Sensei Starman Plays Gotham Knights - Part 55

In which our efforts to end Barbara's Knighthood quest are curtailed, so that we can save all our allies from the League of Assassins.

Sensei Starman Plays Gotham Knights - Part 54

In which we bust into Jacob Kane's bunker, only for things to go totally pear-shaped. This leads to a race across the rooftops of Gotham and a battle with a mob of ninjas.

Sensei Starman Plays Gotham Knights - Part 53

In which we infiltrate Kane Industries and the Court of Owls' seat of power.

Sensei Starman Plays Gotham Knights - Part 52

In which we hunt down the rest of the Talon caches and start doing some quality crafting.

Sensei Starman Plays Gotham Knights - Part 51

In which we start hunting for five caches of rare elements that we can use to build legendary gear. (Dammit, Bruce - would it have killed you to let your sidekicks know about this sort of thing?!?!)

Sensei Starman Plays Gotham Knights - Part 50

In this extra long episode, we thwart the Regulator effort to break Mr. Freeze out of Blackgate Prison AND bring Clayface to justice!

Sensei Starman Plays Gotham Knights - Part 49

In which our search for a missing judge ends with a fateful decision regarding bringing a new hero into the Knights' trust and we head out to Blackgate Prison to prevent an effort to break Mr. Freeze out of jail.

Batwoman Episode Guide: Season 3, Episode 10 - Toxic

For a summary of the episode guide layout & categories, click here. 

Plot

Batwoman's hands are full as she juggles Jada Jet's demands, Poison Mary's ever-increasing power and a new romantic entanglement. Loyalties are tested and motives come into question as Batwoman races against the clock to once again save Gotham City from a newly awakened Poison Ivy.


Influences

Various classic Batman comics with a villain trying to destroy a dam.


Performances

Bridget Regan is far better as Poison Ivy than this show deserves.


Artistry

The special effects work for Poison Ivy's plants is solid.

The sequence in which Ryan jumps onto a moving ambulance is fantastic.


Bat Trivia

This was the highest rated episode of Batwoman ever on IMDB, with a 7.8.


Technobabble

Gotham Dam provides power to half the industry in Gotham City and is responsible for the death of one species of fish.

Sporeling transference is the process by which Ivy was able to rejuvenate herself through Mary. Despite seemingly being a parasitic transfer of life energy, Montoya insists that Ivy really does care for Mary. This suggests a symbiotic bond, like when basil plants and tomato plants thrive together.

Renee Montoya developed a pheromone blocker that negated Poison Ivy's ability to control her. Giving this formula to Mary enables her to weaken Poison Ivy when she tries to tap Mary's energy.


Dialogue Triumphs

Ivy: That was epic. Did you rehearse that?
Mary: Ohh. I've been dealing with the horrors of the Gotham healthcare system for a while now, but I think that you just unlocked something.
Ivy: You found your calling, Doc.
Mary: I get it now. Justice, using this gift to level the playing field.
Ivy: Now the press is gonna label you a villain, they're gonna call you unhinged, use way too many puns, but if you just do what feels right, they can't stop you.
Mary: Yeah. Pam... Your nose. It's happening again.

Alice: (To Montoya) Let's cut to the chase. You are going to tell us what Pam did with Mary. Or this psycho killer is going to show you what she can do with a lemon zester.
(Alice smiles as she brandishes the tool.)
Alice: Trust me. I've done worse with less.

Batwoman: (over radio) I'm getting Mary back, but I'm gonna need help.
Sophie: Batwoman, I'm here. What do you need?
Batwoman: Tell Alice to stop drinking.
(Alice belches.)

(Alice and Ryan overhear Montoya telling Sophie it's obvious she has a crush on Ryan.)
Alice: She has a good point.
Ryan: Whatever.
Alice:"Whatever"? That's a big deal. Sophie likes you back.
Ryan: "Back"? Who said I liked Sophie?
Alice: Uh... all the girls on the playground. Come on. It's obvious. You're avoiding your feelings for Sophie, which is why you asked me to be your wheel woman and not her. You and I are the same, Batty. We pretend like we don't care, but it's only because when we get something good, we know we're gonna screw it up. 

Alice: You're a portable battery, Mary, and you're all out of charge, so listen to a Kelly Clarkson song and move on.
Mary: What are you doing here?
Ryan: Who do you think told us about Pam?
(Alice actually looks ashamed about this.)
Mary: Wow. You know... Guess you were right. Guess I am the crazy one. Says the Arkham inmate still pretending she's stuck in a children's fairy tale and a grown woman dressed like a flying rodent.
Luke: Okay. You made your point.
Mary: (gesturing at Luke and Sophie) You know what? Don't even get me started on daddy's little Robocop or the Queen of Unemployment.
Sophie: (defensive) I didn't say anything.
Mary: Yeah, but you're here, aren't you? Part of this friend-tervention or whatever this is? But if you were all actually my friends, then you'd respect my wish when I said to leave me alone! 

(Montoya has opened the cargo bay doors of the private plane she and Ivy are on.)
Ivy: What the hell am I supposed to do, jump?
Montoya: Why is that crazier than anything you've done before?
Ivy:  I'll 100% die.
Montoya: Then stay! I didn't sell you out, Pam. I negotiated a deal for your freedom. No running, no rules, but it means doing things my way for once. So what's it gonna be? 
Ivy: Close the damn door.
(Montoya does so.)
Ivy: Where are we going?
Montoya: Sophie Moore told me about an off-the-grid island where plants are worshipped and industry doesn't exist.
Ivy: Sounds like a fantasy.
Montoya: Close. It's called Coryana.

Continuity

As the episode opens, Ivy is training Mary in the use of her powers.

The man Ivy and Mary have taken captive is Harold Marlowe, CEO of Gotham United Healthcare.

Mary kills Harold, because his company denied the insurance claims of thousands of people to line his own pockets.

Ivy's nose begins dripping blood. Mary notes that it is doing it "again," suggesting this has happened at least once before. 

Ivy is able to heal herself by drawing off of Mary - a process that is painful to her but does not seem to be hurting her yet.

Alice tracks down the Bat-Team at the Hold Up and informs them that Ivy was able to reach out to Mary all the way in Metropolis.

Alice says their best chance of dealing with Ivy is to go after Renee Montoya.

Ryan asks why Alice came back to Gotham to tell them all this, since her immunity deal with Montoya is null and void, which makes her a wanted fugitive in Gotham City.

Ivy sympathizes with Mary's desire to go after the people who are ruining the health care system, revealing that her younger brother had severe asthma growing up and that he died when he was 12. Her interest in plants was fueled by her mother's search for herbal remedies since they didn't have the money to get him medicine.

Later, Ivy learned that her brother's asthma was caused by tainted water from the factory up the hill from their home.

Ryan catches Montoya as she's trying to skip town on an airplane.

Luke calls Sophie in to help. Ryan says this is fine, but she's clearly still upset at Sophie.

Luke reports that the Bat-Signal is lit.

Ryan investigates the signal and finds Jada Jet is there. 

Jada reveals that she has Joker's joy buzzer and demands that Batwoman hand over Marquis immediately.

Batwoman asks to get take the joy buzzer and get it repaired first. Jada agrees, but says she wants Marquis back by midnight or there will hell to pay.

Ivy asks Mary to help her with her plan to destroy Gotham Dam.

Mary says she would like to help and thinks she owes Ivy, but that she doesn't need the heat that comes with having destroyed half the city.

Ivy says she respects Mary's wishes and can go it alone without her... after draining her strength one more time.

Mary is found unconscious by some of the dam workers.

Sophie realizes that Ryan didn't tell Luke about her kissing her in 309.

Gotham Dam is revealed to be 18 miles east of the city.

Route 99 runs west to east from Gotham Dam to Gotham City.

Ryan takes Alice with her in the Batmobile instead of Sophie to help her stop the ambulance carrying Mary.

Ryan and Alice overhear Montoya and Sophie talking about their one night stand from 307.

Montoya says that it's clear that Sophie only slept with her because her first choice wasn't available and it's pretty clear Sophie has a crush on Ryan because Sophie spent most of their night together talking about Ryan.

Alice tells Ryan that it's clear she also has a thing for Sophie, because there's no other reason Ryan would ask Alice to come with her on a mission instead of Sophie unless there was something going on with Sophie she was trying to avoid dealing with right now.

Ryan jumps onto the ambulance to get them to stop.

Alice tells Ryan about the hunter that Mary killed in 309.

Montoya recognizes the symptoms Mary is undergoing, which include blood in her nose and ears.

Montoya tells the team that Ivy is going to destroy the Gotham Dam, which was her plan 10 years ago before Batman and Montoya stopped her.

Montoya says they will need Mary's cooperation to stop Ivy at this point.

Mary is told that she killed an innocent hunter, but she doesn't believe Ryan.

Mary still agrees to help stop Ivy because she doesn't want innocent people to get hurt.

Montoya comes up with a plan to use Mary as a Trojan Horse to weaken Poison Ivy. This will also likely break Ivy's control of Mary, assuming it doesn't kill her first.

Luke goes to the damn and uses the Batwing suit to take control of the dam's systems that Poison Ivy hacked. 

Ryan is able to beat Poison Ivy in a fight after Mary weakens her.

Mary is said to have brown eyes once Poison Ivy's control is broken.

Everyone on Team Bat apologizes for taking Mary for granted.

Mary feels guilty because she killed someone, but everyone insists that it was Poison Ivy who did it, not her.

Ryan tells Alice that she figured out that she came back to Gotham because she honestly cares about Mary.

Alice says she still isn't going to help Alice cut a deal for her freedom.

Alice reminds Ryan that she was so busy dealing with Poiosn Ivy that she missed Jada Jet's deadline.

Montoya negotiated a deal for Poison Ivy's freedom and takes her to the island of Coryana. 

Luke is said to be working on repairing the joy buzzer but Jada isn't answering her phone.

Ryan says that Sophie kissing her did not get her out of her head. It's just making her think about them kissing more.

Jada Jet is revealed to be on TV, calling a press conference revealing the existence of the Bat-Trophies to the public and blaming Batwoman for their release.

It is revealed that while Luke was able to stop the dam from breaking, there was still some mass flooding throughout the city, including the area where Mary's clinic was located.

The last shot of the episode shows water leaking into Mary's lab and dripping onto Marquis' body.


Location

A cargo plane somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean.


The Killing Jokes

It should be noted that, once again, all the heroic action in the episode is facilitated by Alice and Montoya with Team Bat being stuck in a supporting role in what is nominally their show.

It should also be noted that Team Bat, after promising to take Mary more seriously, continue to treat her with kid gloves and insist that she's this pure-hearted innocent even as she tries to cope with the revelation that she killed at least one man. (Probably two if you include the insurance company CEO.)


The Bottom Line

One of the best episode's of the series to date, with some great effects and stunt sequences. Had this been the season finale and ended five minutes sooner, it would be perfect. Unfortunately, we have to get that twist about Jada Jet being the real big bad and Marquis escaping for more new Joker shenanigans. . 

Batwoman Episode Guide: Season 3, Episode 9 - Meet Your Maker

For a summary of the episode guide layout & categories, click here. 

Plot

With multiple signs pointing to the original Poison Ivy having awoken, Ryan, Luke and Sophie begin trying to track her down, while Montoya attempts to reach whatever remains of the woman she loved. Meanwhile, Mary's behavior begins to unnerve Alice, as Jada Jet seeks out an old friend's help in saving Marquis.


Influences

Every horror movie where the idiot protagonists are trapped in a cabin in the woods and A Quiet Place (trying to avoid triggering killer plants tracking sounds).


Performances

Again, Nicole Kang and Rachel Skarsten steal the show.


Artistry

The special effects for the killer plants are interesting.


Bat Trivia

The lake where Poison Ivy kills two fishermen is called Loeb Lake. This is likely in honor of legendary Batman writer Jeph Loeb, who wrote Hush and The Long Halloween.


Technobabble

Luke creates special darts for fighting Poison Ivy that combine a paralytic drug and a herbicide. He's certain this will slow her down without killing her until they can recreate Batman's desiccation formula.

All the psychologists Jada Jet consulted with believe a second jolt of the Joker's joy buzzer will reawaken Marquis' sense of empathy.

Natural networking is where plants communicate through acoustics in the ground.

Poison Ivy describes the cutting of her vine that Batman kept as a sporeling, which she created to recharge her, like a battery without a plug. She says that meeting Mary will restore her.

Luke describes Diggle's box as a transmatter cube and guesses it isn't from Earth. Diggle confirms this, but asks him to keep that quiet.


Dialogue Triumphs

Poison Ivy: What were you thinking would happen when you freed me?
Montoya: I wasn't. I got wrapped up in the moment, seeing you, the white tulip, the memories, the guilt.
Poison Ivy: Ah. I'm so sorry that you had to feel guilt, Renee, while I rotted for a decade with no water, no sunlight, no soul mate. Must have been really awful for you.
Montoya: I am sorry, Pam.
Poison Ivy: How am I supposed to believe that? I needed you... more than anything, and you're the one that put me there. 

(Mary is trying to go off on her own because of Ivy's efforts to reach her.)
Alice: Stop! I am supposed to be the crazy one!
Mary: You're not the one with a bitch of a migraine that only seems to stop bitching when I go... this way!
Alice: If you go that way, you'll probably die! The O.G.'s back? She's trying to draw you to her. Why?
Mary: Uh, do I look like the president of the Poison Ivy fan club?
Alice: I don't know, but I do know that a world with two of a kind never ends well. Why don't you ask poor, boring Beth Kane? Oh, that's right. You can't because she's dead! 
Mary: Okay. Then that's why I've been feeling this way? Clearly... w-w-we have some sort of bond, and she's calling out to me. Give me the keys.
Alice: Were you not listening to anything I said?
Mary: I'm going, Alice. This is the woman who unlocked my prowess and the reason why I'm finally happy. The least I can do is go and see what she wants. Please.
Alice: Fine. Let's go meet your maker. 

Mary: Why do we work, Alice? You killed my mom, I replaced you in our family, but... here we are on this crazy adventure together. Hmm? Why?
Alice: Probably because you made me drive out to "deliverance" country.
Mary: It's because despite all of our baggage, we both found the sister we always wanted. I see the girl who... just craves her freedom, and I love that you support me to do what I want... And this is what I want.
Alice: (sighs) Okay. 

Dialogue Disasters

(Sophie watches Luke working out, shirtless, in the middle of their new lair.)
Sophie: Pretty sure in the real world this would be an HR violation of appropriate workplace behavior. Luke: Good thing it's not the real world.


Continuity

In the opening scene, Poison Ivy attacks several fishermen at Loeb Lake, to Montoya's disappointment.

Poison Ivy declares that submerging herself in water is not restoring her strength, like she thought it would.

Ryan visits her adoptive mother's grave, which notes she died in 2015.

Cora Lewis worked three jobs and volunteered at her church while raising Ryan.

Sophie spars with Luke, who seems more determined than ever to get in shape and become a good fighter. She guesses this has something to do with his being man-handled by Marquis Jet in 308.

John Diggle appears for the first time since S612, though it is believed his last chronological appearance in the Arrowverse was in F716. In either case, he has started growing a beard since his last appearance.

John Diggle oversaw Jada Jet's personal security detail at some point when her husband was still alive and they remained friends after.

John Diggle is also implied to be an old flame of Jada Jet, as he tells her he got back together with his wife and had kids and she seems disappointed.

Sunlight is also not restoring Poison Ivy's strength.

Ryan is still angry at Sophie for sleeping with Montoya and refuses to talk to her directly.

Team Bat presume Poison Ivy is active again based on reports of the two dead fishermen at Loeb Lake, an unnatural hornet attack at a pesticide factory and an oil rig being tipped over. All of these attacks were within a two mile radius of a national park outside Gotham City.

Jada offers Diggle a job as head of her security detail. He turns it down, saying that he only agreed to meet with her because he just happened to be in Gotham City attending to other business. 

Diggle agrees to help Jada find Joker's joy buzzer, which she believes might be able to cure Marquis. He suggests, given all the other Batman villain weapons on the street, that all of them were part of a collection, which means the joy buzzer might be out on the street as well.

Diggle says his sources at ARGUS thought Renee Montoya, who works for the Mayor's Offices' Rogue Unit, would be worth consulting about the possibility of a Bat-villain weapons cache.

Poison Ivy reaches out through the plants to send a message to Mary, bringing them together.

Alice tries to talk Mary into leaving Gotham with her to go to Santorini.

Mary describes the sensation of being summoned by Ivy as feeling like brain-freeze when you eat something cold too quickly.

Ryan, Sophie and Luke's van is attacked by vines shortly after they get to the national park.

A random hunter dies after trying to warn Ryan, Sophie and Luke away. They hide in a cabin.

Luke blames himself for the team's current predicament and says it's clear his father didn't give him the Batwing suit because he isn't meant to be a hero.

Ryan says that real heroes screw up all the time and keep going, pointing out that Sophie allowed Alice and Poison Ivy to escape on her watch. Sophie sarcastically agrees, pointing out that for all of Ryan's alleged detective skills, she didn't realize Mary was possessed by Poison Ivy until it was too late.

Poison Ivy confronts Montoya on how Batwoman and her allies seemed to know how to find her. Montoya admits to working with them, but says Ryan is different from Batman. Ivy refuses to believe her and goes off to kill Batwoman.

Jada Jet knows how to pick locks and apparently learned the skill while living on the street in her youth.

Diggle and Jada find Montoya's list of the missing Bat Villain weapons.

Alice makes reference to the Beth Kane doppelganger from 112.

Alice agrees to help Mary find Poison Ivy, but Mary knocks her out so she can go on her own.

Sophie and Ryan continue to argue, but Ryan does thank Sophie for grabbing the Batsuit out of their van before it was destroyed.

Sophie asks Ryan why she's always held a grudge against her and says it goes beyond her treating Ryan badly when she was a convict.

Luke is able to kill the vines that come into the cabin with a mixture of salt and vinegar.

Ryan puts on her Batsuit and makes for a truck they saw earlier that had a bag of salt in the bed.

Diggle and Jada steal he booze out of Montoya's mini-fridge.

Jada has no idea how Ryan tracked her down.

Jada finds Joker's joy buzzer in Montoya's desk.

Montoya tries to kill Mary.

Luke saves a boy, whose father was the hunter killed by Ivy earlier in the episode.

Luke visits his father's grave. He also died in 2015.

Luke tells his father that he thinks he is ready to be a hero now.

John Diggle meets Luke as his father's grave and says he is sure his dad is proud of him.

Luke returns a box to Diggle and says he couldn't get it open. This is the box Diggle found in a smoking crater in A810.

Diggle says ARGUS couldn't get the box open either, but it opened for him once before.

Luke guesses that whatever makes the box open isn't based on science.

Diggle asks Luke for one more favor - passing on a message to Batwoman from Jada Jet, that she found her fix.

Alice finds Mary's phone and a man's corpse impaled on a tree.

Montoya built up an immunity to Poison Ivy's pheromones by poisoning herself a little each day.

Mary finds Ivy. The two hug and Ivy is rejuvenated.

Sophie kisses Ryan.


Location

A national park outside Gotham City.


The Killing Jokes

Granting that they're somewhat desperate, Team Bat going into a national park hunting a villain who manipulates nature with an untested weapon seems incredibly stupid, even for these heroes.


The Bottom Line

Painfully bad. The "heroes" continue to be as unsympathetic as they are idiotic and the only thing marking the villains as villains is random, unmotivated murders. Not even John Diggle and the promise of his Green Lantern storyline being resolved can make this episode worth watching more than once.

Batwoman Episode Guide: Season 3, Episode 8 - Trust Destiny

For a summary of the episode guide layout & categories, click here. 

Plot

As Alice and Mary go on the lamb and begin to bond, Ryan, Sophie and Luke become more desperate to catch them. Unfortunately, their resources are limited having been locked out of the Batcave. Thankfully, Renee Montoya has an idea that may help end the threat of Poison Ivy and her control over Mary once and for all. Unfortunately, it requires they infiltrate a party Marquis Jett is throwing in Wayne Tower to celebrate his ascension. 


Influences

The Batman comics of Grant Morrison


Goofs

The writers seem to forget that Alice and Mary are established as being in Metropolis in their first scene, given how easily Mary gets back to Gotham and how quickly Sophie finds the hotel Alice is staying in. While Gotham and Metropolis are fairly close together in the comics universe, Gotham City in the Arrowverse was previously established as being closer to Chicago than New York City. (Then again, this point has been inconsistent, depending on the show, and Superman and Lois has Metropolis being in the same football league as Smallville, Kansas.)


Performances

Once again, the interaction between Nicole Kang and Rachel Skarsten is the high-point of the episode.

Bridget Regan gives a powerful performance as Poison Ivy.


Artistry

The card-themed background for Marquis' party is memorably eye-catching.

Bat Trivia

The original title of this episode was True Destiny.

As Poison Ivy notes, in the language of flowers, white tulips are given as an apology as they symbolize forgieness.

The acrobats at Marquis' party wear Harlequin masks. Coupled with the black and red card decorations, this seems to be a nod to Harley Quinn.

Marquis questions Luke as to whether or not his costume has a portal access point. In the comics, the Batwing suit does have such a function. 


Technobabble

Montoya explains that Batman created a desiccation serum that mimicked the process a plant undergoes when it is denied water and sunlight to disable Poison Ivy. He also created a special device to inject the serum, which is coded to it in such a way that it can also be used to extract the serum.

After Marquis Jet upgrades Wayne Tower's security, the executive elevators in Wayne Tower require a thumb scan to operate. Accessing the CEO's office in Wayne Tower requires a retina scan.

Luke outfits Ryan's mask for the party with ocular mesh scanners from the Batsuit.


Dialogue Triumphs

(Mary has just discovered her credit cards don't work.)
Mary: Did the Bat bitches cut me off?
Alice: All your fancy degrees, and you didn't see that coming?
Mary: I thought we were past this. I mean, one would think that nearly vine-squeezing the life out of your bestie and then crushing the only cure for you in existence was a pretty good indicator that it was time to move on from the friendship. Anyone else find it ironic that when I beg Ryan and Luke for their attention they're too busy with their own drama, but then when I finally step away for some much-needed me time, Mary Hamilton is the coveted Batmission of the week?
Alice: If this is a lecture on being Batwoman's most wanted, trust me, I already took the exam.

Ivy: Are you coming with me or not?
Montoya: Not if you go where I can't follow you. Stay here. Stay the... Quirky, brilliant scientist who loves reading and baseball that I fell in love with a decade ago.
Ivy: She's gone. She's blossomed into someone who can stand up for herself and, more importantly, for those things that can't. 

(Mary downs a flute of champenge. Alice emerges from the bedroom of their suite.)
Alice: I've been in the bedroom trying to finagle my way out of Sophie's handcuffs, and you've been in here drinking all the Dom?
Mary: (distant) Ryan had me beat. She was about to inject me with something, and then she hesitated. Whatever she was about to do to me scared her.
Alice: Don't tell you're getting the conscience tingles.
Mary: Before I even knew what was happening, she used the syringe on Marquis. I don't know if it was to save Luke or protect her secret. But all I know is in that moment, I was the least of her problems.
Alice: She still underestimates you.
Mary: I know it's silly, but a part of me just wanted her to see me as powerful.
Alice: Do you know all those looney tune delusions I've been having? Postcards from Dad, imaginary friends, walking in on Sophie in the shower?
Mary: That last one happened.
Alice: (blinks) Oh. Anyway, since your whole Poison Mary metamorphosis, I have yet to have a single delusional thought, which means baby-sitting you, my dear, has made me less of a crazy person, and if that's not powerful, I don't know what is.
(The two hug.)


Continuity

In 2011, Renee Montya was still a GCPD beat cop, whose partner was killed by Poison Ivy because she couldn't bring herself to shoot her.

Alice and Mary rack up an $8000 bill at a Metropolis hotel and are unable to pay for it, thanks to Luke cutting off Mary's credit cards. Thankfully, Mary's "Ivy" powers allow her to pacify the hotel manager.

Montoya recalls meeting with Pamela Isley and begging her to give up being Poison Ivy after her partner died. She refused, saying she was no longer the quirky scientist who liked reading and baseball that she fell for 10 years earlier.

Ryan identifies the rancid smell in the temporary Batcave as a dead rat in the wall.

Montoya says the only way she think of stopping Mary is to use the formula Batman developed to incapacitate Poison Ivy. She has the device Batman used to dispense the formula, but the only dose of it is still in Ivy. This means that, in order to replicate the formula, they have to find Poison Ivy's body.

Everybody except Ryan votes to go with Montoya's plan

Luke says their best bet to finding Ivy's resting place is consulting Bruce Wayne's Batman journals, which are located in the Batcave.

Montoya became a GCPD Detective in 2013.

Montoya did not know that Bruce Wayne was Batman.

Marquis calls Ryan to thank her for trying to freeze him instead of having him sent to Arkham. During the call, it is made apparent that he's planning a party. This leads Ryan to suggest crashing it as part of Montoya's plan.

Luke's cover identity for the party is Spencer Glad, a former Olympic athlete rumored to be the next owner of the Gotham Knights.

Sophie's cover identity for th party is Cecilia Langley, a world traveler and heiress to a whiskey fortune.

Ryan's cover identity is Penelope Devereaux, who runs a board game empire and is French.

All these cover identities are real people, whom Luke was able to uninvite from the party.

Each person attending Marquis' party is given a playing card as part of a game. Marquis calls each guest up by picking a card, and electrocutes everyone who gives the wrong answers to the questions he asks.

Luke swipes a SIM card from one of the workers' tablets and Sophie gets Marquis' thumbprint from a glass.  This leaves it to Ryan to meet him, face to face, to scan his retinal pattern with her mask.

Montoya confirms that all the Batman trophies, except for Joker's joy-buzzer, have been accounted for.

Montoya, Sophie and Ryan enter the Batcave while Luke stands watch.

Mary attends the party and flirts with Marquis.

Montoya first contacted Batman for help with Poison Ivy in early June 2011.

Montoya recalls how she met with Poison Ivy, pretending to want to join her, so that she could inject her with the desiccation solution. 

Ryan figures out, based on Bruce Wayne's journal where he discussed needing to bury Poison Ivy somewhere no one would look for her but where he could get to her if needed, that he must have buried her in the deepest part of the Batcave and that's why there's a tree in the middle of it.

Gotham City has rain 300 days out of the year.

Sophie gets a credit card fraud alert on her phone as they search for Poison Ivy. It does not occur to her until later that her card was stolen and she realizes it must have been taken by Alice.

Ryan recovers the Batsuit and uses it to track Poison Ivy's heartbeat.

Luke spots Mary at the part and tries to confront her.

Mary tells Marquis that Ryan is Batwoman and Luke is Batwing.

Once the serum is extracted, Ryan returns to the party to inject it into Mary.

Sophie leaves Montoya with Poison Ivy when she realizes that Alice has her credit card. 

Alice tells Sophie that she needed to get her alone and reveals that Montoya has been manipulating them all from the beginning. For proof, she tells her to check out Montoya's office and check the second drawer down in her left filing cabinet.

Ryan confronts Mary, but is forced to let her go after Marquis takes Luke hostage.

Ryan uses the desiccation weapon to take down Marquis as Mary makes her escape.

Montoya apologizes to Poison Ivy's body for betraying her. A white tulip blooms near her, revealing that she can hear Montoya on some level.

Sophie breaks into Montoya's office and searches the drawer Alice told her to look at. She discovers the Joker's joy-buzzer.

Luke and Ryan set Marquis up on life-support in Mary's clinic.

Ryan calls Jada Jet as Batwoman and tells her that she has her son, safe.

Sophie calls Ryan and tells her that Montoya manipulated them to find Poison Ivy's body so she could being her back.


Location.

A hotel in Metropolis
.
The flashbacks show Renee Montoya and Pamela Isley ten years earlier (i.e. 2011) 


Untelevised Adventures

Batman stopped Poison Ivy from destroying the Gotham City Dam in June 2011.


The Fridge Factor

Luke accidentally reveals Bruce Wayne's secret identity to Montoya by discussing his Batman journals in front of her.

Again, it must be noted that Sophie is not a very good detective and that she had no idea Alice stole her credit card until Alice intentionally used it to try and get Sophie's attention. She also left a handcuffed Alice unattended and somehow didn't guess that she'd try to escape or would be capable of escaping. 


The Bottom Line

An underwhelming episode that can't be bothered to keep track of what city half its cast are in. A bigger problem is that Marquis' status as "the new Joker" is completely unearned and distracts away from the far more interesting Poison Mary and the idea of Montoya as the true criminal mastermind of the season.

Batwoman Episode Guide: Season 3, Episode 7 - Pick Your Poison

 For a summary of the episode guide layout & categories, click here. 

Plot

As Ryan's family dynamic grows even more complicated, Alice hits the road with an unexpected new partner in crime - a Poison Ivy possessed Mary!

Influences

The Batman comics of Grant Morrison (Black Glove society)


Performances

Again, Nicole Kang and Rachel Skarsten playing off each other is the highlight of the episode.


Artistry

The Poison Ivy costume and make-up is respectable. 


Bat Trivia

While discussing the blood sample Ryan gave them, Jade Jett's scientist employee makes reference to Swamp Thing. This is the first indication that Swamp Thing exists on Earth-Prime in the Arrowverse following Crisis on Infinite Earths.

The only other reference to Swamp Thing in the pre-Crisis Arrowverse was an AR Easter egg tied to the show Constantine, where fans who called the number on John Constantine's business card would hear a voice mail greeting advising them to "try the bloody swamp" if they had called looking for Alec Holland.

Mary uses the name Daphne as an alias. In classic Greek mythology, Daphne was a nymph whom Apollo pursued against her wishes. Her father, a river god, transformed her into a laurel tree to protect her. Apollo made himself a crown of her leaves.


Technobabble

The Poison Ivy infection is said to double in strength every 12 hours.

The perimeter on Alice's tracker nanobots is 15 miles.

Alice's blood type is O negative. This makes her a universal donor, but she can only accept blood from another O negative person.

According to Luke, blood cells can live outside the body for up to 4-6 hours.

The tracker nanites die along with the blood cells they inhabit.


Dialogue Triumphs

Mary: Why are we in a motor home?
Alice: Oh. Because we wrecked our super-sexy sports car fleeing the GCPD.
Mary: Alice, what did you do?
Alice: Actually, it's not what I did but, uh, if you don't remember, it's probably for the best.

(Mary learns about how she hurt Ryan and Mary as Ivy.)
Mary: Oh god... I'm gonna be sick!
Alice: Oh. Well, you're in luck. Our new ride has a toilet!
(Mary is heard gagging from the bathroom.)
Alice: Trust me, sister. It's nicer than the one in Arkham.

(Alice offers to keep Mary safe in exchange for a blood transfusion.)
Mary: What's your type?
Alice: Tall, dark and brooding.
Mary: Your BLOOD type.

(Ryan is annoyed that Sophie slept with Montoya.)
Sophie: Didn't realize I needed your permission.
Ryan: To sleep with the woman blackmailing me, threatening me with prison? No. Of course not. I am so happy you two found each other. 

Batwoman: Luke, I need a direction. I'm all dressed up with nowhere to go.
Luke: Uh, good news, bad news?
Batwoman: Bad news first.
Luke: OK. Mary hasn't used her credit cards and shockingly hasn't posted on Insta, so I don't have a bearing to give you, and we only have 42 minutes until sunrise.
Batwoman: OK. You better hit me with the good news.
Luke: 19 of our trackers are offline, so we're down to 4.
Batwoman: That's the good news?
Luke: I didn't say it was that good.

Alice: I hope this goes better than my last transfusion. Nocturna? You were there.
Mary: Right. You mean when you saved your own skin by siccing that off-brand vampire onto moi by luring her with the fact that I had Desert Rose in my blood, which was only there because you gave my mom the choice between her or me with only one cure between us? Yeah, I remember.
Alice: We've come a long way, haven't we?
Mary: Hmm. You know, for so long, all I wanted was for you to be out of my life. I should just stick an embolism in your IV and finally just be done with you.
Alice: (laughing nervously) Ahem. Heh heh. Or, uh, option "b," You could finish my oil change, and you will never have to see me again.
Mary: Actually, that's what I'm afraid of. Hard to believe, right?
Alice: You don't want to be alone. I know the feeling. But you won't be. I'm gonna stay with you through this whole Mary metamorphosis.
Mary: You'd be a lot easier to trust if you weren't a serial killer.
Alice: A serial killer who hasn't left you, doubted you, or ignored you. Do you really want to be alone right now, or do you want help from the only family you have left? 

Continuity

Ryan meets Marquis Jet for a secret meeting. However, this turns out to be a ruse to allow the Black Glove Society to capture Marquis while his guard is down.

Ryan set up Marquis in order to get a favor from Jada.

The favor turns out to be using Mary's blood sample to develop an antidote that will purge Poison Ivy's control spores from her system. 

Vesper Fairchild reports on the apparent return of Poison Ivy following Mary's attack on Batwing and Batwoman in 306.

Sophie wakes up in Rene Montoya's apartment.

Sophie learns that Mary has been taken over by Poison Ivy, but the possession only occurs during the day when Mary is in sunlight.

Luke's arm is still in a sling.

Sophie tells Luke and Ryan that she didn't go home the night before, so she has no idea what happened to Alice.

Mary wakes up next to Alice in a motor home.

Alice tells Mary that she fought the GCPD the day before  and their car got trashed, leading her to steal a motor home.

Mary, as Alice, threw her phone into the Gotham River on the way out of town.

Alice still has the AI module for the Batwing suit.

Alice offers to help protect Mary until she masters her new Poison Ivy powers in exchange for a blood transfusion to rid herself of the tracker nanites.  

I-15 runs through Gotham City.

Alice is able to throw off Batwoman's pursuit by using her blood to paint messages on various cars.

Mary and Alice begin flirting with various customers in a bar and doing blood tests trying to find O negative people to drain.

The bartender tries to kick Mary and Alice out, finding them creepy, but Mary subconsciously uses her Poison Ivy powers to make the bartender friendly.

Sophie tells Luke and Ryan about how the Mayor's Office is getting ready to go after Mary with full force.

Sophie also tells Luke and Ryan about her one night stand with Montoya.

Marquis escapes from the lab where his mother was going to have him cryogenically frozen.

Ryan and Sophie find Jada Jet after Marquis attacked her.

Marquis goes to Wayne Enterprises looking for Ryan and stabs a security guard to death with a pen that Luke Fox was given by his father.

The pen has an 18-Karat gold nib and a satin lacquer finish.

Marquis claimed that Lucius Fox used to come by his mother's house and they shot hoops in the driveway a few times.

Marquis easily beats up Luke, who only has one good arm.

Alice picks up a man named Jason who is a Gemini with no piercings or tattoos. He turns out to have O negative blood.

Dr. Tuva was the scientist working for Jada Jet who developed the Poison Ivy cure.

Marquis is waiting for Ryan and offers her the antidote in exchange for her resignation as CEO of Wayne Enterprises and all her stock options.

Sophie dresses Luke's wounds and admits her field dressings in the military academy were famously horrible.

Monotya's apartment is over a GC Jitters - apparently a local chain of the CC Jitters from The Flash.

Luke is able to track Mary by using her GC Jitters rewards card, which was used at a GC Jitters outside Metropolis 2 hours earlier. 

Alice makes reference to Nocturna from 113.

Marquis calls his mother and tells her to be watching TV at 9 am.

Mary and Alice escape from a police officer who identifies their vehicle as stolen. They hit him with the car, but he rolls under the vehicle and the tires do not go over him.

Ryan catches up with Mary and Alice and offers Mary the cure.

Mary says she doesn't want it.

Mary and Alice escape.

Ryan and Luke have their security clearances at Wayne Enterprises revoked, leaving them locked out of Wayne Tower and the Batcave. This leaves them with Ryan's costume and the Batmobile.

Marquis calls a press conference announcing that he's the new CEO of Wayne Enterprises.

Mary, now fully committed to being the new Poison Ivy, dons a green costume and watches the press conference with Alice, and they decide he looks like he might be fun.


Location

Brownsville Pub and a motel somewhere outside of Metropolis.


Untelevised Adventures

Mary and Alice had a violent encounter with the GCPD at some point between episodes, which trashed their electric sports car and led to Alice stealing a motor home.

Renee Montoya told Sophie Moore that the Mayor's Office is authorizing extreme measures to go after the new Poison Ivy during their night together.


The Bottom Line

A mixed bag, oddly enough. The parts involving Alice and Mary are magic, despite it making little sense that Mary should feel at all conciliatory to her mother's murderer. Yet Nicole Kang and Rachel Skarsten play off of each other so well that it seems quite natural and their bonding is far more interesting than Marquis' Joker act, which is far more predictable and, as a result, boring in comparison to the untouched territory of Ivy as a parasite.

Batwoman Episode Guide: Season 3, Episode 6 - How Does Your Garden Grow?

For a summary of the episode guide layout & categories, click here. 

Plot

A frightening discovery in a Robinson Park garden shed sends Montoya rushing to Ryan to place the city on high alert, as she theorizes that Poison Ivy has returned in a new form. Meanwhile, Alice is suspiciously eager to help the Bat Team, as Sophie seeks vengeance for her sister's near death at the hands of the Black Glove society.

Influences

The Batman comics of Grant Morrison (Black Glove Society)


Goofs

The newspaper article with the headline "Batman Scratches The Poison Ivy Itch" is dated as having been published one month ago. However, Batman's last battle with Poison Ivy would have had to have taken place at least six years earlier, given when Bruce Wayne disappeared from Gotham City.


Performances

Rachel Skarsten steals the show.

That being said, Nicole Kang does a masterful job switching between Mary and Ivy and is pitch-perfect vamping it up as Ivy.


Artistry

The horror elements are well played, particularly the make-up for Chris Hayner, the living beehive.

The special effects for the killer vines are good.


Bat Trivia

The episode title comes from an old English nursey rhyme, "Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary." Alice quotes it to Mary near the end of the episode. The title is also a foreshadowing of the revelation that Mary has become a host to Poison Ivy's mind.

Mary's hairdo in this episode mimics the horned-hairdo worn by Uma Thurman during her final fight with Batgirl in the movie Batman and Robin.

Alice makes reference to Montoya having a "wall of weird." This is a reference to Smallville and the mural/database started by Chloe Sullivan of strange things happening around Smallville.

At one point, it is noted that the Arrowverse version of Renee Montoya was on track to become the next Police Commissioner. At the time this episode aired, Rene Montoya was the GCPD Commissioner in the monthly Batman comics.

Alice makes a reference to Harley Quinn when it is discovered Mary violated medical privacy laws while under Ivy's influence. This is the first mention of Harley Quinn existing in the Post-Crisis Arrowverse.


Technobabble

Luke checks Mary's credit card records and finds out she bought a flowering pot, fertilizer and a watering can that morning.  Her phone's geo data says that then she went to a vacant lot in the Burnside district.

Mary theorizes that Poison Ivy's pheromones allow her to communicate with nature while heightening the things she is passionate about.  This is why she overreacted to a rejection and bent the rules to see justice done to a Black Glove operative that couldn't be touched legally. 

Sunlight is the trigger for changing Mary into Poison Ivy. Her eyes turn green when Ivy has control.

Luke detects an abnormally high thermal presence in the plants Poison Ivy controls.


Dialogue Triumphs

Ryan: How did you get Poison Ivy's vine?
Alice: While you were slurping caviar off of Mummy's fine china, some of us were in the field protecting this city.
Ryan: Mm-hmm. You just so happened to stumble across a Batman trophy while you were taking a stroll through the park? 

Alice: (mock-earnest) The cherry blossoms are so gorgeous this time of year.

Alice: Ahem. I'm gonna go check on the vic's progress.
Ryan: (Because you care about a stranger's life all of a sudden?
Alice: You're right. I don't. Let's you and I go sit in the Batcave together and watch the computer tediously cycle through all the anti-encryption ciphers.
Ryan: (deadpan) Have fun with Mary.
Alice: Will do. 

(Ryan and Luke are slow in believing Mary's theory that she is Poison Ivy's host.)
Alice: I thought watching Kate come out was torture.

(Ryan and Luke finally believe Alice and Mary's story.)
Alice: And we're all on the same page. Well, that was an excruciating process.
Ryan: You knew Mary was infected by the vine. That's why you were being so coy in Montoya's office.
Alice: I just figured the last thing anyone needed was for Mary to end up on Renee's wall of weird.
(Ryan's cell phone vibrating. It's Montoya. She dismisses the call.)
Alice: (sarcastic) Oh. Muting the boss. I'm sure that's gonna end really well.
Ryan: Montoya doesn't need to know anything about this.
Alice: Okay. I see. It's fine when we throw Alice in Arkham, but, oh, poor, sweet, innocent Mary, yeah, we should protect her at all costs.
(Mary handcuffs herself to the rail.)
Ryan: What are you doing? 

Mary: What one does when they realize they can control mother freaking earth! I nearly killed someone, and I don't know why or when this infection is gonna make me transform again, and until we figure it out, I am a threat to everyone...
Alice: (mouths words) Not me. 

Ryan: Why didn't you say anything about Mary?
Alice: I was wondering how this would end up my fault.
Ryan: You obviously knew something was up. How'd you figure it out?
Alice: Uh, the question isn't how I figured it out. It's how the hell you didn't. You're her roommate, you have a billion dollars of Battech at your disposal, and your number two is a certifiable genius. One of you should have noticed. 

Mary: So... maybe the chemical pheromones from the Poison Ivy allow me to communicate with nature while heightening the things that I'm passionate about like justice?
Alice: Well, seeing as that M.O. tracks and, uh... ahem... I killed your mother, I'm really not looking forward to being turned into a cabbage. So we should find out exactly what turns Dr. Jekyll into Mrs. Hide my victims under a pot.

(Ivy, in Mary's body, knocks out Luke. She stretches in the sunbeam leaking into the Batcave.)
Alice: Good morning, sunshine. I was wondering when you'd come out to play.
Ivy: You figured out sunlight was my trigger. 

Alice: (starts undoing the handcuffs on Mary) Well, they don't call me a supervillain for nothing, but Batty will be home soon, so I hope you know what you're doing.
Ivy: Why are you helping me?
Alice: Well, why does anyone help anyone? To accrue favors owed. But until I redeem this one, I need you to be careful. Once you slither out of this Batcave, Renee Montoya's gonna be hunting you down like a gardener with a weed whacker.

Montoya: Where did you get infected? The park, the river? Where was the vine, Mary?
Ivy: It's not a homing pigeon for the brokenhearted, Ray-Ray. You don't whisper, "Pamela Isley", into the leaves and follow as it slithers its way to her secret burial site.
Montoya: You know about Pam?
Ivy: Enough to know that she doesn't want you to find her.
Montoya: Look. You need to come with me so I can get you help.
Ivy: Is that what I need? Did you use that soft, gentle tone to lure Poison Pam into captivity?
Montoya: No. She was out of control. You're not there yet. Let's keep it that way.
Ivy: What do you think she thinks about down there? I mean... besides freedom and water and how her veins scrape together like sandpaper? 

Montoya: Easy. Let's not make this ugly.
Ivy: She thinks about how much she hates you, Renee. 

(Ivy drowns Batwoman in vines.)
Ivy: You've been so wrapped up in your own drama, Ryan. It's time you got wrapped up in mine for once.

Alice: "Mary, Mary quite contrary, how does your garden grow?" Quite well it seems from all the sirens I've been hearing around town. (gesturing to the car) It's fully electric, steppy.
Mary: Is that supposed to impress me?
Alice: Uh, yeah. Considering it was 10 times harder to hotwire. So you gonna tell me what you did to everyone's favorite cellar dweller at the Mayor's office or what? 

Mary: On the road. 

Alice: Aw. There's that patented Dr. Hamilton bedside manner... all warm and chatty.
Mary: (impatient) Get in. 


Dialogue Disasters

Cop: (To Montoya) Your ambiguous yet far-reaching power supersedes ours.


Continuity

A group of teenagers playing basketball in Robinson Park come across a man who seems to have been built into a bee-hive, who has bees come out of his mouth as he begs for help.

Montoya takes charge of the crime scene, to the annoyance of the GCPD officers on the scene.

Montoya has the man sent to Mary Hamilton's clinic on Bennett Street.

The man is identified as Chris Hayner, a Tricorner resident.

Monotya theorizes that Ivy has a new host, based on the dead vine Alice found in 305.

Montoya gives Hayner's phone to Ryan.

Alice goes to Mary's clinic to check on Hayner's progress.

Ryan finds Sophie in the Batcave, using the computer to find footage of her sister's attacker using the CCTV system. She says Alice spilled a cherry soda on her laptop.

Sophie is convinced Jada Jet is working with the Black Glove Society.

Ryan says that Jada had no idea people were going to get hurt and that she only contracted them for one job.

Sophie makes reference to her sister being frozen and three of her friends dying in 304.

Alice notes that Mary has even more plants in her clinic than she did in 305.

Alice confronts Mary with the idea that she is Poison Ivy's new host.

Chris Hayner wakes up and screams when he sees Mary, saying that she's the one who did this to him.

Mary tells Ryan and Luke that she thinks Alice is right about her being Poison Ivy's host. She says she can't remember where she was earlier in the day.

Ryan and Luke don't believe Mary or Alice until it is pointed out that the last three texts on Chris Hayner's phone were sent to Mary.

Alice says she didn't come forward with what she had figured out because she figured the Bat-Team wouldn't want Mary getting busted by Montoya.

At one time, Detective Montoya was on track to be the next GCPD commissioner.

Sophie confronts Montoya and asks for a favor, given that she agreed to take custody of Alice. She asks for all her data on Victor Fries and his preservation serum. Montoya says she doesn't have half of what Batwoman does. Sophie then asks for all the information Montoya has on the Black Glove Society. She says she knows nothing beyond the fact that people who know anything about the Black Glove Society end up dead.

Luke discovers that Mary had a profile on a dating website called Twinge and that was where she apparently met Chris Hayner. 

The Bat-Team's best guess is that Mary buried Chris Hayner in honey after he said she seemed sweet but rejected her

Alice and Batwoman go to the vacant lot and find a man buried up to his neck, The man is a Black Glove operative named Virgil Getty.

Mary was apparently able to track Virgil through the PO Box he was using to buy the cryogenic medical supplies he used on the Freeze Serum victims. She was able to do this by using her ability to access medical records to bypass the normal privacy laws.

Alice suggests they tell Sophie they have a Black Glove operative held under the Batcave, but Ryan says they have enough problems without Sophie looking for more.

Alice tells Luke and Mary that Renee Montoya and Pamela Isley dated in college and that is why Montoya is so obsessed with Poison Ivy. 

Alice makes reference to the new Mad Hatter from 301, the new Killer Croc from 302 and Nora Fries in 303.

Ryan meets with Montoya in her office at Wayne Enterprises and tells her that she knows they found a second Poison Ivy victim. She demands to talk to the victim, but Ryan says she will let her know once he's awake after she questions him.

Renee tells Ryan about her involvement with Poison Ivy.

Alice admits to telling Sophie about the Black Glove operative in their custody after Ryan told her not to.

Sophie questions Virgil and learns that the Black Glove Society had been employed to take care of various screwed up rich kids in secret since Marla Elliot hired them to try and treat her son, Tommy Elliot, before he became Hush. Before that, she formed a group of other rich parents with bad seed kids that swapped horror stories, discussed treatments and medications. This led to them spending millions on R&R to fix their kids brains.

Virgil is able to kill himself while Sophie's back is turned, as she confronts Ryan over Alice being more honest with her than she is.

Alice tells Luke and Mary that Ryan is rushing to stop Sophie from talking to Virgil because she's more concerned about Jada Jet's secrets than saving Mary and she wouldn't be surprised if Ryan handed Mary over to Montoya.

Ivy takes over Mary. Alice helps her to escape the Batcave.

Ivy calls in a tip to Rene Montoya's office, reporting an Ivy sighting at the Gotham Botanical Gardens.

Luke tracks Mary's phone to the Botanical Gardens and suits up to join Ryan as Batwing.

Yellow roses are left where Batwoman and batwing will find them. These are a symbol of friendship.

Ivy removed the fail-safe/Lucius Fox AI from the Batwing suit.

Ivy builds on Mary's resentment of Luke and Ryan neglecting her or ignoring her advice to turn her against the Bat-Team.

Luke tears his radiator cuff in the fight.

Montoya saves Ryan and Luke, but she is not happy that they didn't tell her about Mary being Ivy's new host.

Sophie is drinking at the Hold Up and is joined by Monotya. The two are later seen furiously making out.

Ryan calls Jada Jet and says that she needs a favor.

Alice meets with Ivy with a stolen electric car.


The Killing Jokes

Ryan and Luke are dumbed down considerably in their efforts to dismiss Mary's claims that she's the Poison Ivy host, purely because they don't want to believe Alice would be honest about something.


The Bottom Line

The strongest episode of the season so far.

Batwoman Episode Guide: Season 3, Episode 5 - A Lesson From Professor Pyg

For a summary of the episode guide layout & categories, click here.

Plot

Ryan asks Sophie to accompany her to a dinner at Jada's to determine just what her mother knows about Wayne Enterprises and their finances. The evening takes a turn for the worse, however, when an uninvited guest shows up, revealing a new side to Marquis and his mother. 

Influences

The comics of Grant Morrison (characters of Jada Jet, The Whip, The Flamingo and Professor Pyg)


Goofs

Why doesn't Luke go to DEFCON 1 the minute he loses touch with Sophie?


Performances

Nicole Kang has a great performance here playing the obviously off-kilter Mary.


Artistry

The costume for Professor Pyg is a high quality piece of make-up and costuming.

The horror movie style direction is solid.


Bat Trivia

Created by writer Grant Morrison and artist Andy Kubert, Professor Pyg first appeared in Batman #666 in July 2007. Born Lazlo Valentin, the man who became known as Professor Pyg was a brilliant scientist and surgeon employed by the secret United Nations organization Spyral, who was driven insane by a product he was testing. The formula made Lazlo paranoid and obsessed with perfection, performing surgery on himself to become the horrific pig-faced Professor Pyg. He continued to practice his depraved medicine to "make people better" fitting them with horrible new faces and drugging them into becoming his depraved servants.

The Arrowverse version of Professor Pyg is also named Lazlo Valentin, but was apparently a hitman for several years before going straight and becoming a gourmet chef. (His hitman past was mentioned in 213.) Unfortunately, he was fired by Jada Jet, who used her name to ruin his reputation and leave him unable to find work. This resulted in his wife leaving him, taking their children with her, pushing Lazlo to seek revenge on Jada Jet. 

Alice lists several Batman villains while going through Montoya's files, some of whom have previously appeared in Batwoman and in other Arrowverse series. These include Magpie (last seen in 120) and Talia Al Ghul (last seen at Oliver Queen's funeral in A810).

One of the villains on Montoya's list is said to be a woman named Shelley Gaynor, who is known as The Whip. She is said to be an animal rights advocate whose whip was made of faux leather. 

In the comics, Shelley Gaynor was a hero called The Whip, who was part of the Seven Soldiers of Victory. She was the granddaughter of a Golden Age hero, also called The Whip, who is primarily remembered for making his first appearance in Flash Comics #1 in January 1940 along with the Jay Garrick Flash and Hawkman. 

The background given for the Arrowverse Poison Ivy draws off of the origin Pamela Isley recived during the Bronze Age of Comics and her appearance in World's Finest #241 in July 1978. In this origin, Pamela was seduced by a man named Marc LeGrande into helping him steal an Egyptian artifact containing ancient herbs. He tried to poison her with the herbs, which were so rare as to be untraceable, but she survived the attempt and developed an immunity to all toxins and diseases. It was not until the post-Crisis era that Ivy's background was changed so that she became the victim of experiments by Jason Woodrue (aka The Floronic Man) which left her with an immunity to toxins, a toxic kiss and plant-control powers.

The Arrowverse version of Poison Ivy was said to have a rival in the PhD program named Marc LeGrande, who abducted her and used her as his guinea pig. He injected her with oleander, nightshade, water hemlock and other poisonous plants that changed her physiology and her mind, changing her from a compassionate and loving woman to a reckless maniac overnight.

Alice eventually determines that the murderer with the whip was a villain called The Flamingo, whom she describes as a "flamboyant, pink, Harley-straddling psycho."

In the comics, The Flamingo was a villain created by Grant Morrison and Andy Kubert for Batman #666. Once an ordinary man named Eduardo Flamingo, he was brainwashed by the Gotham mob into becoming a contract killer and serial killer for hire, who ate the faces of his victims. He did wield a whip as a weapon and had a dandyish dress sense, with a pink leather jacket and matching Harley-Davidson motorcycle

Technobabble

Catwoman reportedly stole some of Batman's nanotechnlogy and wove it into her whip, making it indestructible.

Zoey's dissertation is on modern family dynamics particularly as it relates to Bowen's family theory paradigm as it relates to triangulation and the roles of rescuer, victim and persecutor.

Mary determines the murder victim had motorcycle grease under his fingernails and she found a similar, but not exactly the same viscous synthetic on the bullwhip.

Mary saved Jordan Moore's life by mimicking the antifreeze synthesis plants use to survive subzero temperatures.

The show introduces a new wrinkle that Poison Ivy can take control of other people and use them as host bodies. This is apparently what has happened to Mary Hamilton. 


Dialogue Triumphs

Alice: So you're Ryan's date? So saw that coming.

Sophie: It's not a date. It's recon.
Alice: But you're wearing a push-up bra, so it's a date.
Sophie: You know this is your fault, right? 

Alice: Ugh. Don't blame me for this repulsive love affair.
Sophie: If you'd never told Ryan that her biological mother was still alive, we wouldn't be in this mess!
Alice: (mock sincerity) Soph, the guilt I think I'm supposed to be feeling is seriously killing my hallucination-free vibes.


Continuity

As the movie opens, Alice and Sophie are seen watching a horror movie together, confirming that Alice is now Sophie's roommate. 

Both women hear a noise, which turns out to be Batwoman on the balcony.

Ryan came to retrieve Alice because of a murder victim Montoya thinks was killed with one of the Batman trophies, i.e. Catwoman's whip.

According to Luke, Catwoman and Batman had a romantic relationship. 

Alice determines that the whip the murder victim was bound with cut with a pocket knife, making it impossible for it to be Catwoman's whip.

Wayne Enterprises stock is down 53% in the three days since 304.

The entire Crisis Management team for Wayne Enterprises quit because of the stress from the accusations Ryan is facing.

Ryan was delivered a couriered letter inviting her to dinner at Jada Jet's house.

Mary points out that the only evidence they have tying Jeturian Technologies to the Black Glove Society came from Alice, who is hallucinating so badly they had to pull her out of an asylum.

Alice says she has not hallucinated since leaving Arkham Asylum. 

Sophie poses as Ryan's girlfriend at the dinner, to help her bug Jada Jet's home office.

Jada Jet's chef is revealed to be Professor Pyg.

Ryan and Sophie lie and say they met through friends on a Tuesday. They remember because it was taco night.

Jada tells Ryan that she knows something is going on between Ryan and Marquis.

Marquis shows up with a date - a woman named Zoey.

Sophie plants a bug and searches Jada's desk while pretending to go to the bathroom.

Sophie finds a picture on Jada's desk of herself with a man and a young Marquis, but the photo is folded so the man is no longer there.

The feed to the Batcave suddenly cuts out while Luke and Sophie are talking.

Jada tells Marquis that Jada knows something is up after she leaves the room.

Jada finds Sophie in her office. She lies badly and says she got lost.

Montoya asks Alice to figure out who besides Catwoman might tie a guy up with a bullwhip.

Alice dismisses Magpie, The Whip and Talia al Ghul as suspects.

Alice determines that Montoya is obsessed with Poison Ivy for some reason, based on the fact that her files on Ivy are very detailed but the other files are rather thin.

Ryan is once again confirmed to be a Vegan.

Zoey is said to be a graduate student who is writing her dissertation on modern family dynamics. 

Jada confronts Ryan about Sophie snooping around in her office.

Zoey goes to the bathroom and suddenly finds herself losing all sensation in her hands.

Jada, Marquis, Ryan and Sophie begin suffering the same symptoms. 

Professor Pyg reveals himself and explains that he drugged the wine. He discusses how he was fired by Jada years earlier and how his wife left him and took the kids when he couldn't find work.

Ryan goes to get Zoey but finds her dead in the bathroom.

After finding that their phones are dead and the front door is locked from the outside, Jada escorts everyone to a panic room on the top floor.

Jada does not own any guns.

Marquis starts spasming once they are in the panic room.

Montoya tells Alice that she knew Pamela Isley before she became Poison Ivy and that the two dated while they were students at Gotham University, where Pamela studied botany and she studied criminal law. 

Alice confirms that Poison Ivy was not in Arkham anymore, despite having a cell there with her name on it.

Montoya doesn't know what Batman did with Poison Ivy, but she guesses that he buried her somewhere away from water and sunlight.

Montoya helped Batman to lure Ivy into a trap.

Alice has another hallucination of a letter from her father.

Sophie says that without an adrenaline shot, Marquis is going to die because he drank far more of the wine than anyone else and is having a more extreme reaction to the paralytic. 

Jada says there are several EpiPens among the camping gear in her basement and that her husband carried them all the time because of his allergies.

They are able to see Professof Pyg building a bomb through the security monitors in the panic room.

Sophie tells Jada that she is Jordan Moore's sister and accuses her directly of being connected to Black Glove.

Professor Pyg gets to Ryan as she passes out while making a break for the basement.

Alice notices that Mary has a lot more plants in her clinic and that Mary has begin going on rants about plants being awesome.

Alice tells Mary her delusions are back.

Mary has developed a constant itch ever since being exposed to a certain vine. Alice identifies the vine as Poison Ivy.

Jada shows herself to Professor Pyg to save Ryan. This allows Ryan, who was playing possom, to inject herself with adrenaline and fight Professor Pyg.

Sophie saves Marquis' life, only for Marquis to go berserk and kills Professor Pyg.

Alice eventually identifies the killer as the Flamingo and the victim as a member of a rival gang.

Alice gives Montoya a cutting from the dead vine sample Mary took.

Montoya says that Ivy's vines don't die unless she's infected someone else.

Sophie once again tells Ryan that she's sure Jada is hiding something.

Ryan confronts Jada alone.

Jada found the bug Sophie left behind. She also found out who Sophie is and that she was a former member of Crow's Security.

Jada tells Ryan that Marquis is sick in the head and had been since he was a child. 

Marquis was one of the students on the bus full of children Joker had taken hostage in the flashback of the Batwoman pilot. The Joker shocked Marquis' head with his buzzer and the voltage made Marquis different and dark.

As a child, Marquis poisoned his dad with peanuts and laughed while he died.

Jada says she has spent millions trying to fix Marquis behind his back, seeing multiple specialists and psychologists. Her latest effort involved hiring the Black Glove Society to help her build a working treatment to safely freeze Marquis until she could find a cure and then revive him. She says she had no idea they were going to test the treatment on innocent people like Jordan Moore.

Jada claims she was pushing Ryan away because she was trying to protect her from Marquis.


The Bottom Line

A waste of a good villain, though the horror elements are competently executed. Unfortunately, everything involving Jada and the set-up of Marquis as a new Joker is nowhere near as interesting as everything involving Alice investigating Poison Ivy's connection to Montoya and the idea that Ivy is now taking over host bodies. While it seems oddly par for the course that Alice has become the best detective in the show, it is weird that she's the one doing most of the heroic work in this episode.

Batwoman Episode Guide: Season 3, Episode 4 - Antifreeze

For a summary of the episode guide layout & categories, click here.

Plot

When Ryan is named to Gotham City's "30 Under 30" list, Luke worries that Marquis Jet's efforts to form an alliance with Ryan will bring Jada Jet's wrath down on Wayne Enterprises. Meanwhile, Alice's hallucinations grow stronger, Mary feels unlike herself and Sophie's sister Jordan goes missing after an incident which suggests more of Mr. Freeze's technology is still on the street. 

Influences

The Batman comics of Grant Morrison (Black Glove Society)

Bat Trivia

Mention is made of a made-up Batman villain called Icarus who had "Zero-G" sneakers. This gimmick sounds like the Air-Walker shoes employed by The Trickster in the comics.

First appearing in Batman #667 in August 2007, the Black Glove Society were created by Grant Morrison and Tony S. Daniel. Apparently a secret society of wealthy elites who just throw wild parties, the true organization was made up of sinister people who staged a yearly contest to play out some epic battle of good and evil. In this case, they tried to manipulate Batman.

Interestingly, one of the members of the Black Glove Society was a woman named Jezebel Jet who was briefly a love interest of Bruce Wayne. It seems likely that Jada Jet is meant to be an Arrowverse adaptation of the character.


Technobabble

Mary says that the formula used to freeze Jordan is based on the catalytic mechanism of Victor Fries' research, but what used to happen inside a chamber is now happening inside Jordan's cells. The effect on organic tissue is like the process that petrifies wood.

The GCPD are said to have thermal cameras all around Gotham City. Luke uses this knowledge to find an unusually hot room for thawing out one of the other Black Glove victims.

Mary notes that plants evolved to survive winter by synthesizing a type of antifreeze in their vascular tissue to thaw from the inside outward. 

The Lucius Fox AI was not designed to run independent of the Batwing suit failsafe and has no purpose beyond acting in Like's best interest In this case, it determined Luke was not ready to wear the suit yet, which was why it shut down..
 

Dialogue Triumphs

(Alice is surrounded by Black Glove Society members, including the man in the suit.)
Alice: Just taking a shot here... are you make-believe?

Luke: So, what? So, even though nobody thinks that you'll win, you're just gonna... stay and fight?
Ryan: Have you met me? 


Continuity

In the opening scene, a man is shown conducting experiments on various figured frozen with Mr. Freeze's cryo-formula and thawed out. One of these subjects cracks when asked to leave the room. The man calls this experiment a failure and notes they have 24 hours until the client's deadline.

Mary is shown on a park bench with vines crawling over her.

Marquis got Ryan onto a prominent "30 Under 30" list.

Charlie Clarke is the head of Public Relations for Wayne Enterprises and has been there since Lucius Fox's day.

Sophie's sister Jordan is also on the 30 Under 30 list because of her work with the local community center.

Mary tries to tell Ryan and Luke about waking up on the bench, but they both blow her off.

Alice is still imagining spiders crawling inside her because of the nanite trackers.

Alice hallucinates more mail from her father and killing the orderly who brought the messages to her.

Charlie says that he had to bribe Bruce Wayne to get him to memorize his talking points.

Ryan remembers that Wanye Enterprises is set to make its biggest quarterly venue gains in six years.

Marquis makes a big deal about getting his picture with Ryan at the event.

Sophie tells Jordan that she had a dream about Ryan bringing her soul while she was in bed.

Sophie is 31 years old. She is also apparently still unemployed.

Jordan says that Sophie should ask Ryan out.

Jordan is abducted by the man from the opening scene.

Jada calls Vesper Fairchild to report a rumor.

Alice is dropped off at Mary's clinic.

Alice admits that she got Montoya to let her out of Arkham because she said she had a lead on the "Zero-G" sneakers of the Batman villain Icarus. Alice completely made this villain up.

Mary refers to Alice's faked cold from 303.

Sophie asks Ryan and Marquis to help her find Jordan, who has gone missing.

Luke is trying to reset the AI in his Batwing suit, but it hasn't worked since he shut down the fail safe.

Marquis gets a tip that Jordan was taken to Room 1620 of the hotel the 30 Under 30 event is at.

Ryan finds Jordan, frozen solid by Mr. Freeze's equipment without a cryochamber.

Ryan tells Sophie about how the last person they tried to reheat and how they aged at 4 times the normal rate. 

Alice recognized Jordan's kidnappers as The Black Glove Society - a group of rich elites that supposedly rule Gotham City from the shadows who are also looking into a way to live forever.

Sophie says that Jordan and her activist friends were working to expose the Black Glove Society and she was going to use her speech at the 30 Under 30 event to do that.

Mary says she can save Jordan if she can get a clean sample of Fries' formula.

Marquis becomes angry with Ryan after she questions how he knew what room she'd be in.

Vesper Fairchild reports that the CEO of Wayne Enterprises has been diverting millions of dollars into a secret personal account.

Charlie reports that Wayne Enterprises stock has gone down 47$ in the past hour and the CFO is conducting a full audit into the company's finances. 

Ryan offers to resign, but Charlie says this is the sort of thing that gets people arrested, not fired.

Luke determines that Jada didn't fake the numbers that were given to Vesper Fairchild - she somehow uncovered the secret budget used to pay for Batman's technology.

Alice hallucinates the orderly talking to her again while searching Jordan's apartment with Sophie.

Alice finds Jordan's hidden notes on the Black Glove Society, which connect them to Jeturian Industries.

Sophie and Alice get knocked out by the Black Glove Society thugs.

A sign once again show's that Mary's clinic is on Bennett Avenue.

Batwoman saves Sophie and Alice from being burned up along with Jordan's apartment.

Mary thaws Jordan out safely.

Alice tells the rest of the team about her hallucinations and how they are getting worse.

Mary says the quality of care at Arkham is so crappy that they could well be giving her medication that causes a psychotic break rather than actually helping Alice.

Sophie agrees to let Alice move in with her and Mary agrees to takeover making sure Alice is getting the proper medication. 

Charlie Clarke says he knows Ryan didn't steal from the company because she hasn't been CEO long enough to steal a stapler, let alone set up a fund to steal $30 million.

Clarke says that he was used to having to cover up similar scandals thanks to Bruce Wayne's public record of addiction, misbehaviors and mysterious disappearances.

Clarke comes up with a press release which says that the missing money was part of a top secret defense contract with ARGUS which Ryan mistakenly thought needed to be kept secret from the Board of Directors due to national security reasons.

Luke makes reference to an old friend at ARGUS who will help to sell the story that the misappropriated funds were part of a secret ARGUS contract. This is likely a reference to John Diggle, whom Luke befriended in 216.

Clarke suggests Ryan resign since the stock price is still falling because someone is manipulating the press against her. He fears they will lose control of Wayne Enterprises in a hostile takeover if Ryan stays.

Luke is fearful of losing the company after all his dad did to build it up.

Ryan reactivates the fail-safe and this reawakens the Lucius Fox AI.

The AI says that helping run Wayne Enterprises is beyond the scope of his programming.

Ryan reaches out to Marquis, but he shuts down any attempt to work with her against Jada.

Jada meets with the Black Glove society and it is confirmed that she had commissioned them to come up with a way to safely freeze and unfreeze a person using Victor Fries' science. 

Jada says that Marquis is about to take a leave of absence.


The Fridge Factor

Alice and Sophie get easily knocked out by the Black Glove Society thugs. As Sophie notes, this only happened because Alice thought they were a hallucination at first.


The Bottom Line

Oddly uninteresting. Too much of the episode shifts focus away from the established characters and their subplots to focus upon the high-finance, public drama of Ryan's ascension which seems rushed given that we just found out Ryan became CEO last week. Unfortunately, this isn't nearly as interesting as Luke's issues with his dad, Alice's hallucinations or even Sophie's relationship with her sister. It doesn't help matters that the show is utilizing the Black Glove Society which, while coming first, seems like a half-hearted rip-off of the similar and better-known Court of Owls.

Batwoman Episode Guide: Season 3, Episode 3 - Freeze

For a summary of the episode guide layout & categories, click here.

Plot

An unfortunate incident in downtown Gotham suggests that Mr. Freeze's signature technology has fallen into the wrong hands, placing Ryan in danger as tensions build between her, Ryan and Mary. Meanwhile, Ryan's confrontation with Jada Jet leads to an intriguing offer from her son, Marquis.

Influences

The Batman: The Animated Series episode Heart of Ice (background for Arrowverse version of Mr. Freeze)


Goofs

Granting that Gotham City is hell on Earth, it still seems odd that Nora Fries, a victim of some form of dementia after being cryogenically frozen for two decades, would be placed in the same asylum as the likes of Scarecrow and the Riddler, particularly when she had a sister working for the police who was willing to care for her.

The temperature regulator on the Bat-Suit needing to be activated remotely rather than kicking in automatically seems like a major design flaw.


Artistry

The fight scene among the pipes at Ace Chemicals is fantastic, well-shot and well-blocked.


Bat Trivia

Reference is made to the Loeb Bridge as a landmark. This is likely a nod to Jeph Loeb, the Batman writer who wrote The Long Halloween and Hush.

Mr. Freeze first appeared in Batman #121 (February 1959) using the alias Mr. Zero. His name was changed to Mr. Freeze when he was adapted for the 1966 Batman TV show, which also gave him the unlikely name of Dr. Art Schivel. This was retconned for the modern age in the Batman: The Animated Series episode "Heart of Ice," which gave Mr. Freeze the name Dr. Victor Fries and a tragic backstory tied to his efforts to save the life of his beloved wife, Nora. This has been the definitive origin of Mr. Freeze in most adaptations since.

The Arrowverse version of Mr. Freeze has a similar background to the one in Heart of Ice, save that this version of Victor Fries died before he had the chance to save his wife.

Photos of Cassandra Jean Amell (who played Nora Fries in A709) are used to show Nora Fries as she looked before she was cryogenically frozen. She is the wife of Stephen Amell, who played Oliver Queen on Arrow.

The cryochamber fight takes place at Ace Chemicals. This is well known as the same chemical factory responsible for creating The Joker in most tellings of his origin story.

Mary's clinic is said to be on the corner of Rucka and Bennett. This is likely a nod to writers Greg Rucka and Marguerite Bennett. The former is the co-creator of the Kate Kane Batwoman. The latter had a lengthy run on the Batwoman comic.

Technobabble

According to Luke, the tanks Mr. Freeze used to hold his custom liquid nitrogen formula were compact, custom-built vacuum flasks that made the contents more concentrated and seemingly less dangerous than it truly was.

Luke says that WayneTech uses injectable nanobots in their research all the time.

Mary determines Alice is faking being sick based on her blood pressure, heart rate and glucose levels being normal.

A typical cryochamber can freeze a person but they'll die of hypothermia in about 10 minutes. 

Nora says her husband's formula can effectively stop time and keep a person from aging, but once they thaw out time catches up with them. This is why she looked 34 three years earlier and now appears to be in her late 70s/early 80s. By her best guess, she'll look 122 by Christmas.

The Bat-Suit has a temperature regulator but it froze up before Luke could access it.

Dialogue Triumphs

Nora: I am so sick of people sacrificing their lives for me... my husband, my sister, the research, the lost years, the desperation. For what? So I could be trapped all over again? 

Alice: So you want me to kill you? Could you be a worse hostage? 

Mary: I was being nice to you. 

Alice: Nice? You think I want... nice? You think I want this stupid arrangement with Batwoman, who I can't even stand, and little miss judgy two-shoes being nice? 
(Alice laughs madly and then sighs, depressed.)
Alice: It's no wonder I'm losing my freaking mind. 
(Alice leaves the room and slams the door.)
Mary: I am... so sorry about that. Um... believe it or not, she's my sister.
Nora: Heh. You certainly fight like it, but I've got to say I understand her.
Mary: You understand the woman who just had you at knifepoint?
Nora: I follow the news. She's been trapped her whole life, and now she wants her freedom.
Mary: Does your sister know that that's what you want?
Nora: Dee's wasted too many years of her life trying to fix me. I love her too much to tell her the truth.

Continuity

As the episode opens, a boy named Evan accidentally opens a tank of Mr. Freeze's special Liquid Nitrogen formula, freezing a city bus solid.

Evan says he found the tank under the Loeb Bridge.

Mr. Freeze is said to be dead on a news report.

Ryan has a meeting with Jada Jet to finish their conversation from the end of 302. However, Jada had no real interest in talking and agreed to meet with Ryan only to tell her that she doesn't care to have a relationship with her and will not hesitate to destroy her or Wayne Enterprises if Ryan doesn't stay out of her business and life.

Ryan bitterly says she just wanted to know who her birth mother was and now she knows Jada isn't worth her time.

The meeting is interrupted by Marquis Jet - the Executive VP of Jeturian Industries and Jada Jet's son.

Sophie didn't tell Ryan that Jada had another child because she thought it would only complicate things.

Alice confesses to telling Ryan about her biological mother still being alive, so Luke and Ryan now know that Jada is Ryan's biological mother.

Alice tries to call in sick, claiming she feels like spiders are crawling in her veins since getting injected with tracker nanites.

Luke says it's actually best Alice sit this mission out as the cannister was tagged by the GCPD at 10:07 am that morning and they probably don't want her going on a mission to burgle the police station.

Ryan breaks into the GCPD evidence locker, only to discover the Freeze tank was stolen.

The thief is an elderly woman, who takes the tank to Nora Fries - Mr. Freeze's wife. The thief says they can finish what Victor started.

Both women are abducted by a gang led by a woman.

Luke identifies the thief as Dee Smithy - a processing clerk for the GCPD who called in sick that morning for the first time in 20 years and who is Nora Fries' sister.

Luke says that Victor Fries had six doctorates, yet insisted on being called Mr. Freeze.

Luke makes reference to Captain Cold from The Flash, noting that he wasn't a real Captain.

Nora Fries suffered from McGregor's Syndrome, a lung disease that had no cure at the time of her diagnosis.  Other victims of McGregor's Syndrome in the Arrowverse have included the Clock King (A214) and Francine West (F204) Nora was cryogenically frozen by her husband until a cure could be found and kept her in stasis using a special cryochamber and his patented freezing formula.

Victor died before Nora thawed out, after his formula finally wore off.

Nora apparently thawed out several years earlier and was given the cure for McGregor's Syndrome. However, she was so confused and disoriented after being locked away from the world for 20 years that she was locked in Arkham Asylum. She escaped in 2018 and had not been seen since. (This coincides with Nora Fries' cameo in A709 during the Elseworlds event.)

Marquis comes by Ryan's office and tells her that he figured out figured out she is his sister. He figured it out because his nannies gossiped and his mother disappeared for several months.

Marquis guesses Jada had an affair and knew her husband wasn't the father.

Ryan is one year younger than Marquis.

Marcus wants to partner with Ryan at Wayne Enterprises and prove that he can make it on his own. He says he suspects Ryan wants to show up Jada as well.

Ryan goes to Dee Smithy's house and finds evidence of a struggle and that Nora Fries was living there but that her McGregor's syndrome hadn't been cured.

Luke guesses that whoever came after Dee and Nora wanted the tank, which means they need a cryochamber. This leads Ryan to Ace Chemicals.

Dee gives the woman holding her and Nora hostage Victor Fries' notes and the tank, but the woman insists they should get the cryo chamber working.

Nora protests that she has no idea how Victor's technology worked and that when she went to college they didn't even teach science to women.

Ryan told Mary about Alice faking the letters from Jacob Kane.

Alice claims she has only been delusional that one time.

Alice broke into Mary's filing cabinet and knows that Luke is showing symptoms of PTSD.

Alice tells Mary she should keep this quiet from Ryan and says it is her place on the team to be silent until she's needed, pointing out that neither Kate, Ryan nor Luke ever went to her for help unless they needed something.

The gang leader says her client wanted the Freeze tank because they thought it would make them immortal.

Batwoman shows up and gets Nora Fries to run to Mary's clinic on Rucka and Bennett. 

Batwoman tries to fight the gang leader and is knocked out and locked inside the cryochamber.

Dee is forced to activate the chamber with Ryan inside it.

Ryan tells Luke to suit up and rescue Dee and not to worry about her.

Nora gets to clinic, where Alice takes her hostage after Mary examines her.

Alice threatens to kill Nora if Mary doesn't get the nanites out of her.

Nora tells Alice to go ahead and kill her because she's sick of people sacrificing to try and save her life when she never really got the chance to live.

Sophie takes over the comms in the Batcave and tells Ryan she's mad at her for getting her to search for her mom but turning to the rest of the team to discuss her feelings.

Sophie complains that Ryan judged her without really knowing her.

Luke saves Ryan.

Chasing after the thugs who kidnapped Dee, Ryan tells Sophie that it was clever of her to try and make her angry so she'd stay awake.

Luke accuses Sophie and Ryan of flirting in the middle of a chase.

The thugs blow up the bridge to try and stop the Batmobile.

Luke uses the Freeze formula to make an ice bridge so Ryan can finish the chase.

Luke puts the tank back in Batman's trophy case, saying there's not much left in it.

Luke says he fixed the glitches in the Bat-Wing suit.

Mary tells Ryan truth about Luke's PTSD and how he disabled the fail-safes in the suit rather than fix it properly.

Luke denies having PTSD and Ryan ignores Mary's warning.

Ryan decides to put the team first, as much as she likes the idea of having a brother, because of the damage Jada Jett could do to her found family.

Mary gets Nora some help for her problems and Dee agrees to let Nora live her life, however long that might be.

Nora notes that the park where she meets Mary was the same one she and Victor went to on their first date.

As the episode ends, a vine grabs Mary and pulls her into the undergrowth.

The Fridge Factor

Ryan gets knocked out way too easy, to set up the rush to rescue her in the second half of the episode.


The Killing Jokes

It's unclear just how Ryan could be knocked out in the first place given how tough the Bat-Suit is.


The Bottom Line

This episode leaves me cold, pun very much intended, as this is a flat episode despite some impressive action sequences. There's no real heart to it, despite being based around one of Batman's most emotionally stirring villains and unsurprisingly the best parts of the episode are the ones that take advantage of that conflict. Alas, all the other drama - Alice's madness, Luke's lying to Ryan, and the situation with the Jets - seems muted compared to that.