‘Batwoman’ Boss Caroline Dries Breaks Down Kate’s Dark Turn in “Off With Her Head”

Spoilers for Batwoman Season 1, Episode 15 “Off With Her Head” past this point.

It’s been headed (sorry for the pun) in this direction anyway, but this week’s episode of Batwoman went full on horror thanks to a healthy dose of Dr. Jonathan Crane’s patented fear toxin, and flashbacks to Alice’s (Rachel Skarsten) horrific youth. Thanks to an appearance by villain August Cartwright’s (John Emmet Tracy) mother, we learned the horrific truth about Alice’s dive into insanity herself, along with the revelation that Cartwright kept the severed head of Alice and Kate’s (Ruby Rose) mother in a fridge, planning on gifting her face to his own mother.

Yikes.

The episode, “Off With Her Head,” written by Natalie Abrams and directed by Holly Dale, is an epic and gruesome journey through the past; but also leads to some awful events in the present as well, as Kate — driven to rage — ends up killing Cartwright, strangling him to death. To find out more about what this means for Kate, Alice, and everyone else on Batwoman, Decider talked to the show’s EP Caroline Dries about Gotham City’s latest trip through the looking glass.

Decider: Before we get into specifics for the episode, I did want to talk about the general direction… It seems like the show is delving further and further into becoming a horror show, versus a superhero show. I was curious to get a sense from you if that’s what you’re going for and if so, why that was important.

Caroline Dries: Yeah, when I sit down with the directors for our tone meeting, one of the first things out of my mouth when I talk about the tone of the show is that I tell them that our show is an urban horror. That’s the tone of our show and that’s what has always interested me. Growing up watching Alfred Hitchcock Presents to watching Psycho and all the scary movies after that, The Exorcist, all those movies we watch growing up. That’s kind of my taste.

I had never really watched superhero movies growing up except maybe the Batmans. So there’s just an innate darkness to Gotham in the Batman lore, even Batman deciding to be a bat because he was scared of bats, him as a kid in the movies being terrified of bats. That all is scary. I’m a writer because it’s the way I deal with my fear. And being able to manifest that through an entertainment source is the gift that I’ve been given. So yeah, it’s intentional. We wanted it to be a horror, with moments of fun and love and romance and comedy.

Speaking of horror, the moment I gasped out loud watching this week’s episode was when Beth/Alice opening the fridge, and saw her mother’s head… Just to clarify, she wasn’t alive when that happened, right?

If you go back, which I’m sure nobody will, and rewatch the season, there are I think three references to Alice or Beth being in the crash with her mom, and her mom’s head bobbing in the river. And so in my mind it was a Grace Kelly situation where she was decapitated during the crash.

That makes sense… It makes me feel slightly better about it, even though it’s still horrifying when it happens.

Yes. Still tough. Yeah.

But why was an important to make this head-reveal move now and why have Alice take revenge on Cartwright’s mom, versus Cartwright himself?

When I initially pitched the season out, I knew we needed the Queen of Hearts from the Alice in Wonderland book, [she’s] the token villain in the book. And I wanted to make sure to incorporate her in our story. I would always kind of planned on seeing Alice’s manifestation of the Queen of Hearts. So it made sense to us that it was Cartwright’s mom and that there is somebody even worse than Cartwright. Because Cartwright seemed to be grounded in what he was doing, which is, I want a companion for my son who I don’t really let out in the real world. That felt as heightened as we could get him. So we needed to bring in a new threat, to be even worse.

In the present, this revelation obviously drives Kate over the edge. And whether it’s on purpose or by accident, she ends up killing Cartwright. Lots of superhero shows struggle with the “should vigilantes kill?” thing, but that hasn’t exactly been part of Batwoman so far. Why was it important to bring that theme in now, towards the end of the season?

When I was starting the show, I always knew that this was going to be a milestone in Kate’s Batwoman journey. The bat code that I think everyone is familiar with, loosely familiar with, is that Batman doesn’t kill people. And there was this assumption when I first started the show that Batwoman wouldn’t kill people, because Batman didn’t kill people. And I was like, “wait a second. I feel like Kate needs to learn that on her own.” She’s not just going to take somebody else’s code and apply it to her own life. That doesn’t make sense. She needs to go through her own journey. And so this is going to be the kickstart to her realizing what her code actually needs to be.

On the flip side of the spectrum, we get to see so much about Alice in this episode via the fear gas induced flashbacks… There’s a certain level where I almost think you can read the show as Alice is the protagonist of the series, versus Kate. How do you look at it?

I do look at it like that. I look at it like it’s a two hander in that Batman would be lesser of a hero if he didn’t have the Joker. You need the yin and the yang. And we were lucky enough that we have two women on the show who are supposed to be twins in real life, so it’s there innately in the show. Alice is just, I think of them as sort of soulmates, one soul in two bodies, really. And you need both of them for the show to have its balance.

There’s a great scene towards the end of the episode where they’re both in the alleyway drinking, and Alice says something like, “we’re going to have to get ready to bury a body.” What do you think this means for their relationship going forward? Is this Alice looking at it as well, Kate’s finally on my level?

Yes. So there’s a sort of glibness to her line, bodies don’t bury themselves, that it’s sort of like, “Oh welcome to my every day. Let me teach you, child, how this is going to work. First you grab a shovel…” And so there’s a sense of excitement from Alice’s point of view, of, “I’m pulling my sister over to my side,” which she says in Episode 10 when she kidnaps the high schooler, Parker Torres, and says to Kate, “we’re sisters, just be my sister, let’s be together.” And Kate’s like, “you don’t get it. That’s not how this works.” Alice is always wanting Kate to stop trying to save her and accept her. And the best way in Alice’s mind for Kate to accept her is to be as just as flawed as she is.

Even though Sophie isn’t actually in the episode at all, you still have that very emotionally palpable texting conversation that goes on. Is there an end point for them? I mean, I know we’re only one season in, but are they destined to have the whole Lois Lane in love with Superman, Clark Kent in love with Lois, thing? Or is it more complicated than that?

It’s more complicated than that because Sophie is on her own journey, as we saw in Episode 14, the one that just aired, where she is going along in her life at her own pace and Kate has all this other drama that she’s trying to balance. So they’re really in two different places in their life right now. And it seems like we’re teeing them up, that they’re destined to be together. I use that relationship as a beacon of hope in the show, as something we can root for because it’s some normalcy for Kate. But there’s just a lot going on in both of their lives that is going to hold them apart for a while.

We’ve seen on a lot of shows, there’s a coming out arc and then… That’s it. It just ends at that point. They come out, The End. But on Batwoman, one of the things that I’ve really appreciated and found very exciting for both Kate and Sophie is that it seems to be this constant process of coming out in different ways and dealing with what coming out means, either through the lens of Batwoman, or through Sophie talking to her mother, etc. I’m curious to get your thoughts on that as a theme of the show, and how that’ll continue to play out throughout the season.

The upside about being able to [do] shows about gay characters is that you have time to go and explore the nuance of it. And a lot of times writers will be like, “Oh this is the character who’s gay.” You know, on a different series. “This is a character who’s gay.” They have their coming out story, and then that’s it. That’s done. And that’s not how life is. You know, you’re gay. You are constantly coming out to every single person in your life, for whatever dumb reason. And it’s not just like you flipped the switch and then you’re out of the closet. There’s so much nuance to it. We were lucky enough that we have time to explore these stories, where, like, Sophie is excited cause she kissed a girl, but that girl is basically a secret from the world.

And so I thought, that’s an interesting story… I don’t know if I’ve heard that version of this story before, and it makes sense to me to play these baby steps of what the reality is. Telling her mom is one step. And then, well, can I be in a real relationship? That’s another step. I feel kind of blessed that our show is 22 episodes and that we have the time to explore these different avenues. It makes it feel more realistic to me.

On the other end, you haven’t really explored Kate’s Jewish side yet… There was the great Bat Mintz-vah pun this episode, but are we going to see Kate explore the Jewish side of herself at all going forward? I have to admit, I was a little bummed there wasn’t a Hanukkah special this year, but, there’s still time.

What would that Hanukkah special look like to you?

I… Do not know.

We’re not necessarily shying against it. It’s not even a Bat Mitzvah, but it’s most commonly known as a Bat Mitzvah, so we called it that. When we’re in situations like that, we definitely want to lean into it, but doing a sort of story where she’s leaning into her Judaism or exploring it more… We haven’t really thought about it. I’m not opposed to it, but it hasn’t — in terms of the crises she’s going through — come into the conversation.

She’s definitely a little busy with some other stuff, for sure. Switching topics, there’s also hints of a Luke/Mary relationship is potentially coming. Anything you can tease with that?

I love their dynamic together. I knew before we even put them in a room together that they would have chemistry, but we’re intentionally playing them as straight friends right now and purposely not doing any longing looks or anything that has any subtext or added layers of anything else. And that’s actually working to build them closer. It’s basically a relationship being built out of respect, and this urgency of needing to save people all the time, and both being incredibly competent people. That’s what I like, these building blocks and then naturally people are wanting them to be together as a result.

There’s always the looming idea that Batman is missing… That was something that was set up in the first episode, though most of the season has followed Kate on her journey and put that to the side. Are there any plans to return to that at any point? Maybe a la Superman showing up in the Supergirl Season 2 premiere?

Yeah, definitely we want to continue to explore that mystery in a way that is within the parameters of what DC will let us do. I’m just as interested as you are, let’s put it that way.

Got it. And last question for you, since you worked for so long on Vampire Diaries, is there any chance we’ll see a Batwoman/Legacies crossover at any point?

Oh, interesting. Tonally, we don’t quite have mysticism yet on our show and so I don’t know that… There might be a tonal clash. But maybe when we’re in Season 5 and the can of worms has been ripped wide open. Yes, I would love to.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Batwoman airs Sundays at 8/7c on The CW.

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