Batwoman has faced more challenges than any other returning tv show so far in 2021. While it had to endure the same COVID-19 related production delays everyone else did, it also had to unexpectedly replace lead actress Ruby Rose when she left at the end of the first season.Â
Producers were left scrambling and chose to replace the character of Kate Kane altogether instead of trying to recast the role. Enter Javicia Leslie, who plays Ryan Wilder and ushers in a new chapter for Gotham’s winged lady of the night. But the fact remains, even though the show left the door open for Rose to return in the future, Batwoman faces the same narrative growing pains this season it thought it dealt with last year.
CW network brass were probably hoping Batwoman would become a solid addition to the network’s block of DC TV shows. And successful enough to ease the sting of older shows calling it a day. Arrow ended it’s eight season run last year while both Supergirl and Black Lightning are hanging up their respective tights at the end of this year. Both Flash (seven seasons) and Legends of Tomorrow (five seasons) are getting long in the tooth and their ends are probably within sight.Â
The CW needed Batwoman to be the grown up while the younger shows (Stargirl, Superman and Lois and the upcoming Painkiller) built their audiences and new shows are developed. Replacing Rose threw a huge wrench into those plans.
But this also represents a unique opportunity as well. An opportunity to reset and course correct, giving the show a renewed and concentrated focus.
Outside of being a super hero show, what was Batwoman’s identity? The show was packaged as the world’s first openly gay super hero, but it offered little beyond that. And it often seemed afraid to dig deeper, not only into it’s own apparent identity but also its own potential.
Why was it so important for the world to have a gay super hero? How did Batwoman help struggling or closeted members of the LGBTQ+ community in both it’s fictional world and the real one? The show often seemed to concentrate more on the conflicts with her authoritarian father and villainous sister, her growing pains as Batman’s replacement and her own romantic relationships than it did considering these and other important questions.Â
Not only did Batwoman neglect it’s own packaging (rarely did it seem to genuinely consider it’s weight with the under-represented gay community), but it ignored a wider narrative potential even after flirting with it. In the same way Black Lightning seemed afraid to embrace it’s importance as a black super hero during highly charged racial times (despite dropping clues that’s what it planned on doing), Batwoman never even tried to lean into it’s potential.
But now that has changed with a fresh slate. Batwoman’s new lead not only embodies what the show always claimed it stood for, but is also a perfect choice to explore it’s storytelling opportunities.
Kate Kane was denied a promising military carer because she was a lesbian. Being expelled from military academy in turn drove a wedge between her and her father. But Kate was still rich, white and a member of Gotham’s privileged social elite. The fact that she was Bruce Wayne’s cousin was what allowed her to become Batwoman to begin with. Without that family connection she would have been another rebellious but well meaning rich kid with daddy issues.
Ryan Wilder is a different beast entirely. She was born in tragedy, growing up in an orphanage after losing her birth parents before she was born. The woman who adopted Ryan was brutally murdered in front of her by the Wonderland gang. She lost 18 months of her life to prison after she was framed and was both homeless and unemployed when the Batwoman suit literally fell into her lap. Alone, stained by violence and with nothing to her name, Ryan is the exact opposite of Kane’s child of privilege (and Bruce Wayne’s for that matter).
It was revealed during Batwoman’s first season that Batman had mysteriously disappeared from Gotham a handful of years earlier. Gotham’s police were never able to cope with the city’s crime-super or otherwise-and were overrun the second the Dark Knight disappeared. A paramilitary law enforcement organization known as the Crows rose to fill the void Batman left, protecting Gotham City when traditional law enforcement couldn’t.
But it turned out the Crows were only ever interested in protecting Gotham’s wealthy upper class. The Crows were soon the only thing resembling any genuine law enforcement in Gotham, but if you weren’t on their radar, you were at the mercy of Gotham’s endless parade of predators.
The show tried to make Batwoman a hero for everyone while Kate Kane did her best as a millionaire with a social conscience. While Batwoman protected Gotham as a vigilante that immediately came into conflict with Gotham’s Crows (who soon declared outright war on her), Kate ran a foundation that helped Gotham’s growing numbers of underprivileged get homes and created a bar for Gotham’s disenfranchised LGBTQ community.
But no matter how well meaning Kate Kane was, she still never wanted for anything (except maybe her father’s approval her and criminally insane sister’s rehabilitation). She never went hungry. She was never cold. She could always afford a trip to the hospital and she never had to be worried about being framed or racially profiled. She could never truly fix Gotham because it’s social and political failures never truly affected her.
Enter Ryan WIlder. While she sees being Batwoman was a way to help people and get revenge on the criminals who murdered her mother, she considers the Bat symbol something far greater than herself and doesn’t feel worthy enough to wear it. While she can use the Bat legacy to help both Gotham and its citizens, she feels she can never live up to it. Or do it justice. Unable to escape the shadows of her personal tragedy and the legacies of those who walked before her, Ryan is filled with regrets and uncertainty.
In short, she is the perfect hero.
She has suffered from poverty and despair in ways that Kate Kane could never imagine. She understands loss and the intimate violation of violence in ways that neither her predecessors nor her allies truly could. Ryan Wilder’s Batwoman can help all of Gotham, regardless of wealth, status, race or sexuality. She can fight corruption in Gotham’s institutions of power, including city hall and in the ranks of the Crows (who were the ones who framed her back in the day). She is a hero that can stand against all the monsters that live beneath Gotham’s bed and in its closet.
And she can stand against them in ways Kate Kane couldn’t.
(Shout out to Batwoman’s producers, who quickly found themselves pressured to abandon Batwoman’s sexuality during the recasting process. When they insisted on finding an openly gay actress to replace Rose and continue Batwoman’s legacy as an openly gay super hero, the more nefarious parts of Twitter lost it’s mind. Which, for the record, is a good thing.)
Not only can Ryan Wilder be a better Batwoman, a better hero, she can also make Batwoman a better television show. A show that, the courage of its writers and producers willing, is free to explore the potential it now has.
Image via www.cbr.com
