Gotham Knights season 1, episode 13 recap: Night of the Owls

At the end of Gotham Knights season 1 episode 12, it was looking like a bad time for the Gotham Knights. They had been caught with the entire court dead, and it looked like they were going to be framed for those murders as well.

As this episode opens, the Knights are in police custody trying to explain everything that’s happened to them. But their explanations of secret cults using space rocks to live forever and bring murderers back from the dead to be their enforcers, and there’s a nursery rhyme about it, don’t go over well.

However, as long as the characters are telling crazy stories, the lead detective chooses this moment to reveal to Turner that his birth parents were actual world traveling assassins, who had taken a job to kill Batman. That was the assignment that resulted in their deaths.

Gotham Knights season 1, episode 13 recap – Attack of the Talons

That’s a lot of information for Turner to process, but we don’t have time to dwell on that, because Rebecca’s gang of Talons show up at the police department to kill the Gotham Knights for good. As the police watch a bunch of Talons murdering half of the police force on the security camera, they suddenly believe that the Gotham Knights’ stories are sounding plausible.

The police release the Knights from their holding cell, and they join the fight, defeating the Talons. However Carrie’s mom, who was in the police station, is stabbed by the last Talon before he is killed.

Carrie’s mother is rushed to the hospital, but Carrie can’t do anything to help there, so with her mother’s blessing, she joins the rest of the gang on a quest to save the city. It turns out that Rebecca has a plan to blow up a bunch of buildings throughout the city.

In order to do so, Rebecca needs Duela to be the fall person for Gotham to blame, so that she can get away and start her life over with Harvey. Except she doesn’t want good guy Harvey.

She wants the dark side version. So, by strapping Duela to a bomb in the hidden floor of Wayne Tower, she agrees to give over the disarm code if Harvey lets his dark version out, banking on good Harvey wanting to save the daughter he just found out about.

It turns out that Rebecca was the one who paid Duela’s mother to sell out her own daughter. And then when Duela disarms the bomb, it will send a signal to 7 other bombs in the city that will wipe out any evidence of Rebecca and place all the blame on Duela.

It’s a villain scheme that’s just complicated enough to work perfectly in a comic book TV show.

Gotham Knights season 1, episode 13 recap – Getting Duela back just to lose another Knight

The rest of the group manages to figure all of that out and decide to trust Duela to not save herself and destroy the rest of the city. Harvey decides to trust his darker half to figure out a way out of everything and calls him out.

The dark version of Harvey manages to convince Rebecca to untie him and then attacks her, getting half a face full of acid in the fight. Then the rest of the Gotham Knights show up just in time and have a scuffle with Rebecca’s guards and save Duela, while Rebecca is killed by her own son.

With the main bomb detached from the other bombs, they have to make their quick getaway before Wayne Tower blows up. As they hurry to the exit, Turner realizes that Bruce’s journals are still on the top floor and he can’t leave them there.

He separates from the group to get the journals. Just as he is about to escape Rebecca shows up, not quite dead with her henchmen and prepares to kill Turner.

Before she can, a unit of soldiers show up and kill everybody Court of Owls related and take Turner into custody. The rest of the group sees none of this, so when they watch Wayne Tower blow up, they still think Turner is inside.

The next morning, the rest of the group is mourning Turner, while also grappling with the fact that they’ve now cleared their name and don’t have to be on the run from the law anymore. They decide to continue to be crime fighters in Turner’s memory.

Meanwhile Turner, who is very much still alive, is brought to the man who trained his assassin parents as well as Batman. He tells Turner that he will now train him, setting up for a second season that we’ll never get to see.

Gotham Knights season 1, episode 13 recap – Goodbye to the Gotham Knights

After 13 episodes it seems like Gotham Knights has finally figured out what kind of show it should be. There’s a moment early in this episode where the Talons all attack the police station, and the police are helpless to stop them.

Then they decide to let a group of teenagers with minimal combat training out of jail and give them swords. Those same teenagers end up beating all of the trained mercenaries.

It’s a scene that fits right into the show that Gotham Knights has ended up being. Over 13 episodes the show has gone from boring to fun.

It may not have made it all the way to good, but it was still an enjoyable hour of television for the last few episodes and was silly yet charming enough that it would have been nice to see where a second season went. Still, it’s not a big surprise that the show was canceled.

The series never seemed to get enough ratings to justify a second season, so while it will join the long list of shows to end on a cliffhanger, never to be finished, that always felt like a strong possibility of where this show was going to end up. Still Gotham Knights was a ride, and maybe the third time they try to make a TV series about Batman’s offspring, it will be the one to make it to season two.

What did you think of Gotham Knights season 1? Are you sad to see it canceled?

Let us know in the comments below!

You can watch Gotham Knights season 1 on The CW.