Batwoman S01 EP17 spoiler review

Batwoman came back from its break tonight with an episode that I really enjoyed! We got a fun deep cut for the villain of the week, while also getting a few storylines pushed forward a great deal! I'm excited to talk about what went down on Sunday, so here is my review of the season's 17th episode!
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I'll start off with the Alice stuff because I'm not as into her storyline as everything else. We got a lot of her in Arkham, causing a disruption in other inmates such as Tommy Elliot who is bent on proving he is better than Bruce Wayne. We also get to see Magpie again, who I didn't peg as insane when we last saw her. Alice and Mouse are together with the latter beginning to relish being inside Arkham where it is safe and he is handed everything essentially, but Alice wants more. She previously spied that Elliot had a hidden weapon which he used on her when provoked, this lead to her stealing the weapon away and giving it to Mouse who was due for a procedure with the doctor. Things went awry though as Mouse used the weapon to kill the Doctor and subsequently take his face, placing himself as the new head of Arkham alongside Alice. Definitely no shuffling of the feet when it came to hurrying through the prison storyline, and I'm glad they at least jumped right in to make her side of the episode more interesting.

The main focus of the episode dealt with Kate struggling to put the suit back on in order to take down a lunatic called, "The Detonator," who is threatening good people like cops and doctors to save their own lives in exchange for blowing up a building somewhere in the city. I like when the show does things like this, pulling villains from the comics no matter how deep and just giving the hero someone interesting to fight. Flash has been consistent with this, and Supergirl in its early days maintained this same pattern. I know the villain of the week stuff isn't everyone's preference, but I like seeing surprise characters and the variety in villains gives the heroes a chance to come up with different ways to defeat their foes!

Kate insists on going after the suspects as Kate Kane rather than Batwoman, afraid of going over the edge like she had done with Cartwright. This leads to them finding out that the original Detonator from 7 years ago is dead, meaning the one attacking people now is a brand new copycat of the original. At the same time, Sophie and Julia investigate who is behind the killing of Reggie Harris and they prime their suspect as a member of the Crows. While this portion of the episode is progressing, we get a great scene of the building Mary's clinic is in being blown up with her still inside to protect some of her non mobile patients. Since her clinic is in the building's recesses it manages to survive, though without being unscathed. Kate arrives in the aftermath to try and help, though suffers a panic attack in the same manner she has several times already, everything going red. Mary confronts her, and reveals that she knows Kate is Batwoman. She goes over how many times Kate has saved her in the past, and encourages Kate to be Batwoman again and save people, that they need it.

The turncoat Crows member uses Jacob Kane as his next victim, with Wayne towers being the next building to be dropped by the bomb. Kate suits up once again and confronts the villain in the basement of the Wayne building where the truck of bombs has been planted, and at this point he has confessed to the murder of Lucius Fox as well and is just cleaning up the trail that could lead back to him. Luke arrives with a gun, demanding an answer for why his father was killed. The Detonator reveals that he had threatened Lucius with going after his son, leading to the ultimate confrontation that ended with his unintended murder. Luke knocks out the Detonator and moves to kill the man who killed his father only for Kate to reveal that she killed Cartwright. She talks Luke down, telling him that it isn't worth it, and they escape the blast of the truck bomb which does no damage as Luke locked down the building.

Luke and Kate talk afterwards about what she had told him, and Luke says that Batman came to that turning point as well. He says that there is a reason the Joker has not been seen in 5 years...did Batman kill the Joker? Is that why Batman vanished? That one line has some major implications and I hope they are answered at some point in the show's future, cause that is some heavy facts to drop on the CW canon. Mary then arrives, seemingly officially joining the team or at least acting as an affiliate. It'll be nice to have more of her energy on the show now that she is in the know.

Like I said, it was a really good episode with some solids points of character development and pushing forward of the story! Exploring Kate's response to killing someone has been great and doing that through Luke's desire to get revenge was a perfect way to do so! Mary revealing that she knows Kate is Batwoman was an awesome scene and it was great seeing the character stand for herself like she did. The Alice stuff doesn't seem entirely pertinent right now, and with her character basically on ice it will be interesting to see how the show handles the story without their main villain. I'm looking forward to next week!