SPOILERS ahead! WATCH the episode before you continue!
SPOILERS ahead! WATCH the episode before you continue!
“General”:
My highlights from this episode (without particular order):
1 – Marquis Jet's first appearance! Or as he gets called "Marcus" (who names their kid Marquis?). Ryan's (half-)brother seems like a clever guy. Hard to say what he is really up to. I think their mother will be one of the villains of this season. But does he really wanna work with Ryan just to prove himself to Jada? Perhaps he will be some sort of spy for Jada?
2 – Alice and her mind games! As usual, Alice has some funny lines and I like how she tries to manipulate Mary, classic Alice. I guess as Batwoman has now Alice and Batwing as support in the field, the writers need to come up with reasons so that that Batwoman still has some solo missions. Alice pretending to be ill, was a nice idea, as Alice has her very own plans. She needs to get rid of these nanobots and the scene with the "hostage" was just hilarious (Alice asking: "So, you want me to kill you?", Nora smiles and nods... :lol:..."Could you be a worse hostage?"
. Great writing :-)3 – Nora Fries and her backstory! At first, I had to get used to the fact that Nora Fries is a granny here. But I really like her backstory. The whole idea that she broke out of Arkham 3 years ago, but was then aging rapidly without her Freeze-chamber is really good. I also like how she was handling it as she grew tired of trying to stop her aging ("I am dying my whole life"
. I think her character is very interesting, tragic, and likable. Quite some funny lines included.4 - Batwoman in action! I think those action scenes with Batwoman were some of the best of the entire show! It was nice how Batwoman took out all these goons and then fought against the "Head Mercenary" (IMDB) who was much taller than she. Batwoman had a lot of screentime and that's always a plus point for me. Feels like Batwoman had more screentime in this one episode than Stargirl had in her entire second season so far (12 out of 13 episodes) :lol: . The setting was also great as "ACE chemicals" is quite a famous one that was used well here.
5 – A frozen bridge! It was very fitting to have such a scene in this episode. OK, the blast damage from that bomb was maybe a little too much, but it was great to see the Batmobile driving over the ice. Reminded me a little of "Batman and Robin". ;-) . The whole car chase was solid and I guess they invested quite some budget in it (for CW TV),
6 - The nameless "Head Mercenary"! - The episode didn't have a new Mr. Freeze as I expected after the last two episodes with new versions of the Mad Hatter and Killer Croc. But the Head Mercenary was a really great henchwoman! A pretty impressive sight with her height of 1,79m (5'10), especially in comparison to Javicia who is much shorter. Never saw the actress Jennifer Cheon Garcia elsewhere...I guess. Her Korean-Mexican heritage mix makes her look quite "unusual", in a good way. I hope she will be in the next episode as well, as she escaped here and the title of the next episode is "Antifreeze", so I guess we might see her again. After all, Batwoman has a score to settle with her ;-)
7 - Ryan/Batwoman and Sophie! - Well, as I thought before, things are getting....well....."hotter" between these two. Sophie is just attracted to women who dress up as a bat ;-) . It was intense how Sophie kept Batwoman awake and therefore alive as she was talking to her as the Bat was trapped in that freeze chamber. It was funny how Luke insisted the two were flirting with each other.
Aspects I didn't like in this episode:
>>> It was quite odd that the cliffhanger from last week was continued in such a weird way. For some reason, that scene was interrupted and Ryan had to show up again to continue the conversation about Jada being her mom. Can't imagine why such a conversation had to be postponed as it was very important.
>>> Also, I was slightly confused on how Jada behaved as she was switching from an interested mother to a cold-hearted ice queen here and there. So far I don't have a real clue on why she left baby Ryan and why she is still so distant. But ok, I guess we will find out eventually.
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More interesting aspects for me:
--- The business guy at the very beginning of the episode was a strange character. Blaming the bus driver for his own fault and then he was quite happy/amused over the bus freezing to an ice block. Not really a sympathetic dude.
--- The freeze chamber scene was very interesting. It included the standard "let's put the hero in a trap instead of simply killing him/her" trope. Batwoman was lucky that the mercenary didn't kill her off or unmasked her as she was knocked out. But this way we could have a very intense scene where Batwoman was in real danger, and that doesn't happen that often with her bulletproof suit. Luckily Batwing was there to rescue her. Quite funny that a nameless mercenary nearly killed off Batwoman, she was much more successful than many big villains.
--- Mary and Nora Fries had two good scenes together. Funny and interesting as Nora explained her behavior.
--- Alice in Arkham...once again. Well, how things are going Alice must really hope that her help is needed so she can get out of that cell. Also, her illusions are getting worse. I wonder where this will be going?
--- That Luke and Mary relationship was certainly damaged as Mary told Ryan about Luke's PTSD issues. He denied it and confirmed to Ryan that he was ready for his Batwing role. Well, pretty sure this will backfire big time as Luke will get into severe problems at one point. But for now, he is angry at Mary for "snitching" on him, even I think she did the right thing.
--- I was very much surprised as Mary got grabbed by these vines at the very end! Judging from the titles of the first 5 episodes I didn't expect Poison Ivy to appear before episode 6 or so. But, it very much looks like she will already show up in the next episode.
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>>> Rating “General:” <<<
4,5 out of 5 - One of my favorite episodes with lots of Batwoman, very good action scenes, and some interesting storylines!