Batwoman is the newest addition to The CW’s strong lineup of superhero content. The series, overseen by Caroline Dries, will introduce audiences to the network’s first lesbian-led superhero show (the honor of its first female-led superhero series goes to Supergirl). The show has big boots to fill with its place in the Arrowverse, just as Kate Kane (Ruby Rose) has a big cape and cowl to fill as Batwoman. The absence of the Caped Crusader plays a big role in Kate’s life when she returns to Gotham, and is the catalyst for her taking on the bat persona herself. As Kate explains in a voiceover, The Crows—a private security company—have had to fill in the void created by a missing Batman and an ineffectual Gotham police force. It feels like a story that’s been done before, because it is a story that’s been done before. Vigilantism is literally what Kate’s cousin Bruce Wayne did (though she doesn’t find out until halfway through the premiere); it’s the reason Oliver Queen’s Green Arrow exists, and can be loosely applied to any form of super-heroics. That doesn’t make the Batwoman pilot boring, but it does make it predictable.
Kate has a connection to her cousin Bruce’s alter ego: For a long time, she’s held a grudge against Batman for failing to save her mother and her twin sister Beth from a watery grave, but she gets a reality check in the first hour from Wayne Enterprises’ steward, Luke Fox (Camrus Johnson). With that emotional weight off of her and her perception of Batman altered, she’s free to take on his recently vacated role as protector, one she takes on quite well. When Kate makes her first appearance as Batwoman, she’s mistaken for Batman by the people of Gotham—who observe her actions from a safe distance—but as a copycat by her father. Even though she has this literal and metaphorical shadow over her, Kate Kane is not one to live in it. Rose’s Kate Kane is somber and determined, and knows her way around a utility belt already. The show is leaning into the dark, serious world commonly associated with Gotham, adding another super-powered layer to the Arrowverse.
As Kate, Rose gives a nuanced performance—she doesn’t stick to a sullen manner, though it could easily be justified by living with immense loss and rejection from her father. She shows off a dry humor and playfulness, especially when dealing with her step-sister over the phone, or pushing Luke’s buttons just enough not to give him a panic attack. Her most strained relationship is with her father, who sent her into a kind of exile, so a lot of her grief and hurt comes out when interacting with him, which is to be expected. With the bleak circumstances and even darker setting—a literal cave—it would be easy to play Batwoman as a gloomy hero, forever brooding. But Rose avoids that while still creating a character fit to fix the brutal landscape of Gotham.
A big part of Kate’s story and her identity is her queerness, which is an established part of her comics origin, along with her expulsion from West Point for having a relationship with another female student. The CW’s Arrowverse has a pretty good track record when it comes to their LGBTQ+ storylines, generally handling them with respect and thought. Supergirl introduced the first ever transgender superhero last year, and Arrow offers a nuanced depiction of bisexuality through Sara Lance (Caity Lotz), continued on in Legends Of Tomorrow. There are rocky waters ahead for Kate’s love life, but her sexuality isn’t her whole story, something that is true to life for any queer-identifying person.
Overall, Batwoman seems like it’s trying to fill the dark, gritty void that will soon be left by Arrow, but it doesn’t quite hit the mark yet. The show is still very much finding its footing in the pilot; the pacing is off, moving a little too fast at some points. The show seems to be banking on viewers’ prior knowledge of Gotham, and Kate Kane/Batwoman’s introduction into the Arrowverse via Elsewords. The limited exposition would be more welcome if the pilot didn’t leave so many questions unanswered. Right now, the biggest issue revolves around the villain, Alice. She turns out to be Kate’s sister, whose body was never found and was presumed dead, although you don’t learn that until the last few minutes. She’s meant to be a bit cheesy, it seems, with her Wonderland gang of masked henchmen and her ill-timed Alice In Wonderland puns—two thumbs up for sticking to a theme. But the pilot provides greater detail for Alice’s costuming and lair than it does her motives, let alone how she is so in tune with the relationship dynamics of several key figures in Gotham. Alice goes from threatening to blow up the city’s glitterati to kidnapping a single person—Sophie. She negotiates with Jacob, then Kate. “Oh dear, this is quite sad actually,” Alice says when Kate tries to barter for Sophie’s life. “I took Sophie because she’ll actually get your father’s attention. Your father doesn’t want you, Kate… I assumed you knew.” She finishes her blow by saying, “Sophie is the daughter your father always wanted.”
That someone like Alice would play mind games with her foes is par for the course; what’s confusing about the literal Sophie’s choice that Jacob has to make is the depth of his relationship with his employee. We’re given no real foundation for their bond before life-or-death stakes are raised. It’s another example of how the pilot, directed by The Vampire Diaries alum Marcos Siega, picks and chooses where to show depth.
With so many pre-existing shows already filling out Batwoman’s lore and universe, finding footing can be tough. Like so many other network offerings this season, the pilot isn’t the strongest start to a series, but there’s room for potential. What the premiere does establish is Kate Kane’s presence and desire to help others. Let the fight between good and evil commence.
Stray observations
- So Bruce Wayne and Batman have been gone for the exact same amount of time, both without any clue to where they went or why, and no one has pieced that together yet? Yeah, it’s the same universe where Kara Danvers’ glasses and hair are what stop people from noticing her identity but damn. A whole town of Lena Luthors, I see.
- Questions that left me scratching my head: Where was Kate training all that time, and with whom? How long has she been gone? Did her father really expect her to shut up and train for the rest of her life, without coming back? Why did Kate’s step-sister Mary’s (Nicole Kang) medical profession and makeshift clinic, feel so… random?
- Wanting to destroy Jacob Kane and his company and take over Gotham is a weird position for Alice/Beth to take, considering all she did was survive a scary fall from a bridge. Did she and her father not have a great relationship? It just seems like a messy plan to take over Gotham. What a headache.
- Just one observation I always have about Batman stories in general: why make a privatized police force when you, as a very wealthy person, can just donate to the city? You know—funding the education system, a better infrastructure, more ways to thwart villains that don’t involve a second S.W.A.T. team. Add some more lights so it’s not so gloomy while you’re at it, too.
- Does this set up Batman returning to Gotham later in the season or series? As with so many other things about the show’s direction, it’s tough to say. Supergirl certainly found a way to involve Superman in a limited capacity, without him becoming the focus of the show.
- In the second half of the pilot, Kate finds out that Sophie (Meagan Tandy) got married while Kate was away. Love triangles are standard stuff, even in the Arrowverse, but I hope we don’t just see Kate pining over Sophie all year.
- Luke Fox is Lucius Fox’s son, so protecting Wayne Enterprises is in his blood. He’s trying to keep his job and not piss off Bruce Wayne, okay? That’s very relatable. Plus, Kate’s going to have such a fun time teasing him; their dynamic is definitely one to watch.
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– The production values seem to be a lot better than other Arrowverse shows, but there’s some weird editing. Maybe this is a cut down version of the pilot.
– I hate the music.
– I didn’t realize that Bruce was that much older than Kate.
– Speaking of, how specifically is Bruce related to Kate?
– Yeah, the Crows are so good that they have people patrolling in one person teams.
– It looks like Alice and Kate are twins. Fraternal, but still twins.
– Ruby is doing just fine in her acting. The guy playing her dad on the other hand…
– Alice is really getting into Kate’s head. This is some clever writing.
– Maybe it wasn’t crappy engineering. Maybe the car was heavier than a ton for some reason. Secretly armored up or something. Something that Alice learned about, and holds against her father.
– “It will be, when it fits a woman.” I initially cringed when I heard this in the promos, but thinking about it, it may not be what I thought. People complain about SJW stuff, but I think she simply means that it’s man-sized and needs to be cut down to fit a woman.
– To me, Rachel Skarsten seems to superficially resemble Ruby.
On the relation, if they are going with the comics, Bruce’s mother was Kate’s aunt as Martha’s maiden name is Kane. I still groan about the comic book scene where Babs implied that this is why Kate would get Martha better than Bruce would.
Pilots typically have a higher budget then a regular episode. They actually filmed a couple of scenes in Chicago (something that will do throughout the season but it’s not going to be a every episode thing).
Yeah the few Chicago shots spliced in were nice, change up the scenery a bit. I wonder how many viewers catch on that the Arrowverse shows heavily reuse the same couple of blocks of downtown Vancouver – the gala in the Batwoman premiere is the same site the heroes fought AMAZO in the crossover.
There’s a establishing shot of a waterfront warehouse that i constantly spot across all 4 shows.
I think the “when it fits a woman line” is somewhat clunky, but I don’t think it’s heavy handed as anything from Supergirl.
At least no one exclaimed “Finally – a superhero for my daughter!” And there was no quibbling over the girl vs. woman (though Batwoman does an advantage there).
Yea, the dad (Dougray Scott) seems to be sleep walking through this pilot. Specifically when Alice first comes on screen, he looks like he’s super bored and tired. This actor’s trajectory could have been so different – he was the first choice for Wolverine back in the day, but backed out to do MI:2. His career’s never made it past “oh yea that guy from…” status. Some other guy got the Wolverine job, heard he’s doing ok.
. In the comics I don’t think Batman is supposed to be that much older than her. He’s maybe ten years or something. But I guess they wanted to tie Bats directly into the apparent death of her sister (which in the comics was a terrorist bombing IIRC).
On the question about supporting Gotham, there have actually been tons of stories in the comics that establish that Bruce gives an insane amount of money to Gotham and the Wayne Foundation is actually the biggest charitable organization in the city. It just doesn’t solve all the problem, just like Batman doesn’t solve crime by his existance.
I’m a little surprised they got to the Alice is Beth Kane reveal so quickly, that’s something you’d figure they’d drag out for a full season. I also hope they add the wig to Kate’s costume in a hurry because her head looks weird in the cowl without it.
shipper retardant.
Kate and Alice being sisters is less of a shipper repellent than you might think.
well, sure, Supernatural fans. but at least nobody’s going to feel blindsided about it a year down the road.
Yeah I’d ….read….that.
Although Wincest should prove that some shippers will not be … stopped. Stopped is the word I should use there.
I figured it out the second Kate mentioned her sister’s body was never found, so it was nice to have the show not pretend no one could possibly know any longer.
A couple of rules of murder mysteries (but these can be applied to any genre):If X is presumed dead but the body was never found, then X is still alive (and likely posing as another character).If X is killed in a way that they are not normally recognizable (i.e. shot in the face) but they are presumed to be X because they have X’s identification, clothes, etc then X is still alive.
Especially since the reveal included Kate figuring it out.
Yeah, I was thinking a mid-season reveal at the very least, but nope they got right to it. In the comics it was also a quick reveal at the end of the first arc, though it was a much bigger shocker given little to no clues were laid beforehand.
I am very, very glad they decided to get the reveal out of the way quickly and move on to the implications of the whole thing. I think in the comics they didn’t really drag it out either. The mystery of Alice’s identity isn’t nearly as compelling as how the revelation affects kate and her dad.
Given that anyone who’s read the Batwoman comics knows that Alice is Beth, I’m glad they didn’t drag that reveal out for too long.
It’s in the Rucka/Williams Detective Comics, so if they tease it at all then the secret gets spoiled anyways.
I agree. The red wig is such a visual element for the comic Batwoman, I thought they’d use it here. I realize , in practical terms, it would be difficult to pull off, but her head looks kind of funny-shaped without it.
She obviously had the wig as part of her costume in Elseworlds so we know it’s coming, it’s more just a matter of when.
I assume at some point she will want to make it clear that Batman is not back and that’s when we’ll get the wig. That will also make sense that it’s such a bright red, as she will want to be differentiated even from a distance.
Just one observation I always have about Batman stories in general: why make a privatized police force when you, as a very wealthy person, can just donate to the city?Because you think you have a better idea of how to spend the money than the local government does? Which, in a city as bleak as Gotham isn’t that crazy. You know—funding the education system, a better infrastructure, more ways to thwart villains that don’t involve a second S.W.A.T. team. Add some more lights so it’s not so gloomy while you’re at it, too.Bruce does all of that in addition to the Batmanning, they bring it up constantly. Maybe a year ago they made a Signal mini about Wayne putting up low-income housing, Batman Begins hinges on the Waynes funding public transit. It feels like asking “Jurassic Park? Why didn’t they just build some electric fences, that’d stop them”, they explicitly did that. One problem I have with Batwoman is that the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell origin is very time-specific, so either she’s going to have to start aging pretty soon or they’re going to have to change it.
I think that part of her backstory still works for now. Compared to Frank Castle being a Vietnam veteran for almost 40 years, it’s still somewhat recent history.
yeah, Ruby Rose is 33, so if this Kate Kane is her age she would’ve been in college during the last Bush administration and the timeline unfortunately works out.
For now, but just barely. DADT ended eight years ago. If they’d made it five years from now, they might have to get someone older than Ruby Rose is now. In ten, Batwoman would have to be relatively old for a newish superhero. Twenty? It’s an okay origin, but it doesn’t work that well for the sliding timescale.
Plus, investing in infrastructure can only do so much when deranged supervillains are constantly blowing up the infrastructure.
I like her stepsister Mary, to my surprise. They kind of teased her being a spoiled socialite like Arrow s1 Thea, but instead she has more on the ball than that, more like … a later seasons on Arrow TheaI thought Rachel Skarsten was too old to be Ruby Rose’s twin sister, but they are within a year of each others’ ages. I did not realize she was so young when she played Dinah Lance on Birds of Prey. Her as Alice is a definite standout & really interested to see how things with her & Kate play out
I like that Mary and Kate are obviously friends. I was worried they might use that as an easy source of tension.
Yeah most of the supporting characters were effectively but briefly established in this episode & most of them seem interesting, Kate’s dad maybe being the big exception It is interesting how obviously it is very intentionally like Arrow in a lot of ways but with a gay female lead (which does by itself make feel pretty different). But her dad so far is not nearly as interesting as Oliver’s mother. Moira Queen was both a better parent & much more shady, at least based on what we know so far
Moira set a high bar. What with, you know, the kidnapping and torture.
yes! and I like that we got the hidden depths reveal that she’s a friggin’ pro bono underground doctor before the idea that she’s a useless social media addict sets in.
I hate to say it, but this is a CW show AND part of the Berlanti brand, so they WILL find a stupid reason to fight, and it will be very contrived.
They made Dinah a teenage on that show so it seems about right.
I hope Skarsten appears alongside the confirmed cameo by Birds of Prey’s Huntress as Canary in the Crisis on infinite Earths crossover.
Definitely agree, it would be nice for Dina Meyer as Batgirl to join them in the crossover too
So true, but I’m doubtful because DC have been real cagey about showing any Live-action Barbara Gordon’s since Birds of Prey died – i don’t know if its a rights issue so Babs can only be used in animated form (eg. Dc Superhero Girls, DC Original direct-to-dvd Killing Joke, Young Justice) or what the deal is?
I have a feeling that she’ll quickly join the fold on Team Batwoman very shortly. I actually enjoyed her character quite a bit, I think it’ll be an interesting pairing going forward.Also yes Alice is easily the best character right now. Actively loopy, but not in an I’m trying to replicate that other Gotham crazy character everyone is talking about. Honestly, I liked the whole episode quite a bit.
Are they still twins on the show? I might have missed a line of dialogue (ironically, probably when I was telling my wife they’re twins in the comic) but I definitely could see Alice being her older sister by a couple years.
I think they are supposed to be twin sisters on the show but am not 100% sure & did not catch it actually being said in the episode, though canonically apparently it is the case
Skarsten was definitely the most fun thing in this episode. I know the reviewer found her a bit unmotivated, but I’m hoping that means they’re doling out the reveals about her over the course of the season and making her arc a major focus.
Alice’s motivation is as yet unclear. In a general sense I feel like she wants revenge on her father for being a jerk? If so I think that would work for me
I think that Alice could provide the best window for expanding the world of the show. I’m hoping she’ll have some justified grievances against their father in addition to her delightful crazies.How do they square that away with her being dead for years? Well, I’m thinking something along the lines of their father knowing she was alive and keeping it a secret in order to further some purposes with his security corporation. They are called “The Crows” after all, so it seems like they’re well positioned to make a heel turn at some point.Maybe I’m getting my hopes too high, but it would be great if the show actually interrogated the idea of wealthy families having their own paramilitary forces. Like, it’s probably not a good thing? Especially in a city as corrupt as Gotham? Make them less “magical private police force” and a little more real-life Blackwater, is what I’m saying. Make the actual moral aspects as dark and muddied as the color palette.But yeah, it’s possible that’s asking too much of an Arrowverse show.
I watched Birds of Prey over the summer and, yeah, Dinah was pretty young.
It also had SUCH a 2000s WB credit sequence that I was amazed. I never new a credit sequence or theme song could feel so dated and such a product of time an place.
Ha, I remember that it was not great & very of its time but I still want to rewatch the old Birds of Prey series sometime. The cast was quite good, including her
It’s on DC Universe, which is how I watched. The effects and visuals were dated, but a lot of the stories worked. Not a lot of depth, but I enjoyed it.
Oh right. I am still dragging my feet on subscribing to DC Universe. The Doom Patrol is out on DVD & blue ray now & isn’t too much, I might just buy the disks for that & Birds of Prey
I fell off all the Arrowverse shows years ago, but Batwoman is one of my favorite comic characters so this is tempting. I think I will wait a while and catch an episode later in the season once they find their footing. They will also hopefully be done establishing origins and relationships by then so I don’t get caught up comparing it to the comic as much and judging changes they made. Already bummed out reading here about the strained relationship with her dad, one of the things I loved about the comic was her dad realizing she is Batwoman and then immediately becoming her Alfred/Oracle, helping obtain military tech and intelligence, because he knows she is to stubborn to stop and if he helps her it increases her chances of survival. Although I guess this version of Big Daddy Kane is just running a business, he’s not a high-ranking military dude. I also wonder how Alice will play in the show. I loved that in the comics she spoke almost entirely in quotes from the text of the two Alice books, but I realize that would be too limiting on the show. On the other hand, if most of the time she speaks (relatively) normally in the show, then when she does speak in quotes or references it might seem goofier surrounded by regular dialogue.
The review didn’t mention it, but he does tell her that his plan was to use his military connections to bury her, er, keep her safe, in a Pentagon desk job once she got out of West Point. So, there is room for Dad to develop and grow.
She’s basically the exact same thing as the Mad Hatter, so are the pair related in the comics?
Not according to Alice.
Alice in Wonderland is a VERY popular source of superhero/villain identities.
They’re not related, though in the first arc Kate did throw shade that Gotham already has one Alice in Wonderland-themed villain. Would’ve been fun to see that here too, just to acknowledge this Gotham has some history.
She’s a lot loopier than Mad Hatter is and in the comics is a different aesthetic. Mad Hatter is very manic and cartoonish where she’s more ethereal and otherworldly.
Pretty sure Hatter was obsessed with a different girl called Alice.
The daddy/daughter relationship soured during the (really good) Rebirth Detective Comics era so they might be drawing that element from there.
Ah, I haven’t read any of her appearances since Blackman and Williams quit, so I was not aware of that development.
I collected the first 4 Deluxe volumes of Detective Comics Rebirth era for the beautiful artwork/inking combo but there’s some solid story/character work too. Highly recommend checking out Tynion IV’s Detective comics run.
I will check those out if I see them at the library. I like the art, but nothing I have read from Tynion previously was memorable or better than average, so I don’t think it will make it onto my “future purchase” list until I can try it out (my comix budget is basically non-existent right now except for occasional visits to the deep discount/overstock book store).
I use Book depository a lot (free international shipping) & consistently cheaper than most retail book stores. This applies to both the Big 2 comic co.’s & the smaller ones too for their trade paperbacks. i can’t say i’ve read much, maybe any of Tynion IV’s other work, but i did enjoy this run. When you do sample it, it would be interesting to hear how you think it compares.
To be fair, most of what I have read by Tynion was back-ups/crossovers/annual shorts related to Snyder’s Batman run, so maybe when he is writing a long term story that he gets to be in charge of he does better. As it was, I found Snyder’s run decent but overrated (except for his Black Mirror arc before the Nu52, which I loved), and Tynion’s stuff felt like a less distinctive version of Snyder (which makes sense as he studied under Snyder and got a lot of co-writing credits with him before getting his own books).
Given that Gotham already did the Mad Hatter, and that the general theme of crazy villains adopting Carroll has been done to death, I really hope we get some kind of a twist here. I’d love, for example, to see “Alice” cycle through also-rans of Batman villains, and end up being thrilled that Kane has decided to become an also-ran Batman at the same time. That could set up an interesting showdown between “Alice” and some legit Batman villains down the line – especially Joker, if he’s not dead in this version of the lore. He’d get a huge kick out of such an extended conceit, before trying to muscle his way back into the game.
We already had CW-Supergirl to put the ultimate optimistic and earnest spin on a clearly cynical character origin. That’s been done, and it was done with probably the best character for it, even if it’s not your cup of tea (and, full disclosure, it’s definitely not mine.) Batwoman’s already claiming to be dark enough to handle something a little bleaker and more existential, and hell, maybe even meta (though obviously mostly through the villains.) I hope we get it. Having a female character, in particular, wrestle with the very idea of being a cynical rehashing of stuff already done before by men would be a rich area for critical commentary and psychological drama. Along the way, it wouldn’t kill one CW-verse show to get a little genuinely nasty about how the public has adjusted to all this costumed-hero crap over the past 10 years. It’s extra perfect that Batman (now Batwoman) doesn’t have any superpowers. Arrow teased Oliver’s concern with becoming irrelevant in a world of metas and time-travellers and aliens, but never really dug deep with it. This show’s the second chance to really dig in and get it right.
I like most of your comment, but I got really confused by your line “ Along the way, it wouldn’t kill one CW-verse show to get a little genuinely nasty about how the public has adjusted to all this costumed-hero crap over the past 10 years.” Are you talking 10 yrs as in “In Universe”? or 10 yrs since what? They say Batman disappeared 3 years ago. Or 10 yrs as in how long the CW/DC-Verse has been going?
CW/DC-verse in particular, yeah. I guess we’re calling it Arrowverse? Flows off the tongue better, for sure.If anything, I’m off the wrong way, even if you compress the timeline from The Hood to Batwoman to fewer years than the Arrowverse shows have been on the air. We just learned in this pilot episode that Batman’s been doing his thing for a long, long time – easily predating The Hood. He rescued Kane when she was… 11, maybe? And now she’s easily in her early twenties, if not older.That means that “costumed hero” has been a thing on Earth 1 for at least that long, and, unless they’re getting REALLY insane with changing the lore, that means Batman was probably fighting costumed villains (even if they didn’t have any inherent superpowers per se) for quite some time too, before his disappearance.The people and media of Gotham, in particular, should be well into some advanced stages of commentary on the wider phenomenon.
Gotcha, that makes sense to me. You’re right. Thanks for clearing that up.
Yeah, I loved the character in the comics when Rucka was writing her, and to a slightly lesser extent under Blackman and Williams (it was still soooooo pretty though, at least when Williams was on art duties). I haven’t read anything since those two walked away.And I also fell off the Arrowverse shows, finally giving up after Crisis on Earth-X and now only bothering with the crossovers. They’re not without their merits, but I wouldn’t trust any of the writers to do “my” Batwoman justice, and her Elseworlds appearance did nothing to convince me otherwise.
They are definitely setting up the father to be that kind of character. In the beginning of the episode you feel it’s going to be the same “Arrowverse” relationship, strained, not telling full truths, etc. But by the end the father actually goes to Kate and tells her to her face he knew she wouldn’t give up and yadda, yadda wanted to get her a military desk job so she wouldn’t be in harms way.
At least in the pilot, Alice is about 10,000 times less crazy than in the comics. She actually seems completely rational like any other supervillain who just has a fetish for a certain get up.
I think that, in the broad strokes, it’s fairly faithful to the ideas of the comic. The relationship with Jacob seems based on the latter stories where he forms the Colony and their relationship becomes more strained.
The biggest departure, so far, is the lack of supernatural aspects. At least under JH Williams, one of the things which distinguished Batwoman from much of the other bat-family was that the threats she went up against weren’t street thugs or costumed psychopaths but actual supernatural beings and phenomena.
Well, I’m on board. It’s rough, but no more so than any of the other Arrowverse pilots. -I really like the Batwoman theme (same one as used in Elseworlds)
-Rose is a bit stiff, but I’m optimistic that she can grow into the role with time
-The daddy issues are potentially interesting, but I would’ve liked them more if they hadn’t so explicitly laid them all out
-So Luke is the new Felicity/Cisco/Curtis. Got it.
-I like that Mary always seems to draw a laugh out of Kate in their interactions
-”You’re the female Bruce Wayne.” That line was totally unnecessary.
-Like Supergirl, I think I just really enjoy exploring a very well-known comic universe from the perspective of largely-unknown and female characters. So I’m excited.
Man, this pilot was busy. I get it, they wanted to lay the foundation and get her into the batsuit, but it was really in a big damn hurry to get all their characters into their respective roles and skipped several steps getting there and, as you said, tended to be pretty on-the-nose with just spelling out all the interpersonal conflicts.
That’s actually one thing I loved in first season of Arrow. They took their time in getting to the status quo, and it meant a lot of thought went into every element built in.I suspect that Batwoman doesn’t have that kind of luxury.
Yeah, it took a while to get to “Team Arrow”.
But then, at this point we’ve done the Arrowverse heroic origin story a bunch of times, and there isn’t a whole lot to slow-play, here. There are elements of Arrow, obviously, which itself was a riff on Batman’s origins, plus a smattering of Supergirl’s pilot, (in that you’re playing in a really, really well-established superhero sandbox). So here it seems they did a cliff’s notes version. “Yeah, everybody pretty much knows how this goes, so we’ll just get through it and explain all the stuff that makes this show different.”
There might have been a more elegant way to put it together while skipping the well-worn story-beats, but overall it did what it needed to do.
Also, they can probably assume that everyone knows Gotham City is full of murderous lunatics who like crashing rich people’s galas, so not much explanation on this latest example is needed.
Right, that’s the bit about playing in a well-established sandbox. Nobody needs an explanation on who Batman is, or Bruce Wayne, or that Gotham is a cesspool that has a crapload of themed costumed nuts running around with a bunch of faceless minions committing crimes. (Where do all those henchmen come from?) They cover what’s happened since Batman’s disappearance, but there’s no reason to recap all the stuff everybody already knows.
But it’s still a lot to cram into a voiceover, especially since it turns out those voiceovers are ostensibly about writing letters to Bruce. I can’t help but think it might have been a little cleaner to do the whole origin in flashback, rather than in “real time”. Start off maybe three or four months after these events and use the letter-writing framework to go back and hit the important bits rather than cram them all into, like, two days of story time. Seriously, the time-frame is pretty silly. She comes back to Gotham, confronts her Dad, sees her stepsister, goes to Wayne tower, finds Alice’s hideout, has an action scene with the inevitable first-round failure, sees her stepsister again, confronts her dad again, goes back to Wayne tower again, discovers the (or a) batcave in what has to be the worst-hidden secret lock imaginable, gets Luke to retailor the batsuit, does heroic things, and confronts her ex, all in the space of roughly 48 hours.
It’s funny, when I was watching this, i kept thinking “I wonder if this pilot will seem really weird and quaint in like five years when Batwoman is chasing like Gentleman Ghost or some alien threat or something. I recently caught a season one ep of Arrow, and I can’t believe how it seems like an entirely different show from what Arrow is now, or really any season post-Damein Darhk. Like, remember when Laurel was a lawyer who wanted to take boxing lessons?
Some of the slow burn on Arrow was a little ridiculous though, it took them what, three years to even call Ollie Green Arrow? And he had that stupid grease paint “mask” for well over a season.
At least four. I just rewatched S3 and by the end they’re still calling him the Arrow. Although Thea does toss out Red Arrow as a potential code name for her in season 3.
Oh, but that was the point. I loved it. The showrunners said at the start he wasn’t called Green Arrow because he hadn’t earned the name yet. That was the intention of the series: to build his origin over the course of five years, rather than jump to the status quo from the opening. It suggests that there can be a lot of building and growing just to get to the actual point of being that superhero, and seeing so many of the pieces enriched the end goal.Same with the mask. He was still evolving the identity. Part of that was figuring out those little details. And having Barry be the one to first give him the mask was awesome.
They likely have a gigantic Crisis deadline to meet. So they’re rushing to put everything into place. I have a feeling a lot of the series will be pushed forward a bit in terms of pacing.
Some of the stiffness is the character, but Rose is clearly still struggling with the American accent. I do hope she improves. Unfortunately it’s a multi-step process. First she has to improve the accent, then she has to learn how to act a bit better *while* maintaining the improved accent.Acting’s not an easy job. We tend to underestimate it because it’s not a very useful one.
I’m watching this as well. Legends has descended into pure farce, and Arrow and The Flash have devolved into endless repetition. This might be the only one of the Arrowverse shows I watch this year. I just hope they have some sort of idea of when they want to wrap it up, so they can avoid that slump that inevitably comes when things go on for too long. All Good Things…
The Bruce Wayne line is also completely untrue, at least from the comics. Kate is really her father’s daughter and is pursuing a military career when she gets kicked out of West Point for being gay. She goes through a party girl phase, but she’s really not like Bruce Wayne.
Luke will obviously be tech support for her, but without the possibility of romantic tension ala Felicity because she’s gay. In the comics he’s also a superhero in his own right, Batwing.
I didn’t pay close enough attention to Sophie’s husband’s name, is his last name Crane, Cobblepot, Fries, Strange, Nygma, Kyle, etc? He’s basically the show’s Tommy Merlyn or Eddie Thawne.
So he’s fated to die in the first season finale?Though I don’t think he’s a regular.
Kate and Sophie are also fated to kiss in the first season finale, but not at any point before then. And when it happens there will suddenly be a 2020 pop song playing that hasn’t been written yet.
I kinda pegged him for a traitor placed in the Crows by Alice, to further fuck with Kate. It’s then the only way to have Sophie get back with Kate when the hubby dies. Otherwise, it’d be kind of a “too soon” situation.
I didnt like the music. Other then that I thought it was helluva a good start. All shows have to find their footing. I cringe at some of the early flash CGI lol. I think this show is going to deliver again and again. Just like arrow and flash and legends and super girl have done time and time again.
I thought it was a decent start, although I didn’t really care for some of the creative changes the show made. Compared to Batwoman: Elegy, the death of her mother felt less impactful(Apparently she was killed by the Arrowverse Joker?) and I thought the DADT stuff and the Alice reveal weren’t handled as well. Also, I don’t like making Jacob Kane a less evil version of Dick Jones from RoboCop instead of a morally ambiguous military guy.
I definitely agree with many of your points. I liked the pilot, but had the following issues:The death of Kate’s mother and (alleged death of) Beth is so much more impactful in the comics. And her parents both being military (which was connected to said deaths) added another dynamic to why Kate wanted to also be military.And the Alice-is-Beth reveal was much stronger in the comics as it occurred at *the end* of Kate’s introductory arc. The comic arc explored how their deaths damaged Kate and colored her subsequent choices – which then made the reveal much more powerful.Also as another poster mentioned, it’s a shame that Show-Jacob is no longer military. That enabled him to both provide Kate with the necessary tech/weaponry and act as her Oracle. But Luke Fox seems to fill this role, as he can now provide her with needed Wayne technology to operate as BW.BTW, Batwoman’s comic re-introduction to DC continuity is some of the best work Greg Rucka has done, which says alot as his comic work (Whiteout, Queen & Country, Wonder Woman: The Hiketia) is reliably incredible. If you’re interested in this show, l strongly recommend reading his Batwoman work.
I think [hope] they are eliding past stuff we already know from the comics? Which is why the pilot felt like an elongated ‘previously on…’ *cautiously optimistic*
But the changes still feel unneccessary. And the show is presumably being watched by people who haven’t read the source material.
I was a little shocked that they not only mentioned the joker, but had him as the guy who killed Kate’s mom. I wonder if that means they’re not doing the whole Religion fo Crime thing, or if that just means the Joker is involved in all that.
Well this definitely came off better then Elseworlds did so I’ll give it that. I’m still not sure about Ruby Rose as Batwoman but she’s no worse than Stephan Amell so I guess she’s fine for now.
So why was Wayne Enterprises in ruins? Just because Bruce fucked off doesn’t mean that the company would shut down.
I think there was a line during Elseworlds about how the board members ran the company into the ground after he left.
Warning: nitpick ahead
That cannot actually be Martha Wayne’s pearl necklace; everybody knows it was destroyed in the robbery attempt that took Bruce’s parents. Unless 8-year-old Bruce walked around after the fact and gathered all the pearls up to string them later…..and we’re talking about a traumatized kid who just saw his parents get shot, so no, saving the pearls could not have been on his mind.
Well, I mean, you’re talking about a kid who dealt with his parents death by traveling the world for a decade and becoming not just a martial arts expert but the world’s greatest detective… So I think obsessively tracking down every single pearl from his dead mom’s necklace is squarely in the realm of possibility.
C’mon, you know there must be some old back issue about Batman, years later, tracking down each individual pearl from a variety of thieves and seedy jewelry buyers.
The pearls could’ve been gathered up by the cops when they were taking evidence at the crime scene, and then returned to Bruce with the rest of the Waynes’ personal effects. Then he re-strings the necklace, hangs it on a bust of Shakespeare, bing-bang-boom.
These are Gotham City cops, though. You know they would have pocketed the pearls for themselves and reported them missing.
Really enjoying Rose as Kane. Not sure how I feel about the sister reveal being so early. On one hand I assumed it from their first interaction and don’t like when shows stretch things out *too* long but it still feels like something that could have been held back a little longer in terms of pacing. So wonder if the Joker had a hand in ‘Alice’s upbringing even though it is more of a Tetch thing. Definitely it isn’t just ‘they never found her so she’s bitter’ or ‘she had amnesia’ so there must be a deeper reason she is the way she is.
I’m just fine with it, because they telegraphed it so hard before then.
Good start. Outside of the cringe-y “it will be [perfection] when it fits a woman” line from the trailer, I really didn’t have any other expectations going in. The biggest fault is that with so many superhero shows now (and so many CW superhero shows specifically) the pilot doesn’t really do anything radically different, but it works well and provides some decent hooks to keep watching. I’m also unclear why the decision was made to tie Batman into Kate’s origin; setting the flashback in rural suburbia in daytime just made everything more bizarre (if they’d moved it to night in the city, the scene would’ve felt a little more Batman-esque). Maybe this will pay off later, but Kate’s resentment of Batman not saving her family is barely explored before its forgiven.
I’m really curious how this lands with the general audience; it has the same problem as Supergirl in that the more famous hero is off screen/off limits so some of the elements can feel like a cheap imitation at times, even if they’re all ultimately derived from the comics. No Lucius Fox? No problem, here’s Luke! No Joker/Mad Hatter/Riddler? Here’s Alice! Supergirl at least has some prior exposure given the Helen Slater film, whereas Batwoman is still comparatively unknown. Hopefully Kevin Conroy appearing as Bruce will answer a few key Batman questions until the show can figure out how to integrate Batman into the narrative like Tyler Hoechlin’s Superman.
why make a privatized police force when you, as a very wealthy person, can just donate to the city? You know—funding the education system, a better infrastructure, more ways to thwart villains that don’t involve a second S.W.A.T. team.Leaving aside that Bruce Wayne does do all of this, there’s also the simple answer that if you’re aiming to write a superhero action-adventure story, Bruce Wayne: Charity CEO Who Doesn’t Fight Crime And Steers Clear Of Any Of That Socially Irresponsible Superhero Nonsense, Thank You Very Much is the exact antithesis of that, and most likely no one will read it.
To be fair, up until fairly recently you’d see more bits of that seeping into Batman stories – Bruce offering an entry-level employee a spot in their free tuition program; or he’d convince a fellow fat cat to pony up the money to save a free clinic by appealing to his vanity, stuff like that.
I acknowledged that (“Bruce Wayne does do all this”); my point is just that for better or worse Batman is still a superhero action-adventure story. The writers can acknowledge that there’s other, perhaps better ways to improve a society than dressing up as a bat and fighting criminals on the sidelines, but the central narrative is always going to focus more on Bruce doing the former rather than the latter, because that’s what the story is about and what people are here for. The whole “why doesn’t Bruce just give all his money away and improve society that way” criticism just seems snitty and pedantic and not-nearly-as-clever-as-the-critic-thinks (on top of being inaccurate) because, well, it’s the story of a man who decides to become a superhero, not the story of a guy who decides to become a charity CEO. Take away the superhero, you don’t have a superhero story.
That’s also why superhero stories lean heavily on “supervillains that the normal cops can’t handle” rather than “vigilante beating the shit out of street crooks.” With Batman, in particular, after a while it’d just start looking like a rich kid who likes to dress up and beat up poor people.
Also, I think my reply sounds a bit snippier than I intended it to be, but I can’t go back and edit it, so apologies. No snippiness intended. 🙂
Hey, no worries! I agree with your points here, I probably came off snippy myself so apologies back at you.
No worries! I didn’t detect any snippiness from you, but let’s pull it into hug harbor anyway.
I think the reason Mary’s second act reveal felt so random is because they presented her as a vapid socialite millennial that can’t go anywhere without her phone in her hand. The reveal she’s running an underground medical office was a pleasant twist for the character.So, I try to go into new shows with an open mind. This one was a bit more difficult because I wasn’t really feeling the character when she showed up in the big crossover last year. Plus many of the trailers for this show left me rolling my eyes and groaning at some of the dialogue choices. HOWEVER, I ended up really enjoying this. I’ve been holding Supergirl up to a higher standard than the other superhero shows because of the new ground it had the potential to tread. However, I feel like it’s really squandered that potential with the way certain elements were written that was about as subtle as a baseball bat to the face. I feel like Batwoman has the potential to surpass Supergirl in this regard, which would take a lot of pressure off that show.
The editing in this show is atrocious. It IS possible to hold a shot for more than 3 seconds.Ruby Rose was OK as Kate, but she’s still the weakest lead in the Arrowverse. The woman who plays Sophie is far more expressive.I know this is a Bat show and all, but there ARE other colors than black. Why is Mary running an illegal clinic and now just a private practice?The whole angst party everyone has with Kate’s dad feels forced. Everything bad about him has been told, not shown.
I think the character’s supposed to be a bit dry and stiff, so it might just take a while for Rose to find the right groove.Looking at early episodes of AoS, it took a bit for Ming-Na Wen to find the right kind of stoic for the character.
Hey, remember when Dougray Scott was cast as Wolverine and turned it down to be the bad guy in Mission Impossible II? Good career choice, there, buddy.
She probably had more than one.
I don’t think* he turned it down. I think MI:2 filming went long and he was forced to pass on Wolverine to finish MI:2. *can’t remember where I heard/read that though so I could be misremembering.
I think you’re right, mostly because I know for certain that Hugh Jackman had NO time to prepare before filming began so they had to paste on fake muttonchops and shoot around his clearly-not-Wolverine-buff physique for the first several weeks of filming.
Which means someone being a Mission Impossible villain has fucked up the filming of TWO different superhero movies.
I really hope that when Batman makes his inevitable appearance he reveals that the reason he vanished was just because he didn’t want to get caught up in Queen and West’s wacky bullshit shenanigans.
The Monitor approached him about the Crisis, so he got out while he was ahead.
I thought for an opening episode it was very solid. We already know how she relates to the rest of the Arrowverse (pretty well especially with Kara) in the crossover. So how she stands alone was key and honestly, I like her a lot. Furthermore, they’re dealing with her 8000 lb gorilla better than Supergirl S1 did which I like quite a bit.Alice is pretty great and I really enjoyed her. Luke Fox could be a good sidekick techy, though I hope they differentiate his character from all the other nerdy, techs they other heroes have. Making him Batwing eventually would be nice. Then there is the whole family dynamics which I dont know how it’ll work quite yet but I am enjoying the step-sister, who I think will have a place on Team Batwoman pretty soon.All around for a series where Pilots are often quite rocky I found this to be one of the better ones. Certainly superior to Supergirl. Also it is clear Ruby Rose will be a good lead on the series as I feel she nails Kate Kane and likely come into her own as Batwoman, though I haven’t seen much of it.I also like since it’ll be one of the things talked about a lot. How her lesbianism is just a part of her. Its not something that is really pushed and talked about a lot. Its there, it doesn’t need to be brought up all the time. Honestly, its refreshing compared to another series that really likes to be heavy handed with these issues.
With the Alice In Wonderland theme…I couldn’t help but wonder if Jarvis Tech was an influence for Beth. He was The Had Hatter, after all.
Arrowverse is lame bullshit, and anyone attaching themselves to it is commiting career suicide.
After Supergirl and Black Lighting, it was a bit of an adjustment returning to the Arrow-style pilot where the hero isn’t fully formed yet. But other than that, and some pretty big changes from the source material (which, again, was the norm in the early Arrowverse), I thought it was a decent start. I can’t remember how long Batman had been MIA during Elseworlds (when Kate is clearly more established as Batwoman). If it’s the same three years, we can probably expect the show to catch up with the rest of the Arrowverse by Crisis or the end of S1. If it was longer, then is this show technically set in the past compared to Arrow/Flash/Supergirl/Legends?
Yeah, I was trying to figure out the timeframe myself. I remember them saying it would start before Elseworlds, but not how much earlier. My guess would be your speculation that it’ll catch up with everyone else in time for the crossover.
It’s not quite as bad as “actually LOL I wasn’t on the island for the whole five years,” but it’s a pretty early unforced error in my view. Best guess: they just flat-out forgot that the series had to start prior to last year’s crossover when they wrote that line.They can now “fix” it by having Kane become legit Batwoman in like a month, but, ehhhhh…
One small moment that I loved: Kate is about to leave the room after rescuing/catching Sophie and she realizes she has to unlock the door first. I feel like the show would do better to lean into those sorts of things – have Kate remark every now and again on how ridiculous this world is that just enveloped Bruce. Also, take a page out of Legends and let her get her mack on now that Soph has shacked up with Capt. Mayo.
The big question for me is: with the Crows seemingly running roughshod “security” over the city, what’s up with the post-Batman GCPD?
It was fine. Really, as good as you can expect from the CW.
Rachel Skarsten, unsurprisingly, steals the show, as she and Luke are the only characters with much in the way of charisma.
Partway through the episode, I realized that the Arrow has already disposed of Ra’s al Ghul. Too bad. Also funny that in all the years that Oliver Queen dealt with the League of Shadows no one mentioned Batman.
Unrelated to the review but HOLY SHIT can we lose the autoplay video under it?
Overall, Batwoman seems like it’s trying to fill the dark, gritty void that will soon be left by Arrow, but it doesn’t quite hit the mark yet.Arrow hasn’t really hit that mark since its Season 2 finale, so hoping for more and better for this series, which it already seems to have the foundation for in a way Arrow never did. As long as they steer clear of another AvaFelicityIrisMonEl fiasco, they should be good to go. (giant unjinx)
As an premiere episode – it was patchy and didn’t flow well in terms of it’s storytelling. As the article states, the pacing felt really off, scenes cut off way too quickly and certain arcs were rushed through just to get to the current storyline. I feel it would’ve been better served as a two hour / part episode that would’ve allowed the story to be more organic and coherent.But in fairness most of CW series premieres weren’t great, The Flash & Legends of Tomorrow in particularly had that rushed, hectic feel to it. It’s the showrunners wanting to get into the current story and then we’ll get more backstory later on.Ruby Rose was ok, physically she looks the part and looks great in the suit. She handles herself well in the fight sequences and was good that she had a confident, self assured persona. We need to see if she can handle the character side more. Not as convinced on the Alice villain and feel it was a mistake to have the sister reveal now. That definitely should’ve been built up throughout the season and revealed in the finale episode.Was also happy that the father wasn’t the typical overbearing, protective trope – like Thunderbolt Ross to Betty from Incredible Hulk. There also was none of the SJW Feminism manbashing that so many have labelled at the show since the first trailer.The handling of Batman was mixed. He was painted as this savior that abandoned the city, but Batman always divided feeling and opinion due to him being part of a vigilante. Also he leaves his entire armoury to one person? All under Wayne Industries building. Whether they address Batman’s disappearance will be interesting as to how much of his rogues gallery will they use. I don’t know if Batwoman’s comic has substantial villains but it wouldn’t surprise me if they used more Batman’s villains.Not bad , not terrible, but definitely areas of improvement. Will stick with it to see how it gets on.
This looks absolutely brutal.
Hmmm, Beth disappears in the aftermath of a Joker rampage, and shows up years later kind of crazy. What could possibly have happened to her? It is a mystery.I’m fine with this pilot, and I say it deserves a B+ or possibly better. As any good pilot does, it establishes the essentials that the show will run on, and it establishes them well. I buy Kate Kane, I buy her motivations. And motivations are incredibly important on superhero shows, because the viewer really needs to believe that the heroes really would put themselves at risk when there’s a perfectly good police department to deal with things.
The show has a pretty cool, techno-musical vibe that sets it apart from the other CW shows. Hints of a theme in there but nothing yet overt like Flash’s Speedster theme. I don’t know how much I’ll watch this. I thought they did about as much as they could with the pilot. My tank is kind of full after having just left Fox’s Gotham behind; Alice having shown up over there with a decent enough arc. (Same Alice?) The Batman world is so enamoured with Harley Quinn currently that she’s sucking up all the oxygen from all the other psycho-women characters available. Not a complaint. I heart Harley. But Alice will need more layering. Seems like this might be the show to finally hook in a Mark Hamill Joker cameo at some point. He’s finally age-appropriate.
Yeah, it’s the same universe where Kara Danvers’ glasses and hair are what stop people from noticing her identity but damn. A whole town of Lena Luthors, I see.Well, not really, considering this is Earth-1, the universe of Arrow, Flash and Legends. Unless Crisis does indeed merge all the universes into one.
This was a solid premiere! I particularly liked Jacob’s dismissive “We’ve had plenty of copycats and they all inevitably die in a spectacular fashion due to a complete lack of skill” as this eloquently answers the question of “What about other heroes?” I doubt we’ll see this angle explored, but it’d be interesting to see how the villains responded to Batman’s absence.
I feel like an idiot for it taking this long, but I’ve only just realized the significance of the movie in the park being Zorro. Of course Zorro had to be involved in another Bat origin.
I’m not completely sold on Rose’s physicality in the performance. I think her performance overall is fine, though it doesn’t have the immediate drawing power that Grant Gustin and Melissa Benoist showed, nor the physicality that Amell showed. Hopefully she will grow in the role. She does feel a little too small and skinny to really feel like she can kick ass. Batwoman in the comics does come off as a taller and more muscular woman and Batgirl is a more nimble and athletic woman. Rose doesn’t feel like either right now. Hopefully they sort out a particular fighting style which makes sense for her stature. Certainly some promise in the pilot.
Most of the complaints can be applied to most TV show premieres. They almost always rush in the first episode or two because they have too much backstory and setting to try and squeeze into the beginning of the show. A lot of other shows that have made the same moves have turned out to be much stronger once they’ve slowed down a bit and gotten their footing. Now that some of those important plot points are out of the way (okay, we know who she is, why she’s doing what she’s doing, who the villain really is, etc.), plot points that are all about the past, she can focus on what she’s doing now and what’s -going- to happen.I realize I sound a bit like Yoda, here, but unless a slow reveal of the past is your goal (and then it would be WAY too much like Arrow), this is probably the best way to do it. I get a bit tired of these slow burns for revealing what happened leading into what’s happening now (and Arrow at least was able to reveal just enough backstory and setting immediately to make it work), so I don’t mind this. I’m sure the show will only improve.
After reading article after article about how good this show was, its first episode was meh. Way too much narration.
Why throw a party for shutting off the Bat Signal? Playing a Zorro
movie in the park is an insidious way to groom the next generation of
Batpeople. Of course Alice’s mole in Crows shares a name with Charles
Dodgson. Why does nobody notice that Batman vanished at the same time as
Bruce Wayne?
Since she’s leading the Wonderland Gang instead of the Religion of
Crime, does Alice have a direct connection to Mad Hatter? I’m ambivalent
about this possibility. Lewis Carroll’s works are popular enough that
they could inspire multiple supervillains, but it seems they should have
a link if they’re spawned exclusively in Gotham City. With fans already
being upset Kate ripped off her famous cousin’s shtick, it’d feel
doubly reductive to reveal Alice owes her crimester career to Jervis Tetch. The Wonderland Gang had better include Batman’s greatest foe, The Carpenter!
I hope they get some Gotham alumni. Get Andrew Sellon to reprise his Scarface & Ventriloquist performance! I’d go hog wild if they got Michael Cerveris back bacon as Professor Pyg! Since WB liked Peyton List as Poison Ivy enough to have her voice her in Batman: Hush, maybe they’ll make her Pamela Isley here too?
Batwoman’s(they sure say “cringe” a lot),
but it wasn’t a smash either. (Supergirl’s pilot was worse.) There’s so much Batman saturation in addition to Berlanti DC shows, especially Arrow, that it doesn’t stand out much. This reminds me of the Bionic Woman
remake where its star, Michelle Ryan, had to use a dull disguise voice
while upstaged by her co-star, Katee Sakhoff, who got to be unhinged.
Batwoman: The Dark Knightress
Moment of unintentional comedy: Kate mentions that Bruce had the absolute bleeding edge tech, as the camera shows her sitting in front of those 1960s-looking bat computers.
“The show seems to be banking on viewers’ prior knowledge of Gotham”Come on. At this point, is there anyone that doesn’t have a basic knowledge of Gotham City? Even complete newbies to the Arrowverse and comicbook shows watching this were probably wondering “Where is Commissioner Gordon?”
I can’t tell exactly what is going on with this show. Critics are giving it a passing grade (RT – 70%, MC -60), whereas it has a 3.2 on IMDB, 12% audience score on RT, and 1.8 audience score on MC. I would normally expect the effect of MRA troll ratings to bring an average-to-good show to a 6.x or so, like with Supergirl. Not only is Supergirl…about a super girl. It also made Jimmy Olsen black, which according to Ben Shapiro is tantamount to “white genocide” or whatever. Have the trolls gotten better at review bombing things they perceive as progressive? Are critics trying to shield the show because it breaks new ground? Maybe a little of both?
Seems like something similar is happening to Watchmen, where critics are hailing it as a bold and brilliant thing (RT – 96, MC – 85) while audience scores are mixed (IMDB – 6.8, RT – 42, MC – 5.6). Which is more in line with the audience scores Supergirl has gotten (IMDB – 6.3, RT – 51, MC -6.3). Critical reception of Watchmen is more positive than Batwoman, but the disparity between the critic and audience scores is still more pronounced with BW. And Watchmen not only has racists and MRA dirtbags to contend with, but also anyone who saw the finale of Lost, or any of the films Damon Lindelof has ever co-written. Berlanti’s other shows have gotten hate before, but not come anywhere near these lows. I realize this sort of disagreement is part of entertainment to an extent, critics and audiences don’t always see things the same way. But a 3.2 is stunningly low. That’s half the score of Supergirl, a show beset from day one by both story problems and troll ratings. I realize MRAs live in an echochamber of impotent manchild rage where hate-voting things on the internet is their primary source of catharsis, but I’ve never seen them sway a series of audience scores this heavily. Lord knows they’ve tried (TLJ is still at 7.1 on IMDB, for example).