TV REVIEWS: FTN Reviews Batwoman Season 2 Episode 16: Rebirth

After an episode that was…something, it was going to be interesting to see the fallout of it all via “Rebirth” and I will give it credit for one thing…it threw a lot of storylines together and made them mostly stick. Even if it did lose some things in the middle.

After Luke’s “resurrection” I was very curious to see what he would do (especially since we now have confirmation that Batwing will arrive at the end of the season, the armor looks good!) and for the most part…it was fair. He’s very angry at Tamarov because of what happened and the injustice that happened (he almost killed his boss, falsified evidence and shot an unarmed man and yet he gets out on bail…? Right…). So Luke tried to take care of it by humiliating him in Texas Hold’em (love that game, just saying) and trying to go mano-e-mano with him.

Humiliating Tamarov? Totally worth it, I loved the speech btw. But how they portrayed Tamarov throughout was just…painful to watch in a bad way. Him gloating over getting out? Yeah, that’s fine. But continuing to be overtly racist to an insane level and actually trying to convince Diggle he was likeable all the while being a bigot to Luke? Yeah…no.

Which brings us to Diggle. It’s been a while since the Arrow series finale (over a year and a half give or take, can you believe it?) and so I was looking forward to some time with him and yet…we got a few “glancing conversations” and one deep talk that honestly…didn’t sound much like Diggle. Yes, it’s been a while, but just how he talked felt off. He’s going to be making a lot of cameos in the Arrowverse over the next while and show the “consequences” of the series finale of Arrow but…this wasn’t the best start to his “return tour”.

Meanwhile, Alice and Jacob teamed up to go and get Circe/Kate and bring her memories back, which was oddly compelling, especially when it started to work and Alice/Beth was the reason for that. And Kate actually fighting Circe in her mind was a nice twist too and showing that Enimga was quite thorough in her work.

Finding out that Safaiyah and Sionis was working together was fun (even though they continue to muddle who kind of was responsible for Kate’s “death” given that Safaiyah gave Roman the flight for Kate’s “abduction”), and Safaiyah again getting revenge on Alice in her own way was fun…though I felt Ocean’s death was a bit anticlimatic. You couldn’t even tell he was dead outside of one shot due to camera angle and the lighting. But oh well.

The problem though was that they overplayed their hand in certain ways. The two teaming up to reclaim Circe/Kate was fine, but then Sionis revealing he has the GCPD in his pocket the episode AFTER we just had the big “corruption shutdown” episode? And then the beginning of this very episode where they did the “Defund The Crowes” bit (which is dumb to say because they were shut down and thus there’s nothing to defund…) further shows that the show took a cheap way out of THE corruption story in order to keep a REAL corruption story alive in a comic-book way.

Finally, there’s Ryan. Yes, there’s a problem with Ryan, would you like to hear what it is? Short and sweet, she was INCREDIBLY selfish throughout the episode. Including wanting Luke to work despite him not going through his pain, her getting angry when he wasn’t “thanking her” for saving his life…which he didn’t want, and then the oh-so-cringe line, “Screw you, you’re not leaving me” at the end. Diggle had a much better line with, “You seem really important Luke Fox, good thing you’re alive.” Because that made it about Luke, not anyone else. So yeah, not the best.

But with Kate Kane likely returning next episode based on the preview, and things possibly turning in a very curious direction (two Batwomen?), it’ll be interesting to see the final stretch of episodes.