Batwoman Takes A Subtle Swing At Fox’s Gotham Villains
The Batwoman season 3 premiere “Mad as a Hatter” takes a subtle shot at Fox’s Gotham series and its use of classic Batman villains.
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Warning: The following contains SPOILERS for the Batwoman season 3 premiere, “Mad As A Hatter.”
The first episode of Batwoman season 3 contains a subtle insult directed at Fox’s Gotham series, and the sometimes ridiculous extremes the show took in tying classic Batman villains into its story. The joke hit all the harder since it was delivered by actress Victoria Cartagena, who was a part of the cast of Gotham season 1. Ironically, Cartagena is playing a different version of the same character on Batwoman that she played on Gotham—former detective Rene Montoya.
The Batwoman season 3 premiere “Mad as a Hatter” set up the central storyline for a new season, with the titular hero and her allies searching for a collection of supervillain weapons claimed by Batman as trophies years earlier. The weapons were stolen by Black Mask and were last seen washing downstream in the Batwoman season 2 finale. “Mad as a Hatter” reveals the fate of one of these trophies: the mind-controlling hat of the appropriately named Mad Hatter, Jervis Tetch. The object’s new owner is an obsessive young man named Liam Crandle (Amitai Marmorstein), who becomes fixated upon freeing the equally unstable Alice (Rachel Skarsten). He begins using the hat to strike out at the health care system that he sees as being more focused on stigmatizing mental illness and making money.
This new modernized Mad Hatter has a penchant for posting on social media, which draws the attention of Rene Montoya, a former police detective who in the Arrowverse heads the Rogues Unit, a special team run by the Gotham City Mayor’s Office that focuses on preventing potential supervillain attacks. The Rogues Unit has seen better days in the Batwoman season 3 premiere, as Rene is the group’s only active member now that iconic villains like the Penguin and Poison Ivy are no longer roaming around Gotham. This seems unlikely to change, as the city’s new mayor appears to be more concerned about the public outcry over the Rogues Unity’s significant budget than about any potential threat posed by the new Mad Hatter. This led Montoya to ask, in a heated moment, if it would be better for the public to complain about preventable mass casualties, before begging the mayor to listen to her “before this becomes Jim Gordon’s Gotham all over again.”
The exact wording of Montoya’s plea seems a clear reference to Fox’s Gotham series, which centered around Jim Gordon (Ben McKenzie) and his efforts to navigate the labyrinthian politics of Gotham City. While Gotham developed a strong following, it also had a somewhat infamous reputation for the many liberties it took with the Batman mythology in adapting his villains. Almost every person in Gordon’s life seemed to be connected in some unseen way, as if they were destined to become a supervillain. This was even true of Gotham’s version of Rene Montoya, who was originally introduced as a rival of Gordon at work, but was later revealed to be an ex-lover of his fiancée, Barbara Kean. While not quite as intentionally camp as the 1966 Batman series, many still found humor in Gotham’s tendency to seemingly introduce new supervillains into the narrative at random.
While this jab at Gotham is funny, it also seems somewhat hypocritical given what little is known about Batwoman season 3’s cast and main storyline. Reportedly the first five episodes of Batwoman will see new versions of Killer Croc and Mr. Freeze emerge to join the new Mad Hatter. It has also been confirmed that Poison Ivy (Bridget Regan) will play a major role in the season’s story. Given that Batwoman previously faced criticism for failing to utilize every aspect of its Gotham City setting during its first two seasons (a problem likely caused by the character rights for various villains being tied up in The Batman movie) the sudden saturation of supervillains seems to be a well-intentioned effort to make up for lost time.
Link Source : https://screenrant.com/batwoman-gotham-show-villains-gag-insult-explained/