It’s a new day in Gotham. With a missing Batwoman and her psychopathic sister still threatening the city, Gotham needs a new protector. Kate Kane has left quite the legacy to fill, but maybe the best way to fight crime is to know the system itself. The world needs a hero. Will Ryan rise to the challenge? Don your cape, grab your expandable bow staff, and join us as we give you five thoughts on season 2, episode 3, “Bat Girl Magic!”
1. The joy of a meaningful secret identity.
I love a good secret identity. There’s just something fun about watching a character navigate a double life and seeing how they react to keeping a secret. It’s something that the Arrowverse does to varying levels of success, but in any case, season 2 of Batwoman adds a fun twist to the conceit of the secret identity. It makes it meaningful. That’s not to say that other shows haven’t mined it to varying degrees of success, but in the case of Ryan Walker, her secret identity is crucial to continue being Gotham’s caped crusader.
As we’ve seen in other episodes, Ryan has a complicated past, including a criminal record and parole officer. In “Black Girl Magic!” Ryan pretends to have a job at The Round-up, which does become a real job, cuts a drug bust short to make it to her parole meeting on time, and has to convince her officer that she’s looking for housing. For Ryan, her secret identity is crucial to showing how she’s reacclimating to society. It’s honestly more fun and interesting to see Ryan navigating with her double life than Kate. While the situations are different, there’s a lot more riding on Ryan successfully pulling off the facade than Kate. Kate might lose a relationship, Ryan could stop being Batwoman. It adds a fun new dynamic to Ryan’s role as a masked vigilante.
2. A hitman with the love of the game (and pain.)
This week’s villain is Victor Zsasz, a high-end hitman who is incredibly professional, loves pain, and is also just a remarkably upbeat person. While many of the hitmen or hired hands of Gotham tend not to be all that conversations, Zsasz is a regular chatterbox, giving advice or adding commentary on the situations he finds himself in and always seems to be in a positive mood. Alex Morf brings incredibly wild and unpredictable energy to Zsasz. Each conversation with Zsasz seems to teeter on the edge of losing control and each confrontation ends with a surprising twist.
While it seems this won’t be the last time we see Zsasz, Morf takes full advantage of his screen time, turning in a fun and memorable performance as the assassin. His design is also just great, with the wild crisscrossed scars of his former victims and his absolute commitment to making sure he fulfills the client’s every weird request. Every time he was on screen, it was engaging as you tried to guess just what was coming next. Hopefully, he will be a recurring villain throughout this second season.
3. Safiya’s confusing long con.
At the end of “Prior Criminal History,” Alice and Sophie were captured by the mysterious Safiyah, a criminal mastermind who seems to control her own island nation. Most of Alice and Sohpie’s plot of “Bat Girl Magic!” is Alice and Safiya having a very tense conversation about Alice’s role in Safiya’s master plan. It seems that Safiya was the one who trained Alice, but Alice broke the rules and stole one of the magical desert rose plants, the cure-all that Mary used to save Gotham last week. Safiyah tries to convince Alice that she wasn’t responsible for the attack on Kate or Gotham. Still, by the end of the episode, it’s revealed that she’s a liar. Szasz’s primary mission is to kill anyone cured by the desert rose, to keep the flower’s power secret from the world. She also reveals that she has Kate hidden somewhere.
While it was nice seeing a different locale than the dreary Gotham, most of the Alice and Safiya stuff from this episode felt like cramming a full season of story into one episode and pivoting because we have a new Batwoman. It’s impossible to know what the plan was, but it feels like there were, once again, things revealed that would have been built up over the second season. Not sure where the plot is going to go from here, but it seems like Alice is now a pawn. Who knows what that will do to the dynamic.
Continued below4. Adding new dimensions to a tired story beat.
Another week, another “doubting Ryan” story. While Mary has all but accepted Ryan to be the new caped crusader, Luke is still having his doubts about the team’s future. For Luke, all of this is just a place holder for Kate’s return, and it seems that the more Luke learns about Ryan, the less he wants her on the team. There is still plenty of talk about how Kate would do things differently, that the suit “wasn’t made for you.” Throughout the episode, he almost acts like a barrier for Ryan to overcome. But the new dimension they add that makes it somewhat more interesting is that Luke isn’t doubtful of Ryan. He just doesn’t want to lose hope in Kate being alive.
Does it make up for his behavior in the episode? Not really, and it doesn’t necessarily feel earned, but it’s nice to see Luke on the same page again. At the end of the episode, he’s not giving up on finding Kate, but he will be a full member of the team. He trusts Ryan’s ability to be the hero. Hopefully, this is the last we get of the doubting Ryan storylines because after three weeks, it’s starting to feel old. If this is the send-off, it was a pretty good one.
5. The importance of feeling comfortable in your own suit.
Hopefully, this is the last time we see Ryan doubting herself this week too. Throughout “Black Girl Magic!” Ryan continues to struggle with being Batwoman. The big difference this week is that she’s struggling with the suit itself. It’s tech made for another person. Szasz even tells her that he “Doesn’t see the Batwoman in you because I don’t see the you in Batwoman.”
In what is possibly the strongest moment in the series thus far, Ryan redesigns the suit to fit her, including a wig that reflects her natural hair. It’s a little thing, but it’s a compelling visual to show how Ryan is now becoming comfortable in her own skin, and she’s making the role her own, not Kate’s vision, not Luke’s vision, but Ryan’s vision of what Batwoman will be. It was powerful stuff and makes me excited to see how she’ll continue to add herself into the role of Batwoman.
So there we have it, Gotham has a new Batwoman and a team backing her up. So what did you think? Sound off below and we’ll see you next time!
