Batwoman returned from its midseason break last night, and it wasted no time in dropping a reference to one of the most iconic stories ever told in Bat-media – Christopher Nolan’s 2005 retelling of the Dark Knight’s origins, Batman Begins.
Titled “How Queer Everything Is Today!”, the episode began with Batwoman saving a runaway subway train from crashing. When her grappling line snapped back at her, however, she was herself rescued by a heroic cop who tackled her out of the way. The incident went viral with Gothamites “shipping” the couple. This led Kate Kane to decide to publicly come out as a lesbian, via an interview with Kara Danvers for CatCo Magazine.
But, putting aside the main storyline for a moment, let’s stick with that train crash. When investigating it, Luke Fox commented that hacking the train’s internal computers and jamming the brakes should have been impossible as Gotham City’s trains have run on an “independent analog system” ever since “the Scarecrow incident.”
This isn’t just a nod to Batman foe Jonathan Crane but seems to be specifically calling back to the third act of Begins. Any self-respecting Bat-fan will recall that Scarecrow was working with Ra’s al Ghul in that movie to infect Gotham’s water supply with his fear toxin. The final stage of the plan involved Ra’s travelling via monorail to the city’s central water source – under Wayne Tower – to release the drug. Clearly, something very similar played out in Batwoman‘s Gotham City and precautions were taken to make sure it never happened again.
This may just be a callback to that movie, but given the multiversal reboot of “Crisis on Infinite Earths” that resulted in multiple Earths combining to form Earth-Prime, this leaves us wondering whether Nolan’s Batverse has merged with the Arrowverse. Remember, Chicago was used to represent Gotham in “Elseworlds,” just as it was in the Dark Knight trilogy.
Batwoman continues this Sunday on The CW.