***This review contains some spoilers***

Watch the SPOILER review on YouTube

Due to the COVID pandemic, “Batwoman” was forced to end its first season a bit early. Unlike the other Arrowverse shows, it managed to wrap things up fairly well and set up a great cliffhanger. However, the star of the show Ruby Rose quit during the break, forcing the show to pivot hard another direction. Unfortunately, season 2 became a bit of a mess as it tried to quickly wrap up that cliffhanger, write off the old Batwoman and introduce a new one, and try to take all the characters that were tied to Kate Kane and make their lives revolve around Ryan Wilder.

Alice using a Bruce Wayne imposter to snag her some kryptonite to kill her sister is how season 1 left off. Season 2 mostly wraps that up in the premier as the imposter is quickly discovered and our new Batwoman jumps in to help. While I felt the show had a few choices on who could be that new Batwoman and keep a personal connection to the remaining cast, they chose to introduce a brand new character. Just by taking over the cape and cowl, the rest of the team has reason to work with her, but they needed to add in some backstory about Ryan’s foster mom’s death to keep Alice as a major villain in the series. The first part of the season is basically Ryan trying to prove herself as the new Batwoman while everyone else tries to find out what happened to Kate. The execution isn’t the greatest, and a lack of a strong adversary doesn’t help matters. The Sofiyah stuff doesn’t really fit the bill. It ends up being a wild goose chase for Kate, and majorly retcons Alice’s story. And it doesn’t have the benefit of using an established Bat-villian. In fact, it feels a little like a Ra’s al Ghul rip-off. Eventually, Black Mask steps up as the main villain, and while he’s kind of just a generic mob boss with a cool mask, he an established character and puts an interesting twist on the MIA Kate Kane saga.

It doesn’t help the story sets up Alice and the main person that everything seems to revolve around. She continues to alternate between sympathetic victim and cold-blooded murder, so you never know if you want her to succeed in getting Kate back or not. Meanwhile, the Ryan character struggles to fit in. She’s already at a disadvantage because the rest of the cast is already established, but she has a pretty big chip on her shoulder and usually just ignores them. Even when they do finally accept her, she doesn’t feel the like star of the show. Her lack of experience, and the fact that we really don’t see her get a lot of superhero wins, makes her feel like a sidekick to a character that’s not around anymore. The show struggles a bit to give everyone else storylines that don’t involve Kate, but at least these story arcs help flesh them out. And a few decent characters get taken off the board all together. (Nobody every bothered to call Miss Pennyworth and let her know she was brainwashed and she can come back? And after they finally cast Bruce Wayne, we only get the first episode and a random dream sequence out of it.)

“Batwoman” was dealt a pretty crappy hand coming into its sophomore season, and trying to introduce a practically-new show while attempting to keep as much as the old one didn’t quite work. The show has doubled-down on the Batman lore, adding the Batmobile, the hero Batwing and referencing plenty of Batman’s classic villains. Now that the new Batwoman has been officially been passed the torch, the show may be able to move forward and deliver something cool.

**1/2 out of *****