8 villains we want to see in the Batwoman series (and 4 we don’t)
Cover to Batman: R.I.P deluxe edition by Grant Morrison. Image via DC Comics.
Although some of the aforementioned villains are typically associated with Batman, they aren’t exclusively Batman villains, and Kate Kane has sufficiently proven herself as more than capable of singlehandedly fighting anyone or anything.
This list isn’t exhaustive because there are even more villains we’d love to see in The CW’s Batwoman series, such as the Weeping Woman, who’s already affiliated with Medusa’s villainous reign, the Victim Syndicate, and Bruno Mannheim (who already exists in the Arrowverse).
However, there are also a few villains we don’t want to see make an appearance on the series. After she’s protected Gotham for years, we want to protect our favorite Jewish, lesbian hero, especially when some villains spell out problematic implications for Kate’s character development.
Sure, these characters could be rewritten, like a lot of on-screen comic book iterations are naturally rewritten for any televised appearance. However, we’d rather live without these antagonistic cameos.
Nocturna
A lot of Bat-relevant villains use mind control, mind-altering drugs or abilities, or some form of manipulation to attack the heroes of Gotham. While Green Fairy uses her subduing abilities to fend off Batwoman, Nocturna sexually assaults Kate.
The vampiric villain escaped Arkham Asylum when Wolf Spider freed Green Fairy, Scatter, and various other meta-human villains from the facility. While most of the villains were recaptured, Nocturna snuck out of the Arkham campus while chaos unfolded inside.
Shortly afterward, she broke into Kate’s home and used her mind-manipulating abilities to put her in a trance. Then, she had sex with her while she didn’t have any control over her body of her consciousness and proceeded to drink her blood after.
It’s a traumatic villainous story, to say the least, but we don’t want to see any character in Gotham be subjected to assault, especially not Kate though.
Batman
Alright, we know what you’re thinking: Batman isn’t a villain. You’re right, but even Bruce Wayne has done some questionable things, regardless of any evil intent. Though Bruce hasn’t taken part in any explicit villainy in Kate’s life, he has threatened to take away her Batwoman mantle away from her after she killed a villain to save a city of people.
Motivated by preserving classic movies from terrible remakes, Clayface shapeshifted into multiple forms to bring cinematic justice to Gotham, but it was mostly just mayhem.
After a lengthy fight between numerous heroes and his malleable form in Knights Fall, Kate shoots him to prevent a building-sized Clayface kaiju from invoking havoc on the city. In action, she killed one person to some indefinite amount of other lives, but that decision caused a disturbance in the Bat Family and led to some troubling quarrels, particularly between Batman and Batwoman.
While her teammates were relentless about preserving lives, Kate was willing to sacrifice a villain’s lives if it meant protecting countless others. Following the fallout from the Clayface incident, Batman started keeping tabs of her “strikes.” Aside from policing her own moral code, Bruce twisted his own ethics after her fights against her when she tries to protect her twin sister in Batwoman #16.
Even though Kate was trying to protect her family, Bruce marked this as her second strike and threatened to take the Batwoman namesake away from her if she made it to strike three. And, Bruce does eventually disavow Batwoman from his team in Rebirth.
We might be selfish, but we just don’t want to see any Bat Fam quarrels in Batwoman’s TV series, especially if that means watching Bruce threaten to take her hero status away from her. (We can also do without Batman’s explicitly villainous clone.)
Catman
Thomas Blake is a thief who slightly changed his criminal occupation after the pride of lions he lived with was killed by poachers. And, yes, Catman did happily live with actual lions.
After his lion roommates we murdered, he became a mercenary and joined the Secret Six to avenge his lion friends’ deaths. Honestly, we’d do the same is someone killed any threatened or endangered species, but he stayed with the Secret Six after he killed the poachers and that’s when things got weird.
Catman’s had a lot of run-ins with Batman and Selina Kyle alike (figures with his affinity for cats). When it comes to his relationship to Batwoman, he became obsessed with her, fell in love with her, and tried to make her his romantic and professional partner in his crime operations.
Clearly, he had moved on from his intermittent relationship with Helena Bertinelli (i.e. the Huntress), but we don’t want to see any on-screen adaptations of a man implicitly or explicitly trying to “turn” a lesbian woman straight. It’s an overdone and harmful trope, and we don’t want to see Kate Kane fall victim to any issue-riddled tropes either by the villains in her narrative or the writing surrounding these bizarre antagonists.
Catwoman
Selina Kyle often dances between the anti-hero, vigilante and villain labels. While some might think she’s a bit villainous for leaving Bruce at the altar, we’d rather see her work as an ally to Batwoman rather than a foe. While she’s committed various robberies throughout Gotham and partners with nearly all the mobs in the city, and she’s even fought against Kate in Rebirth, she’s partnered with the Bat Family before to help Batman escape from other villains in the city.
Though Catwoman hasn’t exclusively extended her heroism to help Kate, she isn’t the standard villain in the Bat Family, and picturing her as one wouldn’t make sense to her character that’s constantly changing and growing.
The DCEU hasn’t had nearly enough Selina cameos, and pairing her and Kate together in a heroic team-up could open The CW and DC TV series up to other opportunities for Gotham’s heroes.
Related Story. The comic history of Batwoman: A fierce Jewish, lesbian superhero. light
Obviously, we might be overly ambitious when it comes to villains that we, realistically, hope to see in The CW’s Batwoman series. After all, it would be difficult to consolidate eight antagonists into one pilot run. Regardless, we just want to see Kate Kane be the canonically fierce Jewish, lesbian superhero who kicks villainy butt.