Batwoman Season 2, Episode 2 recap: Gotham’s new hope

Batwoman Season 2 Episode 2, “Prior Criminal History”, gives viewers more insight into Ryan Wilder’s connection to Batwoman.

Alice is still on the loose, but she’s not the only threat Gotham City is set to face—could Team-Batwoman be up against someone even more terrifying than her on The CW show?

But first, Ryan is still trying to convince Luke and Mary that she belongs in the Batsuit. Luke hasn’t given up hope that Kate Kane will return, neither have Kate’s family. On the other hand, Alice is certain that Safiyah has successfully killed Kate.

If she’s to protect herself from Safiyah, Alice needs to do something nobody expects—team up with her enemy. Of course, Alice being Alice, she goes about making the proposal in the most disturbing way possible—she ambushes Julia Pennyworth in her car, threatening to kill hundreds of Gothamites.

Julia doesn’t believe that Safiyah has killed Kate—it’s not her MO. But Julia isn’t naïve enough to believe that Kate’s plane crash was a mechanical failure. If this was Safiyah, Gotham has problems ahead.

Surprisingly, Julia isn’t as afraid of Safiyah as Alice is. She refuses to team up with Alice and gets a knife in her side for her troubles. Alice will stab people just for the fun of it.

Batwoman Season 2 Episode 2 – The People Left Behind

Kate’s disappearance and the lack of Batwoman sightings has Gotham City feeling antsy in Batwoman Season 2 Episode 2. They want their hero, especially since the last time they saw her, the Crows were trying to arrest her. The people of Gotham think the Crows have done away with the Caped Crusader and they want her back.

Team-Batwoman is feeling Kate’s absence very keenly, especially since Jacob Kane and Sophie Moore have taken it upon themselves to question everyone close to Kate, starting with Mary and Luke.

Of course, neither of them divulges anything, but that just makes Sophie more determined. She’ll get her answers, one way or another. In the process, she and Julia have ended up calling it quits. Julia hid that Kate was Batwoman, but what else did she hide?

That’s not all, though. In Kate’s letter, she explicitly told Sophie that she still loved her. Sophie and Kate had moved on but their feelings for each other never disappeared. Losing Kate means losing any chance for happiness with her now that Sophie is out. Julia just doesn’t fit in that equation.

Batwoman Season 2 Episode 2 – Alice’s Big Plan

The team-up with Julia fell through, but Alice still has a plan in Batwoman Season 2 Episode 2. She had poisoned her best friend Mouse with the same toxin that she used to kill Mary’s mother. But that’s just the start of her new plan.

Alice has a sonic controller to influence bats—they attack Mouse’s corpse and ingest the toxin. Where will these bats go?

We know where Mouse’s body goes—to Mary’s clinic. While Mary is trying to process what happened to Mouse, she also has to deal with a very angry Ryan.

Ryan has not had an easy life—she’s spent years surrounded by criminal elements, not by choice. She was sent to prison—Blackgate, of all places—because her former partner was dealing drugs.

Her run-ins with the law have not escaped the Crows’ attention. When Ryan tries to stop a store robbery, the criminals escape, and she gets hauled in as a suspect.

Sophie is the one to question her and she makes her low opinion of Ryan clear. It seems Sophie was the one to arrest Ryan on the drug charges. At least this time the security footage clears Ryan.

Annoyingly, Sophie and the Crows aren’t very apologetic about making a mistake. Ryan has the upper hand and takes a moment to get a jibe in—she’s been questioned about crimes she hasn’t committed more times than Alice has been arrested for the slew of murders in her wake. There’s obviously a reason why.

Sophie insists that Jacob’s sympathies for Alice are long gone and Ryan is confused. Why would Jacob be sympathetic to Alice? It’s Sophie’s turn to be confused. What reason does Ryan think the Crows have for letting Alice go?

Ryan, being a citizen of Gotham City, assumes that Alice’s whiteness is why she’s been given leeway, but Sophie’s slip-up gives her the impetus to do some research. She lands up at Mary’s clinic, certain that Alice is actually Beth Kane, which is why she’s still terrorizing the city. Ryan is smart and kicks ass!

Which brings us to the Mouse problem. His body is riddled with bat-bites and it turns out that Ryan is quite scared of bats. This is going to be amusing.

Batwoman Season 2 Episode 2 – The Bat-Fans

Alice is obviously planning to attack a large group of Gothamites—but where would they be gathering in Batwoman Season 2 Episode 2? How about at a protest to see Batwoman that is being staged outside Crows HQ?

With no other method to disperse the crowd, Team-Batwoman realises that Ryan has to suit up. She does and brings some hope to the Bat-fans, though some of them notice that the hero looks different.

Unfortunately, the fans are so happy to see Batwoman, they refuse to disperse. And then Alice turns up. Ryan fights Alice, and holds her own against the villain, but Alice manages to activate a device that calls the bats to the crowd.

Ryan plans to kill Alice as revenge for her mother’s death, but with so many bats attacking, she has no choice but to let Alice go. With Luke’s help, Ryan finds the device that’s controlling the bats and she lures them away from the people.

There isn’t any area where the bats can be trapped safely, so Ryan manages to get them into an empty Crows bus—sweet revenge—and blows the bus up. A young girl sees Ryan and thanks her. Ryan insists she isn’t Batwoman but to that girl, she is. Who’s cutting onions here?

In the meantime, people have been infected with the toxin from the bats. Mary needs to figure out an antidote, but she may not have to. Alice hands her the antidote in her clinic. Why?

Mary is rightly suspicious. Alice killed her mother using this toxin. How can she trust this ‘antidote’ from Alice? But Alice insists that she doesn’t have any tricks up her sleeve.

It takes a while, but Mary believes her, not because Alice is a better person now but because it seems that Alice misses Kate as much as Mary does.

For all Alice’s whining about not being able to kill Kate herself, part of her still loved her twin and mourns her. Maybe that explains the symbolism of her using bats for this attack.

Whatever Alice’s reason, Mary takes the antidote and gets it mass-produced at her late mother’s company. With Batwoman back in Gotham, and an antidote on the way, the people of the city feel hopeful again.

Batwoman Season 2 Episode 2 – Dear Kate

The new Team-Batwoman may be taking time to bond, but Gotham City’s need for Batwoman is very obvious in Batwoman Season 2 Episode 2. Until Kate is found, Ryan is the right person for the suit. But Luke does make her promise not to kill—even if it’s someone like Alice. The Bat-suit comes with a code, after all.

As Ryan gets used to being in the Batcave, she finds Kate’s journals where she wrote her letters to Bruce. She turns to the final entry—two months before Kate’s disappearance.

In a dodgy part of Gotham, Ryan had been trying to get home to her van when she was attacked by some thugs. Of course, she had no money to give them so they decided to eliminate any witnesses. Ryan would have been a goner had Batwoman not arrived on the scene.

Ryan was completely taken by Batwoman but as the Gotham hero fought two of the baddies, a third tried to shoot her. Fortunately for Batwoman, Ryan was there to knock the gun out of the attacker’s hand and save her.

In Kate’s journal, she noted the event and wrote about how women like Ryan made her hope for the best for Gotham. Kate wasn’t far off—that same woman is now Batwoman. How wonderful that they touched each other’s lives without knowing each other?

Having read the entry, Ryan turns to an empty page and starts her own letter. “Dear Kate,” she writes. Again with the onions!

Batwoman Season 2 Episode 2 – What’s Next?

Julia and Sophie find a lead on Alice and Sophie goes alone so as to not scare Alice away. This is a bad idea but not for the reasons we think.

Sophie has the element of surprise against Alice, but she’s felled by a new villain at the end of Batwoman Season 2 Episode 2—Tatiana/ The Whisper (Leah Gibson), is a herald for Safiyah.

The only reason why Sophie and Alice are still alive by the end of this episode is because Safiyah has worse plans for them. Oh dear.

Final Thoughts – Batwoman Season 2 Episode 2 Ups the Ante

The season premiere was all kinds of exciting but Batwoman Season 2 Episode 2 brings the action and the feels.

I love how Team-Batwoman is slowly but surely coming together. Mary’s fondness for Ryan, a Batwoman who will trust her, is a great direction for the characters.

Luke’s reluctance to accept Ryan is understandable—he’s worked with Bruce Wayne, Kate, and now Ryan. This is effectively his third change in management and that is a tough ask for anyone.

I’m intrigued to finally meet Safiyah, but when that will be is yet to be determined. Alice has been a terrifying antagonist for the show—what can Safiyah do to make Gotham tremble?

The emotional stakes are high this season because Kate left an impression on so many people. Both episodes have leaned into Kate’s legacy and I love how the writers are tying Kate and Ryan’s stories together.

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This season is already shaping up to be a strong one and I can’t wait to see Batwoman’s new adventures next week.

What did you think of the Batwoman Season 2 Episode 2? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

Batwoman Season 2 is airing weekly on The CW.