REVIEW: Batwoman, Season 2 Episode Thirteen 'I'll Give You A Clue'

 REVIEW: Batwoman, Season 2 Episode Thirteen 'I'll Give You A Clue'

One of the greatest characters of Batwoman is undoubtedly Sophie Moore (Meagan Tandy). Strong, tough and decidedly no nonsense, the character has an undeniable screen presence, and the point where she becomes a part of the Bat team surely can't come soon enough. She has an illustrious skill set for sure, and seems exactly the sort of person you would try to recruit if you were attempting to keep Gotham safe.

This episode delves more into her past, when we see a man she helped put behind bars return to torment her once more. The man in question is former quiz show presenter Arthur Brown (Rick Miller), who goes by the name of 'Cluemaster'. He feels a little too close to the iconic Batman villain The Riddler, who also likes to leave clues for Gotham's heroic figures to solve, but I can turn a blind eye to that because they do make a cheeky reference to the similarities here. The writers are fully aware, and not trying to pass the character off as an original creation away from Edward Nygma.

Ryan (Javicia Leslie) and Mary (Nicole Kang) are brought into the narrative by a message left for Sophie that forms a cryptic clue for the whereabouts of a mystery woman. Their inclusion into this narrative largely involving Sophie feels natural rather than forced, because there's a good story reason established for why she is at Ryan and Mary's flat in the first place. She's there to offer support for Mary, who she told about her Dad Jacob (Dougray Scott) taking the snake bite, so it's not as though it's just a random visit that happens to coincide with the message left for Sophie.

The reveal that the mystery woman is Cluemaster's daughter Stephanie Brown (Morgan Kohan), the real person who had solved Cluemaster's riddles that Sophie had taken the credit for, is a pretty effective and surprising twist. The episode smartly leads us to believe that Sophie is the one who Cluemaster wants, due to the planting of his obsession with the Crows agent and the information that she had apparently solved his puzzles,  so the plot divergence that reveals she wasn't actually the one who solved his questions and that it's actually his daughter he is trying to kill comes as a total shock. It's pretty horrendous witnessing a fether trying to gas his own daughter to death in a car, and a good means of demonstrating just how much of a looney this guy has become.

Stephanie is more than just a plot device however. She also gets a romance with Luke (Camrus Johnson). I really like these two together; the actors have so much chemistry, and they feel a natural together onscreen. I hope we get to see more of them in the coming weeks, as the episode certainly seemed to tease the possibility of more to come from their romance. It's about time we saw someone other than Ryan Wilder and Sophie Moore explore their individual love lives, as we otherwise don't get much of  Luke's private affairs (or Mary's, for that matter).

Of course, a big crux of this episode involves Sophie trying to convince Ryan to trust her. Sophie knows that Ryan Wilder is Batwoman, but Ryan doesn't know that Sophie is aware of her true identity. There's a very clear through-line here of Ryan learning to have faith in those around her, and to not tar every person under the same brush. They actively address the way she views all Crows as essentially the same, which is good to see, as I think it's a major flaw of the character that she is so narrow-minded in that respect. Sure, the Crows may have caused her a lot of trouble in her personal life, and Sophie and Ryan may not have been exactly best buddies in the past, but Sophie is still a good person, just doing her job to help keep the city safe.

The episode ends with Alice (Rachel Skarsten) discovering that 'Circe' is actually Kate Kane (Wallis Day). They've been teasing this in the second season for so long now that I really want them to just get on with it. It feels like we have been told again and again that Circe is Kate, and yet the narrative concerning Kate brainwashed into believing she is Circe never really seems to progress. I'm getting a little bored of this aspect of the plot, as I just want to see Kate Kane back in action as a version of Batwoman, and I'm not sure I see the need for all of this extra padding.

Overall, 'I'll Give You A Clue' is a solid episode of Batwoman's second season. Whilst there are some obvious similarities to the Riddler in the episode's antagonist the Cluemaster, and the Kate Kane narrative is starting to drag a little, the episode as a whole provides a solid reason for Ryan to finally learn to trust Sophie Moore. I just hope we can get Kate Kane as the previous Batwoman sooner rather than later, because the exaggerated wait for her to don the suit once more is growing a little on the dull side.

What are your thoughts on the thirteenth episode of Batwoman's second season? Let me know in the comments.