Batwoman season 1 episode 2 review: “The Rabbit Hole” turns up the emotions
While the series premiere of Batwoman introduced us to Kate Kane, “The Rabbit Hole” dove deeper into her backstory — and the emotions were on high throughout the episode.
The series premiere of Batwoman was promising when it came to setting up the conflict that will be front and center for the rest of the first season, but the second episode began delivering on those promises. “The Rabbit Hole” dug deeper into Kate’s backstory — providing some insight into her feelings about both Beth and Sophie.
The relationship between Kate and her sister took up the majority of the second episode, with viewers getting plenty of emotional flashbacks to Kate’s childhood. Most of them highlighted how much she and her father suffered after losing the other half of their family during that fateful car crash — and it’s hard not to feel sorry for both of them, no matter how much the leader of The Crows aggravated us this episode.
We were expecting plenty of family drama, and that’s exactly what we got from this episode. Not only does “The Rabbit Hole” offer an emotional meeting between Kate and Alice, but it also shows how much Kate and her father are struggling — even if they can’t necessarily lean on one another for support. And there’s the added factor of Mary, who Alice clearly sees as competition. We have a feeling poor Mary hasn’t seen the last of Alice’s minions.
There’s also the question of how Kate plans on separating her feelings for the sister she knew from the killer she’s become. Even if Alice is Beth, she’s clearly killing without remorse. And that means at some point, Kate and her father are going to need to make some difficult choices.
Of course, the familial drama wasn’t the only thing keeping viewers invested in this week’s episode of Batwoman. Kate and Sophie’s residual feelings for one another played a decent-sized role in “The Rabbit Hole,” and their confrontation toward the end was probably a long time coming.
It’s clear that Kate never moved on from Sophie. And despite Sophie’s insistence that she’s happy in her marriage, it feels like there’s something more lurking beneath the surface. Does she perhaps regret her decision to lie about her feelings for Kate all those years ago?
All of these emotional interactions are likely to fuel the characters’ actions as the series goes forward, but the end of the episode hints at another problem Kate’s going to have to deal with: taking the place of Batman. As Luke points out, Kate’s appearances in the batsuit have ignited a newfound hope in the citizens of Gotham. And she’ll either need to embrace her place as the city’s savior or find a way to disappear into the shadows. (We think we know which one she’ll choose.)
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