever, but he needed killin’.
I’m curiously okay with Kate being a killer. Maybe because I was almost certain they’d chicken out and he’d spring back to life.
please let Enzo from iZombie/ Beth’s kidnapper/ torturer be dead for real I don’t think Kate should feel too bad about killing him, particularly as Alice and the guy himself both conspired to motivate her to do it
And the only reason he was alive is she had just saved his life.
And as everyone knows, if you save someone’s life then you get a coupon for one freebie murder attempt on them later.
Kate should be okay with it. Remorseful for a hot minute, but she’ll get over it. Ollie had no issues with killing (at the time). Kate’s also military. Killing might come with job. It’s a facet of her training.
She’s done it in the comics: https://screenrant.com/batwoman-just-went-rogue/
Kate: “I just killed a man.”
Ollie!Spectre:
Is the “adrenaline shot cures fear toxin” a comics thing? I know in The Dark Knight Lucius had to whip up a custom cure for it.
Axis Chemicals Manager: Okay Stencil Guy, take this stencil over to those tanks over there and label them all “Fear Toxin.” Then take this stencil to those cans over there, and label them “Flesh Eating Acid.” Then take this one stencil (this one’s important) to that big tub over there and label it “Danger: Nuclear Waste.” Okay, Stencil Guy? Don’t get them mixed up. Spray paint is over there. Have fun.Stencil Guy: Why is there a steam cloud always hanging in the rafters of this warehouse?
Damnit, now I want to watch (/read) The (Mis)Adventures of Stencil Guy…
He needs his own comic. Hopefully he wasn’t on the clock when Harley broke up with Joker. (;-p
If I worked in a factory that had vats of Fear Toxin, Flesh Eating Acid, etc, I would be saying at the staff meetings “Um, can we get these labelled so we know what is in each one?”
“Please, people. Label what’s yours in the break room fridge. We don’t need another freak-out like we had last week. Joan is passing around a get-well card for Richard. His condition has stabilized and rather than risking surgery to remove the extra limbs, he has elected to begin physical therapy in an effort to try and integrate them into normal life… just as soon as they stop growing.”
“Um, Supervisor Jones, I have a question. I’m working in the Skin-Eating Acid/Aloe Vera department, and none of the bottles are labelled. Can we get someone to look into this before I go back to work there?”
This was kind of a difficult one for me because it stirred up memories of my own childhood. No no, my (adoptive step-)mother never poured boiling water on my hands. She was too smart for that, she knew where the line was and knew she wouldn’t be able to explain away that kind of an injury. Instead she would just make me do dishes in pure hot water. No cold water was allowed to be added. She would mock me for wanting to use gloves because the water would obviously be too hot for my to put in my hands. If she felt I was taking too long to wash dishes, she would stand behind me and smack me every time I stopped washing something. It was the same thing with the bath, pure hot water, no cold water and again would mock me for complaining the water was too hot. Not only mock me to my face, but would make fun of me to other people. This was her way of making me out to be the ungrateful adopted crybaby who was always lying about how I was being treated.
Dude. Fucking hell. I’m genuinely sorry you had to go through that. It was a fantastic episode, but that must’ve been very triggering for you.
Thank you.
I am so sorry you went through that.
That was in places genuinely hard to watch. Still that it paid off with by far the best improvised flamethrower scene in ages might well have justified it.
Where is Oliver when a hero needs some talk about turning from the dark end after becoming a murderer? Oh yeah, dead because they killed my boy :’’’(Kate should hail the Waverider to talk to Sara about redeeming one’s soul.
The Legends would be like, “Uhh, we kinda kill people all the time. Ray once shrunk down to the size of a bullet and flew through a guy’s chest. We’re maybe not the best people to talk to about this.”
At this point, I’m not even sure why killing villains is a big deal in superhero stories given how many times it happens in movies amd tv shows.
Mick: “No harm, no foul I say. Drink?”
I’m actually impressed how grisly this show is getting – it made sense that ARROW was the dark, gritty, older brother, and now you’ve got BATWOMAN taking up the mantle but putting a more horror-centric spin on things (like last week’s faceless girl and this week’s zombie burn victim granny). I only hope now the villains of the week start to get a bit more interesting (plus it wouldn’t hurt if some of them have powers, to spice things up a bit).
It seemed to me that the strangling reopened the neck wound Cartwright gave himself. I suspect that’s the out they’re going to give to the morally squeamish – yes, he wouldn’t have died without her actions but also not without his own. Personally I can’t see many people not understanding Kate’s actions even if they don’t condone murder and we’ve definitely seen heroes do more for less in the Arrowverse.
Watching Rachel Skarsten has been delightful, like watching John Noble was on Fringe. When Alice was crying in terror, I was actually upset for her! I didn’t even care that Kate worried about murdering someone (I didn’t know that she cared, to be honest). But Alice — vengeful, plotting, stabby killy Alice — made me cry because she cried.
“Kirk out!”
My goodness she’s like a female Oliver Queen. Lmao
It got lost in all the trauma of this episode, but I really want to see more of Kate and Beth’s Bat Mitzvah. I really hope that Kate’s drash was something along the lines of “Dusk! With a creepy tingling sensation, you hear the fluttering of leathery wings! Bats! With glowing red eyes and glistening fangs, these unspeakable giant bugs drop onto their prey!”