Batwoman season 1, episode 13 review: Drink Me

In the wake of making, or “taking,” a terminal, irreversible choice, Kate Kane is back in costume as Batwoman to avoid getting bit by Gotham’s latest, and vampiric, threat.

Last time on Batwoman, Kate stepped out of costume for most of the episode to personally deal with sisterly doppelgangers and a family drama that dangled the hope of getting Beth back even if she had to let the other — Alice — die. Very few had a problem with that.

That hope was snatched away from everyone, however, by August Cartwright — Mouse’s father and Alice’s captor. Masquerading as a plastic surgeon, he is alive and has a score to settle with Alice and Mouse. By gunning down Earth-2 Beth, he believes he has and so does the rest of Gotham.

She Is The Night

Episode 13 picks up from there. The alternate Beth Kate tried to save is in the morgue as a Jane Doe but the Crows use her as an excuse to declare Alice deceased and the streets safe again. But Kate, knowing better, is back in her Batsuit right away to investigate a vampire claiming victims in the thick of city nightlife.

The vampire in question is named Nocturna (Kayla Ewell of The Vampire Diaries, appropriately). Also known as Natalia Knight, the civilian name she goes by in the show, she is a character who first encountered Batman in the early 80s. She was brought back in 2012 with the name Natalia Mitternacht and fought Batwoman, setting up a base at Arkham Asylum on Prime Earth.

Nocturna needs blood to fight her affliction, a rare form of the blood disorder porphyria, which is slowly killing her. She gets it from random victims until she fights Batwoman and bites her. Then she zeroes in on Kate and those close to her.

Nocturna’s condition is a neat twist. It gives her a realistic, congenital explanation for her metahuman nature besides the usual “She’s a vampire, put a stake in her.” Batwoman is dark but it operates in a more subdued realm of horror and science fiction. It’s not Buffy.

There’s also a pretty cool callback to the first Tim Burton Batman movie when Batwoman and Nocturna fight in the tower of a cathedral. The same bong noise is used too when Kate is knocked into the bell – kind of fun but it was still too quick a scene to mean much.

Subplots

Kate also has Alice to deal with but the two keep an uneasy truce despite events in “Take Your Choice.” Surprisingly, they never cross swords. Kate walks in and out of Alice’s hideout unharmed and Alice deigns to help Mary after she is abducted and drained of blood by Nocturna.

Alice remains the same old twisted sister. She’s the one who tips Nocturna off to Mary’s recuperative plasma, comparing it to fine wine. It’s just that she is more delicate and more methodical than expected, pulling strings and showing more restraint than Lena Luthor would.

If there wasn’t enough for Kate to worry about, her father may believe Gotham is safer but he nonetheless has a problem with Batwoman in his town and doesn’t want his people working with her. He thusly punishes Sophie when he finds out she’s been helping a vigilante he doesn’t know is his own daughter.

Is That Your Identity?

He probably will figure it out soon. Everybody else is. Mary connects the dots and they make it look so easy. Sophie’s got to know by episode’s end too so that makes two of Kate’s closest friends, Alice, and a random prep-school hacker — a list sure to grow.