‘Batwoman’ Doesn’t Need Its Missing Batman Mystery

It’s clear from the premiere of The CW’s Batwoman that the channel has another superhero hit on its hands. Ruby Rose is magnetic in the title role as Kate Kane/Batwoman, the supporting cast is strong, and you truly cannot do better for a setting than Gotham City. It’s iconic. But there’s one problem for the long-term health of the series, and that’s the central mystery: where’s Batman?

Spoilers for the Batwoman pilot past this point.

The pilot episode takes place before Batwoman was introduced in last year’s Arrow-verse crossover, “Elseworlds.” There, Batwoman was in her comic-accurate costume, red hair a-blazing and ready to go toe-to-toe with Arrow (Stephen Amell), The Flash (Grant Gustin) and Supergirl (Melissa Benoist). It was a small appearance, but for an actor mostly known for roles on Orange is the New Black it was an impactful one for fans of the franchise.

There was one, dangling plotline that sent my alarm bells off, though, and that was the reveal that Batman — and therefore Bruce Wayne — was missing.

With the pilot setting up Batwoman’s origin, it makes sense they’d revisit this plot. Having been kicked out of the army for refusing to sign a “don’t ask, don’t tell” waver denying her homosexuality, Kate’s traveled the world and trained. So she’s missed out on Batman having disappeared from Gotham, her father Jacob Kane (Dougray Scott) installing a fascist private police force called The Crows, and things once again going to hell thanks to a mysterious villain named Alice (Rachel Skarsten).

In the episode Kate returns, quickly discovers that her cousin Bruce was Batman, and modifies his bat-suit so she can take down Alice herself. Along the way, she manages to inspire Gotham once more (they think she’s Batman), and she’s on her way to becoming the hero she’s meant to be. Hooray!

…But there’s still the overarching mystery of Batman’s mysterious disappearance. Don’t know if you’re familiar with the character — he’s been in a couple of movies, I think — but Batman would never give up without a fight, unless he was Christian Bale and wanted to relax at a café with Anne Hathaway. So is Batwoman implying that the show picks up after the end of Dark Knight Rises? Probably not, as the Arrow-verse is a different universe than the films, different producers, and generally not connected. It’s very much its own thing, which means there’s a reason Batman is gone that we just do not know about yet.

Having Batman be off-screen isn’t that different than what happened on the first season of Supergirl (which aired on CBS, before moving to The CW). There, Superman was a consistent presence in the conversation. Kara Danvers (Benoist) would constantly talk about following in her more famous cousin’s footsteps, villains from the Superman canon would show up, and occasionally there’d be conversations to the effect of “yeah, but she’s no Superman.” Part of that was the point of the show — that women need to work double or triple to measure up in a man’s world — but in the real world, it meant constant questions from fans as to when Superman would appear.

He did in Season 2 of the show, played by Tyler Hoechlin, and it was great. Rather than dominating the series, Hoechlin’s gentle, earnest performance as the Man of Steel eased the inherent tension of Superman’s absence. He effectively passed the mantle to Supergirl, allowing her — after a full season — to truly make the show her own.

There was the runoff problem that, now that Superman was established in the world of Supergirl, every time an apocalyptic threat faced National City either Superman would need to appear to help out Supergirl, or some excuse would need to be made. In fact, the show recently shunted both Superman and Lois Lane (Bitsie Tulloch) off-planet, ostensibly for plot reasons. But let’s be honest, it was so people can stop asking why Superman wasn’t showing up to help all the damn time.

That’s why it’s frustrating to watch Batwoman hit the same general notes. I realize it would have been too bold a move for them to have killed Batman off-screen to give his absence a sense of finality, particularly as that may have turned potential fans away from the show. But now, depending on how it plays out, every episode of Batwoman has the dangling question of Batman/Bruce Wayne’s absence hanging over its head.

Even more troubling, the approach seems to bake it into the premise. Unlike Superman on Supergirl, something happened to Batman. That’s a big deal, because whoever — or whatever — could take Batman off the board is a serious threat. But that threat is about Batman, not Batwoman. There’s Alice to deal with, of course, and that’s a highly personal villain for Kate — spoiler, but as we find out at the end of the episode, Alice is Kate’s long believed dead sister. But assuming we’re not going to get introduced to a bat-corpse, somewhere out there is Batman, and the show will have to eventually introduce him with the potential that he could overshadow the star of the series.

More likely, of course, is that Batwoman eventually runs the same course as Supergirl. Kate finds Batman, he’s impressed with her, and gives her his blessing to protect Gotham City. Hopefully they don’t wait a full season to get to that point. Batwoman is bold and exciting enough; let her bat-signal shine, all on its own.

Batwoman airs Sundays at 8/7c on The CW

Where to stream Batwoman