A few weeks ago, Andrea and I wrapped watching season 2 of Batwoman. As I mentioned before, Andrea and I were a bit late coming back to the Batwoman party. The abrupt resignation of Ruby Rose from the role of Kate Kane/Batwoman and the producers' decision not to recast the role of Kate Kane kind of put us off on coming back to the show. Kate Kane's relationships with her father as head of the Crows and her sister turned psycho-killer Alice and her cousin Bruce Wayne were central to the whole mythos created for this Batwoman series. Replacing Kate with someone who had no connections to any of these people seemed to invalidate our investment of time we made into watching season 1.
But we reconsidered our decision and boy are we glad we did. In many ways, season 2 is a vast improvement over season 1 and Ryan Wilder, dare I say it, is a better Batwoman than Kate Kane.
Kate does return (well recast as Wallis Day) but she wisely gives her blessing to Ryan to continue as Batwoman.
Black Mask is as ruthless a son of a bitch as he is in the comics. He plunges Gotham City into a black out and pushes the city into a "Purge" state of lawless and reckless abandon.
Inspired by the new Batwoman, the citizens of Gotham rise up to prove they are better than that.
Luke Fox, forced to confront violence and racism when not insulated by wealth and isolation, becomes a stronger person this season. He even gets his own Bat-gear created by his late father and goes into action as Batwing just as he did in the comics.
Jacob Kane finally does something smart and shuts down the Crows. Gotham's private army of cops was as corrupt as the GCPD they were intended to supplant.
And then there's Alice. There are so many times this season I genuinely felt bad for Alice. You could see beneath the mad facade she projects as Alice that Beth Kane was still there with a possibility of breaking through. But every single damn time it looked like that maybe there was something that just might redeem Beth Kane, something would come along to push Alice back to the fore with her psychotic murdering ways.
Safiyah was frequently named checked as some kind of terrible force to be reckoned with. But we finally meet her, I was less than impressed with her. She never carried herself as a person of power or a threat.
But Safiyah and her island of women warriors does explain how little tortured Beth Kane became the smart, craft and wiley fighter we know as Alice. Beth's trauma was molded with physical training and mental manipulation into Alice.
Since she spends so much time brainwashed into thinking she's Black Mask's daughter Circe, we don't get a real look at how Wallis Day does as Kate Kane until the very end of season 2. Wallis captures the spirit and tone of Ruby Rose but she seems a bit more relaxed in temperment. But within the story, that makes sense. Kate has endured so much torment and torture and that is now behind her and she has a new journey ahead of her. With her trauma behind her, a new purpose ahead of her and the mantle of Batwoman in other hands, it makes sense she would seem a bit more at ease with herself.
And speaking of "Batwoman in other hands", Ryan Wilder has been a most extraordinary character to get to know. Deprived of both her birth mother and her adoptive mother, spending time in jail for a crime she did not commit, just generally having to put up with so much shit for just being black or a woman or gay or sometimes the unholy trifecta of all three, Ryan still works to stay focused on the positive, to try to make life at least a little bit better if not for herself then at least for others.
Ryan, with and without the Batwoman suit, is truly an inspiration.
Andrea and I are very much looking forward to season 3. And we will be there from the beginning this time
And that is that for this week's Tuesday TV Touchbase. Until next time, remember to be good to one another and try to keep it down in there, would ya? I'm trying to watch TV over here.
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