Into the Arrowverse: The Flash wraps, Supergirl shines, and the Legends go Greek

Batwoman: Pictured: Rachel Skarsten as Alice, Gabriel Mann as Hush, Linden Banks as Professor Carr, and Sam Littlefield as Mouse — Photo: The CW

Batwoman Episode 119: “A Secret Kept From All The Rest”

Welcome to the penultimate episode of Batwoman season 1. I’m intrigued by where this show has gone; it’s done a reasonable job keeping up with the rest of the Arrowverse.

At the heart of the first season has been Kate Kane’s struggle to accept who she is, her purpose as Batwoman, and what this means in the context of her double life. I think she’s really started to find her footing as a person in the world she lives in.

But she still has trust issues, and last week’s journal incident didn’t help. After hooking up with her ex, Reagan, Kate woke up the next morning to find Lucius Fox’s journal was missing.

This journal finds its way into Alice’s hands, because if it has anything to do with killing Batwoman, Alice wants the 4-1-1. Kate tracks down Reagan and learns what viewers already knew: Reagan stole the journal for her sister, aka Magpie, who then gave it to Alice, in exchange for her freedom from Arkham Asylum.

Luke is livid with Kate for carelessly losing the journal. After all, his father died to protect the secrets within it, and she managed to lose it over the course of one night. Luke takes this very personally and decides to walk away from Kate and any help she can give. He goes to the Crows, which puts him on an intertwining path with Julia, who has her own motives for finding the journal.

Tommy Elliot is still walking around faceless, no thanks to Alice, and officially transforms into the villain known as Hush. It’s a bit cheesy, but I was sort of here for it. Hush makes his way around town tracking down anyone who can lend a hand to decrypting Lucius’ journal. It’s going to take a special kind of genius to do it, and Alice’s urgency to figure it all out doesn’t help.

They track down a cryptology professor and then an NSA agent, but both are unable to figure out the complex code. Having proven useless, Alice doesn’t hesitate to have them killed via electric shock. She sets her sights on the next target: Parker Torres, the young hacker we met earlier on in the season. Luckily, Parker finds a way to alert Batwoman moments before she’s abducted and is saved in the end.

Having gone through a few people at this point, Alice realizes that there may be no one better to help decode the journal that Lucius’ son himself. I didn’t anticipate enjoying the process of cycling through so many people, but the episode made it fun. And ultimately it was going to end up with Luke, even though he has no idea how his father wrote the code.

In any case, both Luke and Julia are abducted by Hush and brought to Arkham Asylum. Alice gives Luke a very short deadline to figure out what the journal says. I had no doubt in my mind that he’d put it together at some point, but back at the Batcave, Mary ends up finding a pair of Lucius’ glasses that were designed to read the code by simply wearing them.

I didn’t see that coming, but I loved it, and I loved that Mary cracked the case even more. Kate quickly makes her way to Arkham to strike a deal with her evil sister in exchange for Luke and Julia’s freedom.

This is a very profound moment for Kate. Handing over the glasses could be disastrous, but Kate does what she has to in order to save Luke and Julia. I mean, I think it was definitely more for Luke and less for Julia (she is about to hook up with Sophie, after all).

Side note: I don’t really care for Sophie all that much, and I wouldn’t mind if she wasn’t in the series moving forward. I don’t feel like she brings much to the story, and it feels like she has overstayed her welcome. Thoughts on this, anyone?

With the glasses in her possession, Alice checks out just what Lucius has in this journal of his, and stumbles across something quite revealing. The journal isn’t just about the secrets of Wayne technology, but instead, it has the key to destroying Batwoman and the Batsuit.

What is the key? It has something to do with Kryptonite.

Let me get this straight. The very same thing that can take down Supergirl and Superman can also take down Batwoman, and I’m assuming Batman?

Woah, talk about mind blown.

Grade: B