Check out our recap of the pilot before diving into “The Rabbit Hole.”
Episode 1.2 opens with Kate’s voiceover and a search party looking for Kate’s missing sister: What’s the difference between being hopeful and being crazy? Because whatever it is got me through that day and the fears that followed.
It’s one of those things that seem reallyyyyyy deep, but also doesn’t make much sense.
Alice’s masked men light a naughty fire when Batwoman appears. She gets shot several times at close range but is unscathed. “Cool,” she grins. Kate’s trying to get info to prove her theory that Alice = Beth before her Dad kills her.
It’s worth saying here, that even though viewers know this to be true (we’ve seen a scene of Alice with a photo of them as kids), it’s wild that Kate is going so hard on a hunch because of… a birthstone gem found on a dagger? It’s like me shouting that Beyoncé is a lesbian because she wore flannel once.
Kate stomps into the Bat Cave with her Bat Helmet under her arm, and her pitch black eye makeup is gone, conveniently replaced with a nice smokey shadow and half inch eyelashes. This isn’t what the gays want! Give us a butch so blisteringly butch our eyes blister.
Next, we see Kate and her family at the penthouse kitchen. Her dad bugs her for not joining the crows. She says it’s not a good fit right now. Isn’t that kinda weird, her sudden u-turn? Her sister Mary chimes in that maybe it’s drama with Sophie. Saying “Oh my god, can we talk about the fact that she’s married to a MAN? I’m not trying to label her or anything. But what’s her deal exactly?”
Suddenly, Kate interrupts that, saying “I think Alice is Beth.” Everyone looks at her, and I felt like I was at that table too, being like WTF sis. She explains the coincidences, but her father says that the facts are, they found a skull matching Beth’s DNA all those years ago.
Catherine makes her case that Alice is a psychopath, but Kate blurts out again, “Alice IS Beth. I’ll prove it to you.” On the one hand it’s refreshing to have a hero state their opinion instead of the painful and belabored miscommunication trope. But the juvenile way she does it is bizarre!
Even more bizarre is her haircut. It’s like a poofy, short mom-cut but trimmed in the back to be more lesbian- a feminized old lady haircut. I can’t wait for the show to change it closer to what Ruby Rosy normally has. WE WANT HOT GIRL HAIR!
Next scene: Alice is ranting at an old couple she has tied up. “Jacob Kane isn’t man enough to protect this city. Because he’s a quitter. When things get difficult he gives up.” Hmm, I wonder what this means? It seems EXTREMELY personal. Then she screams, “This is personal!” Copy that sis, we know. She’s pissed she can’t find her knife.
In a flashback, we see a young Kate staying up all night by the phone waiting for Beth to call, and her dad promising they’ll never stop looking.
Kate visits Sophie at Crows HQ. She’s looking at a laptop article of the recent “Batman” sighting. She looks Kate dead in the eye, discerningly, and says “Is this you?” I was SHOOK. I could not believe she came out and said this. In other superhero shows, even in Batman, everyone pretends they cant recognize someone just because their eyes are covered. This is SO lesbian of them, to recognize each other faces, or smell even (c’mon you know it’s true) when they collapsed together after the fall. Like, you can’t dupe a dyke. I don’t make the rules.
Despite this, Kate pretends like it’s not her. She asks Sophie to do a DNA test of the knife she has (but somehow doesn’t explain how she got this??). Sophie says Jacob would kill her. Good boundaries, sis! As she hands it back, her wedding ring shows. Kate says, if she had known Sophie was getting married, she would have come home sooner. Not to attend, to stop it. Wow! Yes! Bold!
Suddenly, a tear gas canister and truck peels at them. They run out of the way. Sophie ends up on top of Kate. Nice. They get up, and instinctively in a pure lesbian connection get back-to-back Charlie’s Angels-style to fight the bunny men. Go, girls, go! They pop lock and sock the baddies away.
Kate gets a tipoff and learns one of Alice’s men is healing at Mary’s underground hospital. She lets him go, telling him to reply the following message to Alice/Beth: “Waffles.”
Meanwhile the Crows get a tip off of their own. Alice’s people are hanging in white suburbia, and Jacob somehow knows where (their childhood home, but somehow still doesn’t think it’s Beth). Kate calls Sophie, asking for her to buy her some time to prove that Alice is Beth, who tries but later reveals where Kate is to the Crows.
Kate meets in a dark park at the waffle stand, and memories of being there flood back- feeling guilty for not trying harder to save her sister. Young Kate is a great actress! You can really feel the guilt and grief chipping away at her.
Alice is on the park swing set, being real creepy. Kate asks, “Are you my sister?” Kate proves with enough earnestness that she really IS remorseful, and after all these years hasn’t slept through the night or stopped hoping, so Alice offers her DNA. Then the Crows arrive, and Kate convinces them not to kill her but to take her to Arkham. Alice says some weird riddle that means she’s going after Mary, the competition. Mary fights her assailant with sweet moves. Batwoman appears to finish him off.
Alice’s transport van explodes and falls in the river. In an ironic twist of fate, her sister is drowning again. Batwoman cuts through the metal (pretty cool) and uses a high-tech scuba mask to breathe and give Alice/Beth air. Submerged, Alice/Beth acknowledges Batwoman’s gesture, tenderly touching her face, until police bullets hit the truck which explodes again, violently buffering them apart underwater, all while a Coldplay-esq song plays. Welp, that’s a thing they did.
Kate is washed up on the rocky beach. Luke, from the Bat Cave, uses the suit’s remote defibrillator to wake her up. Also, somehow, she outsmarts a bloodhound that’s one foot away from her? Bat skills! I think.
The next day, Mary and Kate have an emotional exchange about how she almost died just for being her sister, one who has never had much connection. “Is Alice worth it?” Mary cries softly. “Because if she is, could you tell her I’m not a threat?” You can tell Kate is clearly conflicted, because Alice/Beth has already killed many people, and shows no sign of stopping. It’s gonna be fun as heck when Mary and Kate join forces as sisters and teammates.
At Crows HQ, Sophie tells Kate that she’s happy in her marriage and that there’s no “us.” Kate is still bitter about the military academy, saying you sold out. Girllll, your ignorance is showing. I thought you were over that.
Kate thanks Luke for his help and pieces together that there’s someone else at play other than Alice, who doesn’t want her to know things. And … viewers see it’s Catherine, her step mom. Now things just got interesting!
