Critic Reviews

Rose is perfectly cast. The show has a lot to offer, too.

Everything in the “Batwoman” premiere occurs at a breakneck pace. This is great for quickly filling in a new character’s backstory but not for developing a superhero. ... With “Gotham” wrapping up earlier this year, the TV landscape was in desperate need of stories to tell from the Batman universe. It’s a world that should consistently be explored. “Batwoman” appears ready to do just that.

It comes close, but it doesn’t quite get there. Still, there’s potential, particularly when Batwoman stops trying to be a Gotham story, an Arrowverse show, and a familiar origin yarn, and starts focusing on what makes it different.

The facts of who Kate is immediately make her Batwoman origin story different and intriguing. Rose, a once controversial choice for the role, does her best to reveal the flickers of pain underneath Kate’s steadfast stoicism. ... There are a few plot twists, none very surprising, but satisfying nonetheless. The pilot is otherwise jam-packed with plot, standard Gotham mythology, and some unfortunately flat acting that hopefully will all become more multi-faceted in future episodes.

Gritty and fiercely feminist, the series is very much an Arrowverse show that also stands as its own thing.

What makes “Batwoman” stand apart is that Kate is a lesbian, and by the end of the premiere she’s caught up in an unconventional-for-TV love triangle. Beyond that, this superhero show is admittedly more of the same.

The best part of the new series is that unfussy, effortless way of getting Kate's sexual orientation out of the way, and also Kate herself. She's a bantamweight crusader with lightning moves as opposed to devastating ones. ... What's less-best is the usual reliance on the sort of story that Gotham has undergone countless times before. There are no surprises left here, not even a decent dopey headline in the still-dopey, ever-credulous Gotham newspapers (which still don't have websites).

Batwoman really sings when it’s building the adversarial relationship between Kate and Alice, an opposite-sides-of-the-coin situation with similar vibes to Batman and the Joker. Skarsten is having a blast alternating between whimsy and dangerous menace, and her villain feels like the only performance that’s been lived in for more than two episodes. Better yet, it’s bouncing off of Skarsten’s unpredictable energy that Rose’s surly, tamped down performance works best.

Batwoman has a welcome amount of openness and information sharing from the get-go. The series also does surprisingly well with establishing several key supporting characters. ... Around Kate Kane and Rose, there's a question mark. The camera is intrigued, gravitating toward her angular features, spiky hair and convincing swagger. I'm not sure she's as good at conveying the required authority or enigmatic mystery.

Batwoman sometimes drops the ball. It’s a brand name with several new twists. But it also can seem like another one off the assembly line.