Wow, what an amazing first season of Batwoman this has been! It is hard to find words to describe what this first season has been which is why I have decided just to chose some of my top moments from the season as a little ‘recap’ of sorts to try and explain what this show has meant to me in its inaugural season. These are in no particular order, I couldn’t choose just one thing I loved the most, so are we ready to travel to Gotham?

10. The Bat Team

I do love a good Super team working together! Take one superhero, add one tech genius and times it by awesome and then you have the makings of a winning team. I am obsessed with Tthe Bat Team! This one works even better with Julia Pennyworth and Sophie Moore (well it will once Sophie is let in on the Big Bat Secret). The chemistry that this team has to work perfectly together and to complement each other’s skills and to be each other’s moral compass is astounding!

9. Gay Bar

The first of many gay things about this show that I love. Every Superhero needs a day job as a cover, and what better way than to run a badass real estate business which buys up properties around the city and turns them into gay bars or lowers te rent so people can actually afford to live there. I  love The Holdup, we have so many amazing Batmoore scenes there including a grand opening to lure out a freaking Vampire baddie in Episode 13. The fact that a new gay bar is opening in one of my favourite shows while LGBTQI+ bars around the world are being lost gives me hope that we will be able to have good things like this in our lives again.

8. Coming Out to Mamma Moore

Another good and gay thing in this show! There are so many female relationships in this show but the one that I love the most is Batmoore. Sophie was put through the wringer this season emotionally between her marriage imploding, Kate coming back and with the two of them sharing lots of kisses, coming out to her mom and then being in a relationship with Julia. Sophie has had one of the biggest emotional journeys this season (in my opinion) and it was played to PERFECTION by Megan Tandy.

7. Another Beth

What is better than having Rachel Skarsten on our TV playing an amazing character, getting to see Rachel Skarsten play two amazing characters that are mirror images of each other in the same show. I love it when actors get to go all ‘Tatiana Maslany’ on us and get to explore all these different sides of the ‘same’ character. Beth was a delight and I am so happy that we got to see what the sister relationship could have been if Alice had not been abducted and if Kate had gotten the chance to save her.

6. Two Bruce Waynes

So the picture above made me shout out ‘WTF’ at 2am when I was watching the finale last night. It was such a cliffhanger to end on and it now I’m just like ‘Alice no you didn’t!’ because it was so unexpected! Not only did we get this Batman reveal last night but we also had the joy of seeing Kevin Conroy playing such a dark Batman in the crossover. Dark and broken Batman was such a joy to see because he is called the Dark Knight for a reason, he is the one who walks in the shadows, and it was always bound to take a toll on Bruce. I am so excited to see Warren Christie as Batman and to see him as Hush playing Batman.

5. A Bat and a Super working together

Who doesn’t love a Crossover and who doesn’t love a five-episode crossover that is longer than an entire Lord of the Rings movie? Well, I certainly love it and I was so excited when I saw that Batwoman was getting its own episode in the crossover. Last year we got just a little taste of what it would look like, but this year we got to see the implicit trust that Kate had in Kara and vice versa with Kara trusting Kate with Kryptonite (something she never did with Lena and that’s s whole other matter entirely for maybe yet another article). Seeing the two of them, with Alex, sitting on the sofa in Karas loft chilling together and then seeing Kate trust Kara to write the article of Batwoman coming out as a lesbian to the world, it makes me so excited for yet another badass female friendship that these shows both have.

4. MARY HAMILTON: BAMF EXTRAORDINAIRE

What can’t I say about Mary Hamilton? She is smart, she is kind, she is courageous, she strong, she is an utter BAMF! Not only is she a social media influencer, but she is also in med school and she opened an underground surgery to help the people in her city who need it the most. She has faced off against Alice and her wonderland gang, she watched her mother die before her eyes. She saved Batwoman and Kate so many times, she is such a fierce friend to Luke and tried so hard to get Sophie and Kate to make up. I just adore Mary Hamilton so much. She is the epitome of a character who is not what they seem on the outside.

3. The Paragon of Courage

When you look up courage in the dictionary you see the name ‘Kate Kane’. Well, not really but you should! How courageous do you have to be to take up the mantle of the person you thought was responsible for killing your mother and sister. How courageous do you have to be to move past that? What about giving up everything you worked towards in the Army a week before graduation for love. Kate does so many courageous things, and that is just by the time we get to episode one! The only character that could have taken up the mantle of ‘Paragon of Courage’  was Kate Kane. Watching that courage shine through in every episode, for her to be a superhero in defiance of her own family, to be out in defiance of everything that her city is comfortable with, it is inspiring.

2. Sisters

Every single one of my favourite shows has epic sister relationships in them. Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow, Wynonna Earp, Motherland: Fort Salem and now Batwoman. We get to see so many sister dynamics in this series. Kate and Beth had such a sweet and loving relationship and was exactly what we needed at that point to help us to see the redeeming factors in Alice’s personality. The relationship between Alice and Kate is one fuelled by need, they need each other to survive in the way that Batman needed the Joker. Then we have Kate and Mary, the ultimate supportive and understanding relationship. Mary is there for Kate no matter what, even when she didn’t know that is who she was there for. She patches her up, sends her on her way to save the city again all while giving Kate someone to fight for.

1. Alice

Do I need to say any more with this one? Alice is just so delightfully evil and unpredictable. She is the mother freaking Queen of Arkham and of the Wonderland. Sure she got messed up in the head from being kidnapped, locked in a basement and abused for her teenage years to the point she now lives in a delusion, but she always chooses Kate. The switches from delusion to being completely lucid is something I adore in a villain, and it is on par with Heath Ledgers Joker for me. Alice is the perfect combination of a heroes bane as well as giving us a villain we feel empathy for and she makes us want to want her to win. I could probably write an entire book about why Alice is one of my favourite things this season but I’ll leave it with just this short essay. You can all tune in to my TED Talk later.

That is it for my Top 10 for this season. It has been jam-packed, and I can only imagine what else we would have gotten if Coronavirus hadn’t gotten in the way of shooting causing a 22 episode season to be reduced to a 20 episode season. I love the cliffhanger we ended on though and I am just upset now that we have to wait until January for even more episodes. This hiatus will be LONG but maybe I’ll just buy a ton of new comic books to get me through.

-Written by Christine