***This review contains some spoilers***
Watch the SPOILER review on YouTube
“Batwoman” enters its third season with the promise of digging into Batman’s legendary rouge’s gallery, but ultimately delivers second-rate facsimiles. And while the heroes look on course to tackle one of the A-list villains as the season’s big bad, they instead give us a version of Batman’s arch-nemesis that falls well short of stepping out of his shadow.
Season two ended with the gear of Batman’s greatest foes floating down a river, and it was hinted that some of them may show up this season to reclaim their property. However, instead we got a bunch of random folks getting their hands on these trophies and becoming copycat versions of the items’ original owners. Not only were these newcomers lacking the deep history of the classic villains, but they were also each mostly taken out in just one episode. (To make things more disappointing, any hope of seeing the real rogues popup is dashed by dialog telling us they all already died at some point.) Keeping hope alive, it was revealed that the real Poison Ivy would appear at some point, and just when it looked like she arrived, we instead had Mary become a new Poison Ivy. This ended up being an interesting character development for her, but it was a little upsetting not to get the real deal. Eventually she does show up and it looks as if the team will have to take down one of Gotham’s toughest villains as the big bad for this season, but then they take her off the board and move on to Ryan’s brother. While the initial Marquis twist worked pretty well, and he had potential to make a great foe for Batwoman due to the family connection and his unpredictability, trying to turn him into Joker 2.0 never really worked.
Character-wise, Ryan finally feels like she earned the roll of Batwoman and being the leader of the Bat-team. Her family drama gave her some good material, but her mother’s quick about-face after being so cold and ruthless early on didn’t feel earned. Lucas returns with his Batwing identity, but they gave him some baggage to give him an arc where he must prove to himself that he was a hero. It never quite landed as well as it should’ve, and it took away from a potentially interesting dynamic between him and the AI of Lucius Fox. Probably the most interesting stuff was watching Mary slowly transform into a pseudo-villain. It was cool to see a darker side of her, but even after her full turn into Poison Mary, she kept just a bit too much of the old Mary in her, especially when it came time to wrap up the Ivy portion of the season. While Sophie was much more proactive with the Bat-team this season, she still doesn’t quite fit in to the groove because there’s not much to her personal life besides her relationship with Ryan. And once again, Alice is Alice as she alternates between irredeemable villain and tragic character on the verge of redemption.
The new additions to the cast aren’t anything special. Jada is intentionally unlikable and overdoes it quite a bit as she tries to take down her own estranged daughter before suddenly mellowing out. Renee Montoya seemed like a solid character choice, but she quickly turned into nothing more than a love-struck woman putting everyone in danger just for a second chance with her lover. Marquis is almost too likable when we meet him, which lessens the impact somewhat when he breaks bad. (A decent backstory and the unhinged portrayal of the character helps smooth it all over.) But he works great as an original villain and trying to shoehorn him into being a new Joker takes away a lot of what made him unique.
A slew of rip-offs of Batman’s greatest opponents is fairly dissatisfying, especially when they all get taken out too quick and easy. Attempting to turn a compelling original bad guy into a wannabe Joker ends up taking the final batch of episodes down a notch.
*** out of *****