Batwoman S01 EP07 spoiler review

Batwoman is coming closer to the midseason finale of the first season, and this episode pushes forward a couple of relationships while also potentially setting up a new overarching villain for the series! Here is my review of Batwoman's 7th episode!
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We head back to the villain of the week stuff, but it seems like The Rifle is a character that the show has wholly made up. I can't find him from the comics anywhere, and with such a hugely vast Batman mythos of villains it seems odd that the show would make one up, when there are surely plenty of gun wielding foes in the comics. His task in the episode was the kill everyone involved in the construction of the gun that could pierce Batman's armor, hired by Alice herself, who is also working with someone named Safiyah who she doesn't want to hear the name of. More on that later.

The episode sees the introduction of Julia Pennyworth as her own vigilante who joins in on Batwoman's crusade, and is later revealed to have had a fling with Kate earlier in their lives. She was a fun addition to the show, and serves a very useful purpose later on; I'm excited to see how the show uses her going forward. She and Luke are already familiar with each other, so she fits in well with the duo so far; team Batwoman expanding? They're working on finding the Rifle, while Kate is also dealing with the fact that Sophie believes she is Batwoman is is going to tell people.

The episode did a lot for fleshing out more of the backstories of these two characters, as we have several flashbacks to why Sophie decided not to stand up against the military school as Kate did. It lead back to Jacob Kane telling her that the school would kick them both out, and she had to make the choice about whether or not she wanted to go through with it. It felt like a good way to make the situation more complicated and not make it just a choice that Sophie made on her own without any input. Their relationship was complicated even further later in the episode when Sophie confronts "Batwoman" while searching for the Rifle, and confesses that she would take back the choices she had made and that she can't have anything happen to Kate. Then Kate shows up, leaving the show to later reveal that it was Julia behind the mask for that scene, as it was all a ruse to fool Sophie into believing that Kate wasn't Batwoman. Kate heard the exchange between Julia and Sophie though, and knows about Sophie's feelings.

The Rifle blasts Julia in the Batwoman costume, who Kate has to save from police custody after she is captured falling out of the building, but the gun doesn't kill her as Alice removed a crucial piece from the device. She still doesn't want to harm her sister, and this is where the Rifle tells her that Safiyah doesn't want to be screwed with. In the comics Safiyah leads a group called the Many Arms of Death and I'm wondering if they will be set up as the villains for the rest of the season? The other villainous plot this episode involved Jacob Kane being way on assignment, and while it looked as though he had returned early in the episode it was actually Mouse in disguise. He convinces Catherine Hamilton that "he" might not go through with the divorce that the real Jacob has filed for, which will certainly cause some tension between Catherine and Jacob when the real Jacob comes back. Though the mention of "Jacob" being in the headquarters will definitely clue in real Jacob that something was wrong.