It's finally happened. After months of teases and images, Batwoman has officially joined the Arrow-verse. In the second part of the "Elseworlds" crossover, The Flash (Grant Gustin), Green Arrow (Stephen Amell), and Supergirl (Melissa Benoist) ventured to Gotham City for the first time and met the city's Caped Crusader.
This Gotham is one that no longer has a Batman to keep them safe. Instead, Kate Kane (Ruby Rose) suits up as Batwoman in an attempt to save what she can of a dead city. While, for now, this will be contained to the second piece of the three-part "Elseworlds" event only, a Batwoman TV show is being developed for The CW that would pick up where "Elseworlds" leaves off.
Before they could bring Batwoman to life, though, the writers and producers of the Arrow-verse had to figure out who she was. What's more, they have to create the world she lived in and decide how it would compare to the likes of Arrow, The Flash, and Supergirl.
For Caroline Dries, who's responsible for the story of "Elseworlds Part 2" and is developing the Batwoman series, the goal was to give away enough to make you wonder about what comes next. "We all as a group knew who the character was when we were breaking the story so our goal was trying to create a set-up story-wise where we could meet her kind of be intrigued by her, introduce Gotham a little bit, you know, plant a little visual things that are curious and then have people wondering what is this world she's part of," she said during a Q&A with press.
That planning gives viewers some hints about what to expect, should Batwoman go to series. This Gotham is dead and rotting, with even Bruce Wayne leaving town--for reasons that haven't been revealed at this point. However, Kate Kane has no intentions of following suit and is instead renovating the old Wayne tower to be the home of her real estate business--which is pulled from the comics. Likewise, a number of potential villains were teased in the trip Gotham City, including Penguin, The Riddler, Scarecrow, Poison Ivy, and Nora Fries.
This was all done with an eye toward expanding the universe in a spin-off. "We created it with a bigger story in mind for sure," Dries explained.
Just as important as teasing what Batwoman and Gotham City could become, though, was grounding it in the Arrow-verse. This version of Gotham is very different from anything else seen on Arrow, The Flash, or Supergirl. This is a city without hope, that wasn't saved by its vigilante the way Oliver has done countless times with Star City.
Instead of using Gotham City as the tread to keep it rooted in the Arrow-verse, it's Batwoman herself that is the link. "It was important for us I think to humanize Kate in a way that made her relatable to the other characters in the Arrow-verse, even though we're creating an enigmatic character we wanted sort of an in to her and in our minds Kara obviously has this cousin who's, you know, she's started in his shadow and her story was getting out of his shadow and that's exactly Kate's story," Dries said.
That's why the moment at the end of the episode when Supergirl and Batwoman admit they know each other's secret identities was included. "It just felt like the right moment, the right movie," she explained.
So what happens next? Now, we wait. The CW hasn't actually ordered Batwoman to series, though it seems like a foregone conclusion at this point. As for when it'll premiere, the best bet is in Fall 2019, allowing Batwoman to once again play a role in the annual Arrow-verse crossover. In the meantime, there's still one more piece of "Elseworlds" to watch Tuesday, December 11, at 8 PM PT on The CW.
