Batwoman boss Caroline Dries explains the latest Crisis-inspired twist

Warning: This article contains spoilers about Sunday's Batwoman episode, "A Secret Kept From All the Rest."

Batwoman's latest episode revealed that the key to killing Batwoman is something familiar but also foreign.

The ongoing drama over Lucius Fox's journal continued in Sunday's installment, which saw Alice (Rachel Skarsten), Mouse (Sam Littlefield), and Hush (Gabriel Mann) kidnap Julia (Christina Wolfe) and Luke (Camrus Johnson) because they needed the latter to decode his father's ledger. In order to save her friends' lives, Kate (Ruby Rose) gave Lucius' journal-translating glasses to Alice. Thus, at the end of the hour, Alice finally read the journal and discovered that Kryptonite — yes, the glowing green rock that's lethal to Supergirl and other Kryptonians — is the only thing that can pierce the Batsuit.

Meanwhile, Julia revealed to Kate the real reason she wanted Lucius' journal: She promised to give it to Safiyah Sohail — the oft-mentioned-but-never-seen baddie who hired the Rifle to kill Batwoman earlier this season and whom Alice is hiding from — if she agreed to stop targeting Kate. In the pages of DC comics, Safiyah is connected to the terrorist organization called the Many Arms of Death, and you can expect her to play a bigger role in the CW drama's second season.

Below, EW chats with Batwoman showrunner Caroline Dries about both of these major reveals, Julia and Sophie's relationship status, and what's in store in next week's season finale.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How did you land on Kryptonite being the key to killing Batwoman?

CAROLINE DRIES: I’ve talked about this before, but the only way I was really comfortable in doing the ["Crisis on Infinite Earths"] crossover was if we could find ways to keep our world still feeling really grounded. One of the most wonderful aspects of the crossover was the Kate Kane-Kara Danvers friendship. Part of that storyline was centered around this piece of Kryptonite, and it just kind of represented this bond between them; it was just so much bigger than alien mineral [because] it represented trust and a rhyme to Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent’s relationship from the comics. So, I wanted to keep that in our world. Even though it’s an alien rock, we have introduced it on our show.

It was just something [where I thought], we’ve seen high tech stuff — like we’ve talked about a rail gun and a coil accelerator — but is there something that actually could pierce the suit that is not just some weird piece of technology that somebody else could recreate? Is there something unique? So I was like, “Yes, Kryptonite!” There are very few [rocks] in our ether.

So it's a way for you to incorporate weirder elements from the shared universe while using Batwoman's language?

Exactly. I sort of didn’t want to do the crossover, which was so successful, and just pretend like that didn’t happen. What happened was that this relationship came out of it and that’s what we can glob onto.

Does this mean we might get a Supergirl cameo in the finale?

I would love that [laughs], but yeah, I’m not going to make any promises about that. It doesn’t happen.

This episode also revealed that Julia was planning Safiyah mention is setting up season 2?

Yes, she’s somebody we’re teeing up for season 2. My philosophy is that it’s helpful to bring in somebody other characters are scared of and before you meet them, you set the table for how scary they are. She’s definitely somebody I’m looking forward to introducing and writing about.

I’ll admit, I thought Julia was calling Alfred.

Yeah, people were guessing Alfred. People were guessing Bruce. It’s Safiyah.

Julia and Sophie finally kissed in this episode, too. What made them a good pairing?

We wanted to continue to show the next chapter of Sophie’s journey as an out lesbian. So, we’re kind of showing it in steps: “I’m in the closet and have this unrequited love, and then I get comfortable enough to tell my mom and even though she rejects me, I’ve kind of gotten over that hurdle. Now, I’m ready to navigate my love story in the real world openly.” It made sense that in the heat of the high stakes and life and death of it all that Julia, who’s by her side and who’s bisexual, is somebody that Sophie would naturally gravitate towards because they’ve been thrown together. Besides charming, Julia is just capable and she’s very easygoing and chill, and I think that Sophie, who’s so regimented and a little bit more restrained, needs somebody like that to pull out her comfort.

Where is this couple going in the finale?

Their story is a little truncated because we had to stop production early. We do see the tee-up of hopeful things to come in season 2 between them, but based on all the other drama happening in the episode, we get the sense that this is probably going to be a little bit of a rocky start next season.

The logline for the finale teases the return of one of Gotham's "former heroes." Is this someone we’ve met before, or someone new?

It’s not Bruce Wayne, I’m sorry to say [laughs]. This is sort of our sports episode. The hero is somebody we, the writers, have created who is meant to draw out and help dramatize the relationship between Kate and her father, which is one of the core relationships of our show obviously but one we haven’t dealt with in a while. As the pilot was really about Kate and Jacob, this feels like a great finale because it rhymes how far Kate’s come [since] the pilot and how far she still needs to go with that relationship.

Yeah, because at the end of this episode, Jacob threatened Batwoman with war.

[Laughs] Yes, war is not a gentle word to throw around. It’s going to be tense.

Episode 20 wasn't supposed to be the finale, but it is now because of the shutdown. How do you feel about this being how season 1 ends?

We’re lucky because we tried to write where every episode has a lot of emotion and character journey within them, and we also try to end things with cool cliffhangers. This finale has the coolest cliffhanger possible and it really tees up season 2 in an amazing way. Yes, I’m totally bummed — obviously because who wouldn’t be? — because we already had two scripts written. But in terms of the creative, it’s really good and I’m really proud of it. For the circumstances, it couldn’t have worked out better.

Batwoman airs Sundays at 8 p.m. on The CW.

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