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Criminal Groups

The Wonderland Gang

Elizabeth "Beth" Kane / Alice

Elizabeth Marie "Beth" Kane / Alice

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/alice_97.jpg

Species: Human

Played By: Rachel Skarsten, Ava Sleeth (young)

First Appearance: "Pilot" (Batwoman 1x1)

Appearances: Batwoman

An Alice-in-Wonderland-themed supervillainess and leader of the Wonderland Gang, revealed to be Kate's supposedly long-dead twin.

see Arrowverse: Other Earths page to see her Earth-99 and undesignated Earth counterparts

see Birds of Prey (2002) for Dinah Redmond, the Earth-203 character who bears her physical likeness

13 Is Unlucky: On her and Kate's 13th birthday after their Bat Mitzvah, they were caught in the crossfire of a road chase between Batman and the Joker. As a result, Beth lost her mother and ended up in the clutches of a madman, kicking off a series of nightmarish sufferings that turned her into Alice.
Adaptational Badass: She's much more capable at fighting than in the comics, and quite a bit hardier.
Adaptational Expansion: In the comics, Alice was only a villain for four issues, and did not get involved with Catherine, Bette (Mary's analogue), or Sophie whatsoever. Here, she has more complicated dealings with every main character besides Luke, and has accomplished more as a villain than her comic counterpart ever did.
Adaptational Sexuality: She was in some sort of romantic relationship with Dodgson, her mole, and lovers with her former trainer, Ocean. In the comics, her proclivities in that area were never mentioned.
Alice Allusion: Her entire criminal shtick is based on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its adaptations. This was revealed to have come from immersing herself in the book's lore as a form of Escapism during her disappearance.
Arch-Enemy:
- She is Kate Kane's most prominent and personal enemy. Jacob even goes so far as to compare the two of them to Batman and the Joker.
- Initially one-sided with Ryan Wilder, who hates Alice for killing her adoptive mother, which Alice doesn't even remember. However, it becomes personal on both ends when Ryan leaves Alice to die at the hands of "Circe Sionis" and has her imprisoned in Arkham. Ironically, however, they seem to have a deeper understanding of the others' psyches and motivations than Alice and Kate did.
The Atoner: Alice helps bring a Poison Ivy-infected Mary back to her senses to make up for her role in finalizing Mary's transformation.
Ax-Crazy: She's understandably not playing with a full deck, and murders people without blinking.
Badass Normal: She appears to have no powers but is able to hold her own against Batwoman.
Be Careful What You Wish For:
- Alice spends the whole first half of Season 1 trying to make Kate give up on redeeming her. When Kate finally does, Alice is disheartened by Kate's newfound antipathy for her, especially when Kate proves that she'd let Alice die to save a version of Beth who never became Alice.
- At the end of Season 1, Alice refuses to leave Gotham with Mouse even though her retribution is technically completed and poisons him so she can continue to destroy Kate. By Season 3, her schemes have resulted in the rest of the people who still cared about her being dead (Ocean) or out of the picture (Kate, Jacob). However, she has instead achieved peace with her sister and now desires to leave the city behind, but is forced to contend with being trapped in Arkham with her mental afflictions, and even hallucinates Mouse as a guilty conscience over throwing away her past opportunities to reform.
Becoming the Mask: In Season 3, she initially allies with Poison Mary for purely self-serving reasons, wanting to escape the Bat-Team's custody so she can finally leave Gotham. However, during the latter half of the season, Alice and Mary begin connecting as they help each other out and Alice eventually decides she wants Mary in her life, to the point that she becomes genuinely concerned for her stepsister's safety.
Beyond Redemption: Kate stops having faith in Alice being redeemable when the latter kills Catherine.
Big Bad: She's the main antagonist of Season 1.
Big Bad Duumvirate: With Mouse, and later Hush.
Big Bad Slippage: She's introduced as the feared leader of the Wonderland Gang terrorizing Gotham until her gang is murdered by Tatiana and Kate imprisons her in Arkham, which leads to her title being usurped by Safiyah and Black Mask. Julia and Black Mask even call her out on how far she's fallen.
Big Sister Instinct:
- After learning Kate was mentally reprogrammed to serve as Black Mask's daughter and right-hand, Circe Sionis, Alice fights to bring her sister's true self out in her mind.
- She gradually grows protective of Mary when the latter becomes Poison Mary, encouraging her as she comes into her powers and trying to prevent her from becoming Poison Ivy's Living Battery. Alice even willingly works with the Bat-Team to save Mary and takes the fall for an Accidental Murder she committed with her powers.
Break the Haughty: Her status as the Big Bad and Chessmaster is torn down when she's forced to face how Being Evil Sucks.
- In Season 2, Safiyah Sohail and Black Mask derail Alice's vengeance against Kate, rendering her planning All for Nothing. She's coerced into doing their bidding at the expense of Kate and Ocean, forcing her to confront her emerging conscience. In the midst of all this, the new Batwoman, Ryan Wilder, has a very personal vendetta against Alice and tries to straight up kill her, then leaves her to be killed by "Circe". While she finally abandons her crusade and helps restore Kate, Ocean is killed, Jacob is arrested, and Kate leaves Gotham while Alice is sent back to Arkham.
- In season 3, the consequences of her crimes catch up to her as she's plagued by hallucinations from her repressed guilt. And with no one left to entertain her mind games, the Bat-Team is content to let Alice rot in Arkham if it means keeping her out of their lives, only giving a damn about her wellbeing for pragmatic reasons. She's eventually made to work with the heroes in their mission but still tries to run away from her problems until her developing bond with Mary makes her seriously question her goals.
Bright Is Not Good: She has light blonde hair and wears brighter, and generally more colorful, clothing (e.g. a light blue coat and pink shirt), in contrast to Batwoman's Dark Is Not Evil costume.
But for Me, It Was Tuesday: She doesn't know who the second Batwoman Ryan is, nor does she recall killing her adoptive mother Cora Lewis (or at least, witnessing the aftermath since her gang did the deed), even when given the exact date. However, she later admits to Ryan she lied about forgetting Cora, listing off details about her appearance to prove it.
Cain and Abel: She is actually Beth Kane, Kate's sister who was thought to have died in a car accident caused by a Joker attack.
Character Tic: She enjoys flipping a butterfly knife while monologuing, "for cadence".
The Chessmaster: She's very good at pulling off complex plans and outmaneuvering several skilled factions at once.
Conspicuous Trenchcoat: She often pairs her Alice-themed outfits with a long trench coat (usually blue, pink, or yellow).
Consulting a Convicted Killer: In Season 3, she makes a deal with Renee Montoya to get out of Arkham by using her experience and knowledge as Gotham's former most prolific criminal and Arch-Enemy of Batwoman to help the Bat-Team retrieve the missing "trophies" of Batman's rogues gallery.
The Corrupter:
- She attempts to be this to Kate, believing she can manipulate her sister into becoming her partner-in-crime to wreak havok on the world over everything "they" have gone through. Even Kate being Batwoman won't sway her, as Alice repeatedly tries to get Kate to abandon her heroic code and considers her killing Cartwright in the heat of the moment as a success. She abandons this plan in favor of killing Kate as revenge for imprisoning her in Arkham.
- A more successful one to Mary after Alice learns about her developing plant powers from Poison Ivy's vines. She personally triggers Mary's final transformation and encourages her stepsister to embrace her new self's dark impulses. However, she soon comes to regret this when the OG Poison Ivy comes into the picture.
Daddy Issues: She goes out of her way to make her father suffer out of some deeply pathological hatred for abandoning her due to presuming Beth dead. Even as she's touched when finding out how much he missed her, she soon wants to break Jacob's spirit by manipulating him into killing Kate/Batwoman, or killing her sister herself in front of him.
Didn't Think This Through:
- A result of Evil Cannot Comprehend Good below; Alice's whole Evil Plan was partly predicated on her assumption that Kate felt the same way about their family as Alice did. When it became clear that she didn't, Alice was thrown for a loop.
- Alice's increasingly dramatic and frenzied attempts to make Kate give up on redeeming her work like a charm; Kate finally concludes that Alice is irredeemable, but now loathes what her sister has become, much to Alice's shock.
Dirty Coward: Alice has twice sold out innocent people to try and save her own life, and while dying of cellular breakdown, has the audacity to beg Mary for help.
Doublethink: Alice both blames her family for her current state and revels in it as her true self.
Drives Like Crazy: As evidenced in Season 3. No wonder both Ryan and Mary don't want to take a ride with her.
Dye Hard: Her hair used to be brown, but she dyed it light blonde as an homage to Alice's Adventures In Wonderland. She wears a dark brown wig after making a Heel–Face Turn and planning to go into therapy.
Earn Your Happy Ending: While she still has a long way to go in coming to grips with her past villainous activities, and her family will never be the same again, Alice takes the first steps towards redemption and self-improvement in the Series Finale. Everyone who wronged her and her family is dead or imprisoned, she has begun to let go of her inner turmoil and grudges, and parted ways with Batwoman on civil terms after so long of not being Easily Forgiven. Better yet, she forms a stable, loving bond with Mary, giving Alice someone to lean on as she prepares to heal her mental scars at an overseas hospital.
Evil Cannot Comprehend Good:
- Alice expected Kate to share her joy that Catherine was dead and Jacob framed for it, as revenge for the latter two fabricating evidence of the former's death and calling off the search for her, respectively. What Alice failed to understand was that, no matter how Kate felt about Catherine, she didn't want her stepmother dead because Catherine was still a person and Mary's mother. Kate, while a little bitter about Jacob giving up on finding Beth too soon, also didn't want anything bad to happen to him, not only because Jacob is her father but because he's a good person who didn't do anything wrong. Even Mouse calls Alice out on still believing that Kate will join her after everything she's done.
- Alice doesn't see Kate being Batwoman as anything but her pretending to be a hero, and assumes that Kate will immediately join her if she's publicly unmasked.
Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Subverted... at first.
- Kate captures her boyfriend Dodgson and offers to release him if Alice can avoid killing for 24 hours. Alice reluctantly agrees, only to kill a Crow officer and then show photographic evidence of this to Kate, saying she'll just have to let Dodgson die after all.
- Her adopted brother Jonathan/Mouse points out that Alice never even visited him during the five years he was incarcerated in Arkham. When Mouse threatens to leave her if she doesn't give up her self-destructive campaign of revenge, Alice poisons him, though it clearly upsets her to do so. In the third season as she struggles with her humanity, Alice makes it clear she regrets what happened with Mouse.
- Alice's love for her sister is similarly self-centered. She wants Kate to change to be like her instead of vice versa, and failing to see how her efforts to prove they aren't so different only drive them apart. However, the second season shows she really does care for her sister, and is willing to go to any lengths to rescue her, but she keeps coming up short until the finale, where she frees Kate from Black Mask and Enigma's control. Afterwards, Alice and Kate seem to have called a truce with each other now that they've stopped trying to change the other and need to find their purpose.
- Her above-mentioned Daddy Issues are complicated as Alice's schemes unravel. When Jacob stops her from committing suicide after exposure to Fear Toxin, she breaks down in his arms and calls him "Daddy" for the first time in years, proving that Beth still loves her father deep down. While she targets Jacob again after being sent to Arkham and Kate is presumed dead, her plans now seem to have less to do with him personally. After she gives up on her vendetta, Alice once again seeks her father's presence and works with him to save Kate. In the third season, she initially hopes Jacob will break her out of Arkham so they can be some sort of family again.
- Zig-zagged multiple times in regards to Ocean, the man who helped train her on Coryana, whom she eventually fell in love with. They both become devoted to each other, but his adoptive sister Safiyah has Enigma remove their memories of each other after they attempt to leave together with a Desert Rose. Then when they encounter each other in the present day, their time together comes back in flashes and they act on old feelings, until Alice stabs Ocean to get Kate back from Safiyah... except she doesn't have Kate, and the knife she wanted Ocean killed with was laced with the Desert Rose to bring him back when needed, as "proof" that Alice didn't care for him. Then, when he bumps into her again, he almost does her in as she's holding Enigma hostage... until Enigma brings back their memories and they act on their feelings again. Then, things get rocky when he kills Enigma to keep Kate from being freed of her brainwashing, with him claiming that Kate is explicitly toxic for Alice. However, she convinces Ocean to help her have both him and Kate back in her life and is heartbroken when he's killed by Tatiana, with his memory haunting her in the third season.
Evil Is Hammy: Rachel Skarsten is clearly enjoying herself as a villain and devouring every second of her appearances.
Faux Affably Evil: Alice is charming and conducts herself very politely, with a lot of eloquent speech and Lewis Carroll quotes, but it doesn't take long for her to show that she's completely off her rocker; she can barely go five minutes without saying something awful or doing something violent. However, this later becomes subverted as she is shown to be kind to Mouse and deep down loves her family, secretly not wanting them to give up on or leave her. She even starts to bond with her stepsister Mary when the latter becomes Poison Mary.
First-Episode Twist: Her identity is revealed at the end of the pilot.
Freudian Excuse: The horrors Beth was exposed to and made to participate in while being held captive by Cartwright, on top of the belief that her family gave her up for dead, caused her to snap, turning her into the sociopathic Alice.
Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: Despite everybody (be it Kate, Jacob or Mary) feeling incredibly sorry for her, they all make it abundantly clear that, at some point, Alice cannot keep on blaming her past for everything and that the gravity of her crimes far outweighs any sympathy they might've had for her. This especially gets hammered home in Season 2, where Safiyah and Ryan rub it in that Alice could have chosen to try and overcome the trauma of what happened to her, but instead chose to kill everyone she perceived as wronging her.
Good Feels Good: While on the run with a Poison Ivy-infected Mary, her mental state stops falling apart as they develop a sincere sisterly relationship. Alice is perhaps the most serene and well-balanced she's ever been (probably since before the fated car crash), feeling glad that she and Mary found each other. This eventually prompts her to be Insane No More by seeking a way to cure her mental instability.
Green-Eyed Monster: She sends Dodgson to kill Mary, as Kate is her sister. Apparently, that goes way back, as Beth never liked to share.
Harmful to Minors:
- A 13-year-old Beth saw her mother being decapitated when their car fell off a bridge into a river, which marked her Start of Darkness.
- In August Cartwright's captivity, she witnessed his skin graft experiments using flesh from corpses and was Forced to Watch him brutally kill her kitten.
Heel Realization:
- In "Survived Much Worse", she's made to realize how pointless her endgame is after Safiyah and Ryan both point out that for all that Alice wants to present herself as a victim entitled to revenge, she's really just a Psychopathic Womanchild who has spent so long wrapped up in her rage and pain that she doesn't actually know how to function outside of those feelings. Alice accepts that they're more right than she's willing to admit, enough to choose saving Kate over revenge.
- She has one in "Meet Your Maker" and "Toxic" about pushing the reluctant Mary into embracing her powers for Alice's own selfish reasons after witnessing her stepsister losing her former compassionate self to become a supervillain. This kickstarts her path to the closest she's come to a Heel–Face Turn.
Holding the Floor: No matter how many times she finds herself on the wrong end of a gun, knife, or Bat-gadget, all it takes is a speech to buy her enough time to get clear again.
Ignored Epiphany:
- In "Take Your Choice", she sees a hallucination of Catherine who denounces her as being evil through-and-through, implying that Alice is aware of her reality but refuses to accept it. Furthermore when Kate chooses to save an Alternate Self Beth who grew up a kind and decent person, instead of her evil and irredeemable sister, Alice only sees this as another betrayal by her family. She also rejects the suggestion that this other Beth represents a different course she could take with her life.
- In "O'Mouse", Alice acknowledges that poisoning her only friend Mouse is as big a betrayal as anything she blames her own family for, but refuses to forgo her revenge and run away with him to a better life.
I Just Want to Be Free: In Season 3, she's no longer interested in plotting against anyone and simply desires to make a new life for herself away from Gotham. However, no one, especially Ryan, will let her off scot-free for her crimes. This takes a toll on Alice's mental state as she resorts to her former underhandedness in her attempts to escape custody during her parole arrangement with Renee and Ryan. She makes a last-ditch attempt at freedom by colluding with Poison Mary, but gives up her opportunity to flee the country in order to help the Bat-Team save Mary from Poison Ivy's influence.
Insane No More: In the second half of the third season, she longs to be free from the trauma and insanity of her Alice persona by using the Joker's Electric Joybuzzer to reverse her mental condition and be Beth again, even though it's not guaranteed to work. She becomes consumed with self-loathing and goes to increasingly desperate lengths, including telling Marquis about the Batcave as part of a deal, to obtain the joy buzzer. However, Mary and Ryan ultimately make her realize that she needs to face her struggles and reclaim her Beth self of her own will through professional help.
I Reject Your Reality: Beth convinced herself she was Alice and having a "tea party" with her friend Mouse/Jonathan to deal with her imprisonment by Cartwright and partaking in his research. While she broke the illusion after killing Cartwright's mother, her crusade proves she's still not completely tethered to reality, refusing to believe her perception of her twin sister Kate is really skewed or that Alice herself is just an irredeemable, psychopathic killer. When faced with something contradicting her desired scenarios, she comes crashing down HARD. Alice especially struggles with this in the third season after giving up on her ambitions and no longer having control over her circumstances, nor any allies or family around.
Irony: Kate spent the first half of Season 1 trying to help Alice regain her former identity as Beth. In the second half of season 2, Alice ends up helping Kate reclaim her memories from her brainwashing as Circe Sionis. Kate herself lampshades their reversed roles.
It's All About Me: Alice's whole crusade against Gotham is basically her lashing out at her family for not saving her from Cartwright. She also places no value on innocent life compared to her own, throwing Mary under the bus to save her own neck from a serial killer and when it becomes clear that she and Beth can't coexist on Earth-Prime, Alice's first thought is that she deserves to live more, and she immediately tries to kill Beth. On top of that, the idea that other people, especially Kate, feel differently than Alice does about certain things is something she has real trouble wrapping her head around. Even the few people she does value aren't safe from this, as Alice manipulates Kate into becoming a killer just to prove a point and has no problem ignoring any of Mouse's desires when they clash with her own goals.
- A key part of her Character Development in Season 3 is shedding this mentality and putting others before herself. She's initially loyal to Mary out of self-preservation, but sticks with her after Mary develops powers out of genuine familial care. Alice ultimately sacrifices her best chance at freedom, something she yearned for throughout the season, to pull Mary away from Poison Ivy and even takes the blame for a hunter Mary killed. Also, despite her tense relationship with the Bat-Team, she warns Sophie about Renee using them to find Poison Ivy by hiding the final Bat trophy. This culminates in Alice relinquishing the Joker's joy buzzer for Marquis' sake, accepting that he needs its final curing jolt more than her, and even aiding Ryan in the Final Battle.
Journey to Find Oneself: At the end of "We Having Fun Yet?", she decides to leave Gotham for a psychiatric facility in Switzerland to find herself.
Lack of Empathy: She couldn't care less who she screws over, so long as Kate is dead. This turns out to be deliberate, as Safiyah had the hypnotist Enigma remove all traces of Alice's empathy as punishment for helping Ocean to steal a Desert Rose.
- As she regains her memories, Alice becomes uncharacteristically conflicted about continuing to hurt the people she knows in a bid to get even. After Ocean's murder, she even tries apologizing to Ryan for her indirect role in Cora's death, now understanding how it feels to live with the loss of the one person who loved and understood her. While Alice snaps out a vicious retort when the apology is rejected, her effort is still noteworthy.
- In season 3, Alice's arc is centered on grappling with how she really feels about the pain and death she brought to various people with her actions. Mary's determination to make amends for the harm she caused as Poison Ivy resonates with Alice, which spurs her to search for a way to regain her empathy and purge her mind of her psychotic impulses.
Laser-Guided Amnesia: On Coryana after she and Ocean were caught stealing a Desert Rose, Beth's memories of her time on the island were altered by the hypnotist Enigma so she would forget about her romance with Ocean and the subsequent positive emotions it inspired in her, while retaining her training and dread of Safiyah, which led her to fully embrace her Alice identity.
Light Is Not Good: Alice's bleached-blonde hair and light-colored outfits strongly contrast her against Batwoman.
Love Redeems: It's a complicated journey but she eventually has a Heel Realization about the futility of her hatred against Kate and Jacob, and resolves to rescue her missing sister instead. Taken further when Mary attempts using her medical expertise to help Alice deal with her visions, causing Alice to become more civil with her. Though this is partly because Mary is all she has left, with Kate taking a sabbatical from the city and Jacob arrested, they find the sister they always wanted in each other when Mary is possessed by Poison Ivy's vines. It's ensuring her stepsister's wellbeing that causes Alice to work with the Bat Team of her own volition (with no ulterior motives or betrayals) in getting Mary to abandon her partnership with Pamela Isley. Finally, she ends the series by going on a Journey to Find Oneself with Mary's support to overcome her demons and take back her Beth identity.
Luke, I Am Your Father: Or sister, as the end of the series premiere reveals.
Made of Iron: She survives the underwater explosion of her transport van without any apparent difficulty; Kate, wearing an armored suit, only survived with emergency defibrillation.
Misblamed: While Alice is genuinely guilty of quite a lot of crimes, the one for which Ryan hates her - the murder of her adoptive mother Cora - is not one of them. The murder was carried out by Alice's Mooks, but not on her order, and Alice herself only turned up after the attack was over. Ryan's justification for this - that it was Alice's fault her gang was willing to do that in the first place - also doesn't hold much water, as there's no indication that she was using any form of brainwashing or conditioning on her men, or indeed did anything at all except hire them from Gotham's already-quite-bloodthirsty underground economy. While it was arguably Alice's fault that they were holed up in that particular empty apartment, thus creating the conditions for the murder, this was pure chance, and she had no reason to expect the occupants to return early.
Misplaced Retribution: Alice's anger towards Catherine for making Jacob and Kate believe she was dead is understandable and justified. Her anger towards Jacob and Kate for believing a very convincing lie from two different parties who wanted them to think Beth was dead is not. She also hates Mary for "replacing" her as Kate's sister.
Moral Myopia: To put it mildly, Alice has a real problem with perspective.
- After realising that between her and Beth, only one can survive, Alice immediately tries to kill the innocent Beth and is outraged that both Mary (whose mother she murdered) and Kate (whom Alice has manipulated and betrayed repeatedly by this point) would rather save an innocent life than hers.
- After Kate accidentally kills Cartwright in a moment of extreme emotional stress, Alice gleefully believes that the two sisters are now no different, considering her own scores of premeditated murders morally equivalent to Kate's act.
- Alice spent all of Season 1 manipulating Kate for her own ends, but when Kate manipulates her to lock Alice in Arkham, Alice sees it as an unforgivable betrayal and vows revenge.
- Alice's Rage Breaking Point was realising that Cartwright was going to use her mother's face as one of his masks. Despite this, Alice has no problem with using Cartwright's false face trick whenever convenient.
- Alice is very angry at Ryan for abandoning her at the hands of Black Mask during their mission to save their respective Love Interests from the False Face Society, especially after Alice saved Ryan. However, she seems to forget that the reason Ryan left is because Alice is a violent murderer who she can't trust and holds responsible for the death of her mother.
- Alice calls out Ryan for not reporting a Poison Ivy-influenced Mary to Montoya immediately, but being perfectly fine with locking Alice in Arkham and throwing away the key. Alice is clearly ignoring that she committed her crimes of her own free will while Mary is explicitly being brainwashed. Never mind the fact that Alice is partly responsible for Mary's situation.
Mythology Gag:
- In Batwoman (Rebirth), Beth was very briefly mentioned to have tailored a suit for Kate. In the show, her advanced sewing skills at even a young age prove useful to Cartwright's attempts to fix Johnny's face.
- She agrees to go to the Weiße Kaninchen Sanatorium at Mary's suggestion to work on her mental health at the end of the show. Beth's comic counterpart stayed there between the New 52 and DC Rebirth.
Named by the Adaptation: Before the show, Beth's middle name (if any) was never revealed in the comics. Here, her middle name is Marie.
Never Found the Body: Easily explains how Kate’s sister is still kicking.
Never My Fault:
- All of the wrong she does is either Kate or Jacob's fault for not saving her as child.
- Alice initially brushes off hiding Mary's emerging powers from her and the Bat Team, which allows Mary to become the second Poison Ivy, and places the blame on Ryan and Luke for not paying more attention to her. Subverted, however, after Mary is brought back to herself and accuses Alice of taking advantage of her new powers, not doing anything to stop her from killing a hunter. Alice is initially hostile and insists she was there for Mary while they were on the run, but she eventually takes the blame for the man's murder to spare her step-sister.
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: During the Kanes' fateful accident, their car was briefly affixed to the bridge by Batman, but Beth tried to help her mother instead of immediately following Kate out of the wreckage. As a result, she was left trapped in the car when it went over the edge and fell into a river.
Other Me Annoys Me: She hates alternate Beth, seeing her as how Alice could have been if she was never kidnapped by Cartwright.
Practically Joker: She very much acts like a female version of the real deal. Which is ironic considering that her mother died during a terror attack of the Joker. Although her Alice in Wonderland motif makes her more akin to the Mad Hatter, she's nevertheless compared to the (supposedly) late Clown Prince of Crime a few times, with her war with Batwoman noted as similar to that of Joker and Batman's own fighting.
Psychological Projection: Alice projects a lot of her own feelings and issues onto Kate, assuming that her twin sister shares her hatred for their father and stepmother, and that Kate would be as happy to see their lives destroyed as Alice is.
Rage Breaking Point: Finding her mother's head in Cartwright's freezer and knowing what he planned to do with it, Alice well and truly snapped, assuming her deranged persona and incinerating his mother Mabel with a makeshift flamethrower.
"The Reason You Suck" Speech: She ends up the receiving end of this quite a few times during Season 2, where Safiyah and Ryan Wilder both call out her petty desires to get revenge of Kate rather than trying to overcome the trauma of what happened to her.
Revenge Before Reason: After being locked in Arkham, Alice throws out what sense of subtlety or restraint she had left in favor of plotting revenge on Kate for locking her up. She orchestrates a takeover of the Asylum, then completely ruins that set-up when it becomes slightly inconvenient. In the Season 1 finale, Mouse has finally had enough and threatens to abandon her, so she poisons him for making her "choose" between her revenge and a potentially happy life elsewhere with him.
Sanity Slippage: Multiple times. Later on, she alternates between this and Sanity Strengthening.
- Beth's years of captivity under the Cartwrights drove her insane until she adopted the identity of Alice. Additionally, Safiyah had Beth’s memories of Ocean and her empathy removed in retaliation for betraying the former, setting Alice on her rampage in Gotham.
- Not long after being exposed to Fear Toxin, her worst fear comes true when Kate betrays and leaves her behind in Arkham. Alice’s psyche crumbles further as she aspires to be a "Queen" and is dead set on killing Kate, callously murdering anyone or destroying anything that stands in her way even if it benefits her, including Mouse.
- In "Rule #1", she hallucinates Kate's younger self and her dead kitten from captivity while struggling with Kate's supposed death just after Alice changed her mind about killing her. She eventually decides to forget Kate even existed to cope with her conflicted feelings. However, Ocean's return and the revelation of Kate being alive and brainwashed give her a new direction.
- In season 3, she begins regularly having delusions in Arkham, first thinking her father is sending her postcards and planning to break her out. Afterwards, the hallucinations worsen to the point that Alice receives visions of her Arkham orderly while struggling with her reality.
- She grows increasingly desperate to obtain the Joker's joy buzzer to shock herself back to sanity while hallucinating Ocean and Mouse as reminders of her past sins. After her betrayal of the Bat-Team lands her back in Arkham, she's breaking down and electrocuting herself with any object she can find to force her crazed persona out of her head while rejecting Mary's offer to send her to a sanatorium to help her. She comes out of this once and for all when Ryan persuades Alice to work through her trauma and let the buzzer be used on Marquis Jet.
Sanity Strengthening: Zigzagged and often overlapping with Sanity Slippage.
- Midway through season 2, it's revealed that her romantic relationship with Ocean on Coryana after being conscripted by Safiyah began to help her let go of her violent anger, planning to find happiness in a new life with him. Unfortunately, Safiyah and Enigma’s machinations led her to be consumed by her rage and forget about her newfound love and understanding.
- In the present, Alice begins to care for her family again during her search for Kate while remembering her experiences in Coryana. However, after being led to believe Kate and Ocean are both dead, she loses herself once more until learning they're alive. Even after Ocean dies, she remains determined to see through her goal of restoring Kate to her former self and succeeds, to her genuine joy.
- Throughout season 3 when not hallucinating, Alice is still unpredictable but has generally shed her over-the-top behavior, being more observant and calculating. Looking after Poison Mary when they go on the run brings out her hidden caring side and she gets a break from her delusions, acting more mentally sound and grounded. It's to the point that Alice is the more reasonable of the duo, being rightfully worried about Mary turning into Poison Ivy’s sporeling and accidentally killing an innocent man.
Secret-Keeper: She knows Batwoman is Kate, although she doesn't act on this knowledge because she wants her sister at her side.
Sibling Yin-Yang: When she and her sister were kids, Beth was more cautious, levelheaded, and a Girly Girl while Kate was more daring, Hot-Blooded, and a Tomboy.
Significant Wardrobe Shift: In her last scene in the final episode, she's wearing regular clothing with more subdued colors, symbolising the start of her journey to becoming Beth Kane again.
Spanner in the Works: Her discovery that Ryan's birth mother is still alive and divulging this to Ryan is what eventually kicks off the Bat-Team's conflict with Jada and Marquis Jet in season 3.
Starter Villain: She is Batwoman's first opponent in the series and also the Big Bad for Season 1.
Taking the Heat: As part of being The Atoner, she confesses to the death of a hunter accidentally killed by Mary before her stepsister can do so.
Terms of Endangerment: She is fond of calling people "my dear", often when she's planning to hurt them. She also calls Ryan "Ry-Ry" when trying to manipulate her.
That Woman Is Dead:
- Inverted. For those that do believe Alice is Beth, she's nothing but a psycho killer to them. The only exception is Kate, who still holds out hope that she can be redeemed until "The Mad Tea-Party". After Alice poisons Catherine, Jacob and Kate consider Beth truly dead.
- Played straight with Alice, who states to Batwoman that Beth fell down the rabbit hole and she isn't coming back.
- This is zigzagged and ultimately subverted in Season 3 as Alice begins regaining her morality and hopes to restore her former self in her mind. In the end, it's acknowledged that Beth isn't gone as Alice is still capable of change.
Tomboy and Girly Girl: With Kate. In their childhood, Beth wore lighter, feminine colors with her hair let down while Kate wore darker, more tomboyish clothing and kept her hair in a braid. Notably at their Bat Mitzvah, Kate was dressed in a dark purple suit and tie, and Beth in a bright pink and blue floral dress. This dynamic carried over into their adulthood, as Batwoman fights crime in a black combat suit while Alice wears flashy and lacy vintage apparel with many skirts and dresses. Alice gets dolled up a shimmering golden gown when infiltrating a gala while Kate prefers a Bifauxnen style for formal occasions.
Tragic Villain: Underneath her Ax-Crazy flamboyance and Lewis Carroll-themed gimmicks, she’s a deeply traumatized woman who endured years of fear, abuse, isolation, and conditioning until her mind was warped with a psychopathic drive as Alice, and is lashing out over having her life ripped away from her. Deconstructed in seasons 2 and 3, which make clear that while Alice didn't deserve the suffering she went through, she remains in mental agony because she refuses to handle her trauma in a healthy way. Instead, Alice consistently uses her enmities or other questionable solutions, like memory erasure or the Joker's joy buzzer, as a band-aid even when she wants to make a Heel–Face Turn. It takes Ryan and Mary's urging and belief in her inner strength for her to finally embark on the long road to healing by getting real help.
Trauma Button:
- Both August and Mabel Cartwright, who she fears as the Caterpillar and Queen of Hearts, respectively. Years later, she actually seeks a psychologist's help on how to confront the Not Quite Dead Cartwright and when dosed with the Fear Toxin, the first thing she sees is Mabel's burned face haunting her.
- In general, her past ordeal of being locked in a cell away from the world reveals the terrified young girl she still is. When subjected to a Fear Toxin-induced vision of her family abandoning her again in a locked room, she's nearly driven to slit her own throat and is only stopped thanks to Jacob’s timely intervention. Any time she’s sent to Arkham (mid-Season 1, beginning of Season 3, end of Season 3), she goes further off the deep end and loses any rationality.
Trauma Conga Line: Which caused her to become the deranged villain she is in the present.
- As a young teenager, she witnesses her mother die in a car wreck which nearly claims her life as well, then is separated from her remaining family after August Cartwright abducts and imprisons her. She's subjected to psychological abuse and forced to take part in Cartwright's horrific skin graft experiments to make human faces for his son, with only her friendship with Jonathan as comfort. After learning her beloved father and sister "replaced" her, she suffers dissociation and becomes “Alice”.
- Then, she's forced to become the caretaker of Cartwright’s cruel mother Mabel and outright suffers severe physical and emotional torture. After a decade of this, Beth finally snaps upon learning Cartwright kept her late mother’s severed head in his possession to give Gabi's face to Mabel. She proceeds to sadistically murder Mabel, embracing her killer instincts.
- When brought to Coryana, she channels her rage and trauma into becoming a fighter but begins to heal thanks to the companionship of her trainer Ocean, only to suffer Laser-Guided Amnesia and become obsessed with enacting vengeance against her family.
Trauma-Induced Amnesia: The revelation that her father had given up on finding her and remarried to Catherine Hamilton caused Beth to completely block out her past and reimagine herself as Alice to cope with the hopelessness of her situation, making her subservient to Cartwright and Mabel's atrocities instead of resisting as before. Ironically, it took another traumatic reveal, this time triggering anger instead of fear, for Beth's Repressed Memories to reawaken — seeing Mabel wearing her mother's earrings and locating Gabi's dismembered head in Cartwright's possession.
Traumatic Haircut: She once had her hair forcibly cut by Mabel in an attempt to tarnish her beauty.
Used to Be a Sweet Kid: She was once an innocent, cheerful girl and a loving sister to Kate, until after the car accident where she ended up in captivity by Cartwright, which caused her to snap.
Villain Has a Point:
- While she's clearly being callous towards Ryan's tragedy, Alice is right that she isn't truly to blame for the death of Ryan's adoptive mother, as her goons killed Cora on their own and Alice only showed up after.
- Zigzagged with Mary transforming into Poison Mary. While Alice disregards how she kept Mary's powers a secret despite the danger, she correctly points out that Mary is Ryan and Luke's friend, and they both neglected to pick up on the fact that something was wrong with her for weeks. Alice even previously brought up to Mary how the team only came to her when they needed her expertise.
We Can Rule Together: Her ultimate plan is to have Kate join her in ruling Gotham. Kate rejects it, locking her up in Arkham and leading Alice to drop this entirely.
Wicked Cultured: Plays a cello for Jacob. Does a very good job of it, too.
Wild Card: Throughout Season 2, she is opposed to Safiyah and Black Mask for her own personal reasons, and while she occasionally works alongside the heroes, it's clear she's looking out for nobody but herself. This dynamic more or less continues in season 3, where she becomes a reluctant ally in retrieving the missing Batman trophies, yet attempts to back out of the arrangement and flee multiple times.

Chuck Dodgson

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/dodgson.png

"I want to make sure we stay on point, uproot the city's confidence in the Crows, and let chaos reign."

Species: Human

Played By: Brendon Zub

First Appearance: "Pilot" (Batwoman 1x1)

Appearance: Batwoman

A former Crows Security agent and Alice's lover.

Badass Normal: He's able to hold his own fairly well against Batwoman.
Broken Pedestal: Dodgson claims to have joined the Crows in the interest of helping Gotham, but was disillusioned by what he saw as the Crows' corruption and status as glorified bodyguards for the city's rich and powerful.
Canon Foreigner: He has no apparent counterpart in the comics.
Consummate Professional: He shows concern when Alice lets their personal grudges get in the way of their agenda.
The Dragon: Alice’s right hand.
First-Episode Twist: The Reveal in the pilot about him is why most of his page was whited out.
The Mole: He reports on the Crows' activities for Alice.
Moral Myopia: After being disillusioned by the Crows' failure to help Gotham, Dodgson threw in with Alice, who is actively trying to bring Gotham to its knees.
Opposites Attract: He’s The Stoic partner of the Ax-Crazy Alice, yet they're romantically involved.
Put on a Bus: Once Mouse comes on the scene as The Dragon for Alice, he's no longer necessary plotwise. He gets captured after trying to ambush Jacob and Sophie and is not seen again until The Bus Came Back with him attacking Jacob in prison, almost killing him.
Red Oni, Blue Oni: The stoic Consummate Professional blue to Alice’s Ax-Crazy red.
Themed Aliases: Charles Dodson is the real name of Lewis Carrol, and he works for Alice.
Unholy Matrimony: With Alice. She even sends him to kill Mary for her. However, she is also quick to abandon him.

Jonathan Cartwright / Mouse

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/jonathan_cartwright.png

"Are we mad? I'm afraid so."

Species: Human

Played By: Sam Littlefield, Nicholas Holmes (young), ^{Various disguises}

First Appearance: "Mine Is a Long And a Sad Tale" (Batwoman 1x5)

Appearances: Batwoman

The deformed child of the man who abducted Beth Kane. 15 years later, he has escaped from Arkham Asylum.

see Arrowverse: Other Earths page to see Jane Doe, the Earth-99 character who bears his background

Accomplice by Inaction: Despite caring for Alice as his Only Friend, he never tried to free her from his father's custody nor intervene as Cartwright and Mabel physically and mentally tormented her for years until she was pushed to her breaking point. Possibly Justified, as Jonathan was also mistreated by his family all his life, leaving him too afraid to stand up to them. Alice herself doesn't seem to hold a grudge over his inaction.
Alas, Poor Villain: His death is played entirely for tragedy.
Anti-Villain: While definitely a willing accomplice in Alice's crimes, Mouse isn't as vicious as his surrogate sister, and once their original plan (take revenge on Catherine and Jacob) is complete, he's in favor of just leaving Gotham to live a new life. After they're both incarcerated in Arkham, Mouse shows a willingness to genuinely reform and get help for his mental issues, only resuming a life of crime at Alice's behest. Even then, he's happy to have a calm, peaceful life in Arkham and tries to discourage Alice from seeking revenge on Batwoman.
Because You Were Nice to Me: Beth was possibly the first person to offer him real compassion and kinship despite his disfigured appearance, which is the reason for his Undying Loyalty to her and why he's easily drawn into her bizarre fantasies and plans.
Big Bad Duumvirate: He and Alice are this for season 1.
The Chain of Harm: Considering how his grandmother was, and how his father turned out, it's no wonder his head's not completely on straight.
Comic-Book Movies Don't Use Codenames: Although he's implied to be a gender-flipped version of Jane Doe, he's never given the name "John Doe".
Crazy Jealous Guy: And how. He wants Alice for himself and even kills a hostage simply to make a point to her.
Dark and Troubled Past: In his childhood, Jonathan's face was somehow burned, causing him to be shunned by his peers and deemed a "monster". His father then kept him in isolation to fix his face, yet treated him abusively. When Beth became a captive in their house, Jonathan quickly grew attached to her because she was kind to him. During this time, he became a guinea pig in his father's skin graft experiments until Beth helped fix his face, and for the next decade, had to contend with his cruel grandmother Mabel living with them. After Alice killed Mabel, she and Jonathan seemingly killed his father, and he eventually ended up in Arkham for unspecified reasons.
Decomposite Character: Of Jane Doe, along with his dad.
Distressed Dude: Gets captured by his father and exposed to Fear Toxin.
Facial Horror: Half of his face appears to be scarred or burned, and it's been this way since childhood, though whether it's due to some accident or a birth defect is unknown. However, his father's specialty being child burn victims implies the former.
Gender Flip: Mouse is essentially the Arrowverse Gender Flip of Jane Cartwright from Gotham who in turn is the adaptation of Jane Doe, the Master of Disguise Serial Killer with the ability to perfectly mimic another person's voice in the comics. The name Mouse also comes from a female villain.
Hates Their Parent: He holds his father in absolute terror and loathing due to everything the man put him and Beth through as adolescents.
Heel–Face Door-Slam: By the end of Season 1, he just wants to leave Gotham and have a peaceful life, and he does his best to get Alice to abandon her plans for revenge. She promptly poisons him for forcing her to choose between him and her revenge.
Hiding Behind Your Bangs: As a child, he used his long hair to cover his facial deformity. As an adult, he still does, but to a lesser degree.
Latex Perfection: He uses lifelike masks together with his innate vocal chameleon abilities to disguise himself as others.
A Lighter Shade of Black: He's still undoubtedly a bad guy that does plenty of terrible things, but he's just far less despicable than his father and grandmother by comparison.
Like Brother and Sister: He and Alice regard each other as surrogate siblings due to the bond forged between them under the Cartwrights' abuse.
Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: It's unknown how exactly he has the ability to perfectly mimic the voices of others, though it's implied to be a case of Charles Atlas Superpower.
Never My Fault: Mouse claims that Kate is not a good sister because she failed to figure out that she was so close in finding Beth when she was in front of the latter's cell door. Never mind that at that same time, he helped his father lie to Jacob and Kate that Beth wasn't there and he just prank-called them by imitating Beth's voice. That's without even mentioning the fact that Beth was held captive there in the first place because he needed a friend.
Only Sane Man: While sharing much of Alice's insanity, he's often the one to point out the more sensible course when Alice's obsession with Kate or vengeance blinds her.
Secret-Keeper: In "I'll Be the Judge, I'll Be the Jury", he dupes Alice into revealing Batwoman is Kate.
Two-Faced: The left side of his face is scarred, presumably from a past fire accident.
Voice Changeling: He can perfectly mimic the voice of anyone he hears, a talent he has displayed both before reaching puberty and as an adult. As a young boy he uses this ability to trick Jacob into thinking Beth's attempt to get help was a prank call, and as an adult distracts Sophie with the sound of Kate's voice.
Wild Hair: As both a child and an adult he has long, messy hair, which just adds to his creepiness.
Would Hurt a Child: He detonates C-4 under a high school gymnasium during a dance (not knowing the students had been evacuated) and kidnaps two teenage boys to demand Alice's release.

False Face Society

In General

False Face Society

A new emerging gang that distributes the destructive Snakebite drug.

Fantastic Drug: They distribute Snakebite, which is made of part psychedelic mushroom oil and part Fear toxin. It allows the users to see their greatest regret in life play out differently, making it extremely addictive. However, if the drug is mixed incorrectly, it causes people to become cannibals.
Malevolent Masked Men: All of them wear masks and are quite dangerous.
Would Hurt a Child: They have no qualms with targeting children, even forcing them to work for them.

Roman Sionis / Black Mask

Species: Human

Played By: Peter Outerbridge

First Appearance: "Rule #1" (Batwoman 2x9)

Appearance: Batwoman

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/black_mask_1.jpg

"It's a symbol of liberation from people like you: people who think they'll never be held accountable as long as they pretend what they do is justice."

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/roman_sionis.png

The leader of the False Face Society, known for wearing a black mask.

see DCEU: Gotham Underworld page for the character in an undesignated Earth who bears his name and background

Abled in the Adaptation: Like many adaptations of Black Mask, he wears a skull mask instead of actually being disfigured. Subverted Trope, as he later gets facially disfigured.
Adaptational Badass: Most iterations of Black Mask usually don't take on the Bat-Family directly, preferring to outsmart them rather than go face-to-face. Here? He fights Batwoman and almost wins.
Adaptational Intelligence: In the comics, he was rather inept at running his company, losing it to Wayne Enterprises. Here, his company is going strong and he is at the head of it all, proving a degree of competence in business his comic self lacked. That being said, he does show some of his comic counterpart's lack of savvy elsewhere, when he grabs the Villain Ball towards the last two episodes of Season 2, which costs him dearly.
Adaptational Nice Guy: Very downplayed, as Black Mask is still a psychopathic Torture Technician and a ruthless mobster, but unlike his depiction in Birds of Prey (2020), he's a Well-Intentioned Extremist with a case of Even Evil Has Loved Ones. He's also not a Politically Incorrect Villain this time around, as he lacks his comics counterpart's sexist traits.
Black Mask: Oh, please enlighten me. Who am I?
Batwoman: You're a sadistic drug lord.
Black Mask: [Begins to respond, pauses, looks at man he just killed with a bandsaw] Okay, I can see why you might think that.
Adaptation Origin Connection: Zig-zagged, as the Batwoman in question he played a hand in creating is a Canon Foreigner, but it was his actions in taking out the original Batwoman that led to Ryan taking on the mantle, whereas other iterations (with the exception of the DCEU iteration) never had a hand in creating a member of the Bat-family.
Badass in a Nice Suit: He is not only a very effective crime boss and a cold-blooded master of torture, but he dresses to the nines in designer suits.
Bad Boss: Any member of the False Face Society that fails him or tries to resign, and he will see to it that their deaths are as painful as possible.
The Bad Guy Wins: He manages to deal a significant amount of damage to the Bat-Family by "Kane, Kate", simply due to the fact that the hypnosis he implanted on Kate wins out and "Circe" takes over in full. He ultimately comes out on top while Ryan is forced on the run and the rest of her allies are locked up thanks to Kate pulling a Hyde Plays Jekyll.
Big Bad Duumvirate: Alongside Safiyah, who has been working in tandem with him since the beginning of the season.
Big Bad Ensemble: Alongside Safiyah, he serves as the biggest threat in Batwoman Season 2.
Censored Child Death: His daughter was taken into custody by the Crows and apparently killed by Batwoman, though it's never seen. It's later revealed that she died during the breakout at Arkham Asylum at the end of Season 1.
Cold-Blooded Torture: When he holds Alice hostage, he wedges a knife under her fingernail to force information out of her.
Cool Mask: Like many non comic versions of the character, he wears an intimidating black skull over his face (comics Black Mask never wore a skull mask and his Skull for a Head appearance is his actual head).
Cop Killer: Has his men kill the Police Commissioner after he condemned the use of Snakebite.
The Corrupter: He has one of his men get Jacob Kane hooked on Snakebite — a substance that makes anyone see their biggest regret play out better — so he can personally drop off the substance (under the guise of having confiscated it from one of his employees) and keep one of his biggest obstacles distracted by his own failures. He succeeds in getting Jacob hooked, to the point he goes into cardiac arrest after he overdoses. Then it's revealed he has several high ranking GCPD detectives on his payroll.
Crazy-Prepared: He almost beats Batwoman singlehandedly until Sophie intervenes and is prepared to arrest him. He weasels out of it by showing live footage of Angelique being held hostage, threatening to drop her into a vat of toxic chemicals (sound familiar?) unless he's allowed to walk free. Both Batwoman and Sophie reluctantly let him walk.
Create Your Own Hero: He ended up kidnapping and holding the original Batwoman hostage, but his actions led to another woman taking her place — Ryan Wilder, who becomes the biggest thorn in his operations.
Create Your Own Villain: In a literal example of this, he has Circe gather the critical components of Batman's foes he kept in the Batcave stolen and brought to him so he can do what they failed to do the first time. One of his first actions is to give Agent Tavaroff Bane's Venom.
Daddy's Little Villain: His daughter, Circe, apparently acted as his right hand prior to her death. He then has Enigma brainwash Kate into believing she's Circe so he can have her around again.
Dead Alternate Counterpart: His DCEU iteration was blown to smithereens by Harley Quinn.
Diabolical Mastermind: He nearly manages to manipulate Gotham City into his grip thanks to his scheming.
The Dreaded: Even amongst his own crew, he's this thanks to his Hair-Trigger Temper and his Torture Technician behavior. If you make a mistake in Black Mask's eyes, he will end you.
Engineered Heroics: He plans to launch an attack on Gotham using his goons to create his own version of The Purge, which will end with Ronan "killing" Black Mask amidst a destroyed Gotham, allowing him to become the hero he thinks the city needs.
Even Evil Has Loved Ones: He loved his daughter Circe very dearly, and has Kate brainwashed into believing she's Circe just so he can have her back. Part of his motivation is that she was apparently killed by Batwoman and the Crows (though it turns out that she died in Arkham). Everything he does now, he does in Circe's name.
Exact Words: He promises to use his wealth to help the GCPD. He is telling the truth; it's just he's using the money to put them in his pocket as Black Mask.
Facial Horror: Alice uses the Joker's acid flower to permanently fuse Black Mask's face to his signature mask.
Faux Affably Evil: He can sound impeccably polite, right before he murders people on a whim.
Foil: To Ryan Wilder, aka Batwoman II. Both of them are skilled fighters, have access to a great deal of resources, have lost close family members (Ryan's adoptive mother to Alice, Black Mask's own daughter to the Crows and (as he claims) Batwoman I), and an intense dislike of the Crows. The key difference is that Black Mask uses his resources to do as he pleases, hooking Gotham on an addictive drug to continue profiting on an endless cycle of substance abuse, and is a massive dick to his underlings, whereas Ryan is a genuinely good person with a chip on her shoulders that uses her resources to help others in need, and treats her allies with respect and compassion. As Season 2 ends, he ends up being arrested for his crimes, while Ryan gets to walk away a free woman.
Freudian Excuse: His turn to villainy came about as a result of his daughter being taken into custody by the Crows, then apparently being killed at Batwoman's hands. There are questions raised by this given Kate's firm Thou Shall Not Kill beliefs and that the only person to die at her hands was Cartwright. It's revealed that Circe died in the breakout at Arkham, throwing further doubt on this claim.
Genius Bruiser: He's not only a Machiavellian criminal mastermind, but he can throw down with a Bat-Family member and almost win.
Greater-Scope Villain: He's revealed as the one responsible for kicking off the plot of Season 2 by kidnapping Kate Kane, resulting in Ryan Wilder becoming Batwoman, and leading Tatiana to frame Safiyah as the person responsible for the entire affair, causing Alice to target her in the first place, and land Ryan in the crosshairs as she worked to rescue Kate and stop her sister, little realizing that Kate was in his clutches the whole time. He's also connected with Safiyah in employing the hypnotist Enigma in their employ — Sionis using her to wipe Kate's mind (and implied to have already done so to Julia while she was investigating the plane crash Kate was involved with), and Safiyah using her to remove all traces of Alice's empathy and memories of Ocean.
Hoist by His Own Petard: His final scheme falters twice in the same episode thanks to two key factors:
- The Snakebite he uses to control Tavaroff's Venom ends up being the key towards Kate regaining her memories.
- The masks he passes around Gotham are used to create makeshift Bat-Signals.
Hypocrite: There isn't anything he wouldn't do to protect his family, but he has no problem making other people's families his targets. He also claims he's trying to make Gotham better by getting rid of the corruption caused by Batwoman and the Crows, but he's causing just as much of said corruption by running a criminal enterprise.
It's Personal: He's motivated to get back at Batwoman and the Crows because they played a hand in getting his daughter killed.
Laser-Guided Karma: Thanks to Alice, the moment his scheme falters, his mask ends up becoming permanently fused to his face.
"Not So Different" Remark: He tries pulling this on Ryan. She does acknowledge that he's right in some way — it's just she didn't use the rage and frustration of losing a loved one and channel it into something so horrific.
Put on a Prison Bus: His downfall in Season 2 and his subsequent imprisonment in Arkham Asylum has resulted him not appearing in the show again as of yet.
Rank Scales with Asskicking: During their first confrontation, he goes toe-to-toe with Ryan and actually wins, only being barely restrained with the additional help of Sophie.
Related in the Adaptation: Circe was his girlfriend in the comics, in this adaptation Circe is Roman's daughter.
Replacement Goldfish: He uses Enigma to brainwash Kate into thinking that she's his deceased daughter, Circe.
Resignations Not Accepted: If anyone dares to try and quit the False Face Society, he'll personally end the offender himself.
Sadist: If there's one thing in life he enjoys, it's torturing those who stand in his way or failed him. He intended to have Batwoman and a mook who failed to stop her from finding him killed with a buzzsaw. The mook doesn't last long.
Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: He's managed to get himself out of any trouble simply by buying off a lot of the GCPD.
Shout-Out: His Engineered Heroics scheme where he causes chaos then swoops in to save the day is very similar to that of Syndrome.
Skull for a Head: Thanks to Alice and a little bit of Joker's acid, he ends up this way, much like his comics counterpart.
Spared by the Adaptation: His Gotham and Birds of Prey (2020) counterparts both kicked the bucket in their respective projects. Here, he manages to survive, albeit with a bit of Facial Horror thanks to his mask fusing to his face.
Torture Technician: Like his comics-counterpart, he's definitely fond of employing this.
Trumplica: Between his obsessive love for his daughter and interest in empowering the GCPD in order to "clean up" Gotham, he vaguely resembles Donald Trump during the period where Trump was intervening in the "Central Park Five" case.
Villain Ball: He grabs this hard in "Kane, Kate" when he finally wins by getting control of Kate Kane in full, taking the Batcave, and making sure that everyone who can possibly oppose him is out of the way... and he doesn't kill them. That wasn't going to bite him back later. By the next episode, he's still grasping it hard, leading to his downfall.
Villain with Good Publicity: His public persona is Roman Sionis, a wealthy cosmetics magnate who has vowed to use his vast fortune to revitalize the ailing GCPD, even as his False Face Society is one of the biggest contributors to Gotham's gang problem. He then intends to capitalize on this trope by having the False Face Society tear Gotham down, then he'll "kill" Black Mask as Sionis, then rebuild the city.
Well-Intentioned Extremist: He sees his organization as a necessity to eliminate both the corrupt Crows and the entire Bat-lineage, finding them to be responsible for a lot of the chaos in Gotham.
You Have Failed Me: If anyone fails to deliver in their task, he will kill them himself, no questions asked.
You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: When his Snakebite supply starts to run dry, he forces Angelique and Ocean to make a how-to video for his goons to put the stuff together. Once that's done, he plans to dispose of the two.

Candice Long / The Candy Lady

Species: Human

Played By: Linda Kash

First Appearance: "Fair Skin, Blue Eyes" (Batwoman 2x4)

Appearance: Batwoman

A long time child abductor who specifically targets the disenfranchised to forcefully recruit them into the False Face Society.

Canon Foreigner: Being a villain specifically made to tie into Ryan's past, she understandably has no comic book basis.
Faux Affably Evil: She presents herself as a sweet person who loves children, but what she really wants is to break her prisoners' spirits and sense of self-worth so she can sell them to gangs.
Missing White Woman Syndrome: Exploited. She's well aware that her orphaned, often non-white victims get much less attention from the public.
Laser-Guided Karma: While it takes a significantly long time, the moment Batwoman gets involved to investigate one of her victims, she ends up being brought down hard.

Rudy / Panda

Species: Human

Played By: Aason Nadjiwon

First Appearance: "Fair Skin, Blue Eyes" (Batwoman 2x4)

Appearance: Batwoman

A member of the False Face Society who wears a Panda mask.

Canon Foreigner: Has no comics counterpart.
The Corrupter: Tries to manipulate the young recruit Kevin Johnson into killing Jacob Kane and basically ruin his life forever in the process.
Fluffy the Terrible: "Panda" isn't exactly the most threatening alias for a cold-blooded killer.

Black Glove Society

In General

A secretive underground organization of Gotham's elite built to hide their children's psychotic diagnoses from the public eye while curing them by any means.

Adaptational Heroism: By comparison. The comics version were were a bunch of Card-Carrying Villains who delighting in corrupting heroes and perverting virtue.
Adaptational Wimp: Downplayed. They lack the resources and worldwide reach of the comic version with their schemes being pretty small scale, but the members of the comic version were mostly Smug Snakes who were taken out pretty quickly by the Joker.
Adapted Out: Their leader in the comics Dr. Simon Hurt and most of the comic members with the exception of Jada (Jezebel) Jet
Asshole Victim: Marquis kills most of their membership with one fell swoop, using the same methods they used on their kids.
In Name Only: Have very little to do with the comic organization, outside of being a secret society destroyed by a Joker.
Parents as People: They truly love their kids, and made an illegal group conducting dangerous experiments on others just because they want them to be well.
Rich Bitch: Their members are part of Gotham's elite, and they don't care what they have to do or who they screw over (aside from Jada) if they can fix their kids.
Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: With their massive wealth, they're easily able to avoid the public eye and use illegal means to try and cure their psychotic kids.
Team Member in the Adaptation: Most of their members were never part of the Black Glove in the comics.
Well-Intentioned Extremist: They hurt innocent people because they want to save their kids from their own psychosis.

Marla Elliot

Species: Human

The Black Glove Society's founder and mother of Thomas Elliot, who made the group to cure her son's psychosis.

Predecessor Villain: Much of Season 3's backstory hinges on her founding Black Glove.

Barbara Kean

Species: Human

Played By: Sarah J. Southey

First Appearance: "Were All Mad Here" (Batwoman 3x12)

Appearances: Batwoman

James Gordon's ex-wife and mother to James Gordon Junior.

Ironic Death: Subverted. Barbara wound up turning her son into a vegetable when she tried using chemical treatments to cure his condition, so Marquis decided to do the same. She winds up surviving anyway.
Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: When her son tied a poodle to the train tracks, she and Black Glove tried using chemicals to cure his condition. She instead turned him into a vegetable, who's now rotting away in Arkham.
Truer to the Text: Gotham depicted Barbara as an Ax-Crazy psychopath when Jim Gordon eventually broke off his engagement to her, she was largely out for herself, and was only Barbara Gordon's parent because she and Jim had a one-night stand during the final season. She's much saner in this adaption — well, mostly sane, as she still joins Black Glove — and was trying to help her son.

Burton Crowne

Species: Human

Played By: Eric Ruggieri

First Appearance: "Were All Mad Here" (Batwoman 3x12)

Appearances: Batwoman

A member of the Black Glove Society.

Mythology Gag: Crowne hails from The New 52, and was the catalyst for William Cobb failing to get the girl of his dreams in spite of initially supporting him, leading him to join the Court of Owls.
We Hardly Knew Ye: He gets offed by Marquis before much is said of him.

Jeremiah Arkham

Species: Human

Played By: Glen Ferguson

First Appearance: "Were All Mad Here" (Batwoman 3x12)

Appearances: Batwoman

A member of the Black Glove Society and the descendant of Arkham Asylum's founders.

Decomposite Character: His role as Arkham's warden is given to Dr. Butler.
We Hardly Knew Ye: One episode into his debut and Marquis kills him.

Mario Falcone

Species: Human

Played By: Marcio Barauna

First Appearance: "Were All Mad Here" (Batwoman 3x12)

Appearances: Batwoman

A member of the Black Glove Society and a relative to the Falcone crime family.

We Hardly Knew Ye: Falcone doesn't make it past one episode before he's killed by Marquis.

Jada Jet

See the Arrowverse: Gotham City Citizens page

Batman's Rogues Gallery

Jack Napier / The Joker

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/jack_napier.png

Species: Human

Played By: Nathan Dashwood

The most infamous and insane criminal in Gotham City, the Clown Prince of Crime, and Batman's Arch-Enemy.

see Titans (2018): Villains page to see the Earth-9 character who bears his name and background

see Batman (1966): Rogues Gallery page to see the Earth-66 character who bears his name and background

see Batman Film Series: The Joker page to see the Earth-89 character who bears his name and background

see Superman Film Series page to see the Earth-96 character who bears his name and background

see Arrowverse: Other Earths page to see the Earth-99 character who bears his name and background

see Birds of Prey (2002) for the Earth-203 character who bears his name and background

see DCEU: Gotham Underworld page for the character in an undesignated Earth who bears his name and background

Adaptation Origin Connection: He has a hand in Kate, Beth's, Ryan's, and Marquis' Origin Story whereas he's merely Batman's Arch-Enemy in every other story. That being said, the Joker of Earth-89 did play a hand in Batman's origin, and the Joker of his his own solo movie indirectly caused the death of the Waynes, so it does have precedent.
Alternate Self: He has numerous iterations, one on Earth-9, another on Earth-66, another still on Earth-89, another on Earth-96, yet another on Earth-99, another on Earth-203, and at least one more iteration in the DCEU.
Ambiguous Situation: If Luke is to be believed, he was killed at some point before Bruce disappeared. However, Jacob discovers that Kate was investigating a painting made by Jack Napier, and as Safiyah, the woman whom the painting is allegedly connected with, claims to have not done the deed, he may not be entirely dead. With the revelation that Black Mask is responsible for the series' events, his fate is once again left in question. In the Season 3 finale, Alice mentions that Batman "threw him into Arkham", though whether or not he's still there or even alive is once again not revealed. With the series' cancellation, the answer may never come. If he is truly dead, then he would have been brought back to life by the Red Mask during Batman (Chip Zdarsky)'s 135th issue, but this hasn't been shown thus far.
Arch-Enemy: For Batman, having caused the death of his sidekick Robin, Aunt Gabi and (it was believed) his cousin Beth. Jacob directly compares Batwoman and Alice's enmity to that of Batman and the Joker.
Continuity Snarl: If Cisco's Tumblr blog is considered canon, The Dark Knight film and Heath Ledger's portrayal of the character also coexist in-universe.
Dead Alternate Counterpart: He may be one himself (if Luke is to be believed), but he has deceased counterparts on Earth-9^note, Earth-66 (assuming the Wonder Woman (1975) crossover comic is canon)^note, Earth-89 (Ambiguous Situation notwithstanding)^note, and Earth-99^note.
The Dreaded: Even after his (supposed) death, the Joker's name continues to be amongst the most infamous of Gotham's super criminals, rightfully feared for the destruction he caused during his reign of terror. The only person who never feared him is Marquis, whose psychosis came about as a result of his actions.
Electric Joybuzzer: He evidently still used his infamous weapon, as Batman had kept it in cold storage. It's later revealed that he used it on Marquis Jet when he hijacked a school bus, which didn't kill him, but caused him to become a sociopath. Doctors working for Marquis' mother believes that another jolt could restore him to normal.
Evil Laugh: Another traditional staple of the character, his laughter is heard in the flashback scene with him hijacking a bus and corrupting a young Marquis with a joy buzzer that we see towards the end of season 3.
For the Evulz: Strongly implied to be the motive for everything he does, as is typical for the character.
Foul Flower: His famous lapel flower squirts acid, which Alice uses on Ronan Sionis to permanently fuse his mask to his face.
The Ghost: Has yet to appear in the flesh, but his name appears on a newspaper clipping and he was in fact causing the car crash that cost Kate her sister and mother. Luke implies that Batman might have killed him, but when it's revealed that Kate had taken an interest in a painting by a certain Jack Napier, and was looking into it before her plane was shot down, it strongly implies that the Clown Prince of Crime may still be around. But it turns out that Black Mask shot down Kate's plane instead, leaving Joker's fate ambiguous once again. We eventually see parts of him other than this face in a flashback in the penultimate episode of season 3 of Batwoman.
Greater-Scope Villain: His actions ultimately drive the plot in seasons 1, 2, and 3 of Batwoman despite him not actually being around. See Small Role, Big Impact below.
If You Kill Him, You Will Be Just Like Him!: The implied reason that Batman left Gotham, according to Luke, is that he killed the Joker in cold blood — presumably in retaliation for killing his aunt and (apparently) his cousin.
Mysterious Past: In spite of everyone knowing who The Joker is, no one knows who he was before his fall to villainy.
Mythology Gag:
- The Jack Napier name originates from Tim Burton's Batman. He also made a painting out of someone's insides over an existing work, referencing the same film and his vandalizing of an art gallery in a similar manner (though with actual paint instead of human insides).
- He drives a school-bus in the iconic opening of The Dark Knight just as he was when he ran the Kanes off the bridge.
- With the appearance of Marquis Jet and the subsequent revelation of his origins, it seems Joker has created another "Joker Junior" to follow in his footsteps — electric shock and all (though just the one jolt this time, and no genetic remapping)!
Named by the Adaptation: While most versions of the Joker have their identity shrouded in a Multiple-Choice Past, this one uses the identity of Jack Napier, much like Tim Burton's film.
Noodle Incident: The painting that's become a key plot-point in the second season of the show was made by him killing someone and making it out of their guts. It's not explained why he did it or how it happened.
Offscreen Villainy: He killed Robin offscreen. He was also driving the bus that ran Kate's family off the road, but he didn't appear in that scene, nor was the audience shown the actual hijacking of the bus. The painting he made out of someone's guts is not shown during its creation either. Eventually somewhat averted in Season 3, where we see him at least partially.
Posthumous Character: According to Luke, the Joker hasn't attacked Gotham in five years because he is dead. But when Jacob discovers that Kate was investigating a painting by Jack Napier shortly before her plane was shot down, he may not be as dead as it was once thought. But it turns out Black Mask was responsible, so whether or not he's still around is left up in the air.
Predecessor Villain: Batwoman takes place in the same setting that once served as the battleground between Batman and The Joker. Funny enough, Season 3 completes the circle by giving Batwoman II her own "Joker" in the form of her brother, Marquis Jet.
Small Role, Big Impact: Even though he is a major Batman villain, his only role in Batwoman's story was killing her mother and apparently her sister, which was a pivotal moment in her life. The fact that the Joker was killed so soon before Batman's disappearance implies that said disappearance may have been a result of the killing, making Batman's absence from the story the Joker's fault as well. He's also connected to the entirety of the plot involving Safiyah, as he randomly painted some poor guy's guts all over a painting that contained a secret map to her island — a painting of which Kate was investigating before she was kidnapped by Safiyah, only for her plane to be shot down on its way back to Gotham, leading Ryan Wilder to take up the mantle of Batwoman, and leading her to investigate said painting. His earlier actions that resulted in Beth's apparent death also occurred around the same time that Ryan was being held hostage by a kidnapper, which proved to be highly valuable in the future when said kidnapper continued to strike. His lapel flower also ends up being the key to giving Black Mask a serious case of Laser-Guided Karma, when Alice uses it to fuse the mask to his face. And then Season 3 reveals he caused Marcus Jet, Ryan Wilder's brother, to become a sociopath when he zapped the kid with his electric joy buzzer, leading to Gotham's protector to have a Joker all to herself. For a supposedly dead guy, he's influencing the series outcomes by quite a lot.
Villain of Another Story: The hijacking of the bus that killed Kate's family, the death of Robin, and presumably countless other acts of villainy, all happened off-screen.
Would Hurt a Child: The night he killed Kate’s mother, he had kidnapped a school-bus full of children. Then it's revealed that he shocked one of those kids with a joy buzzer just for the hell of it. It's also revealed that he killed Batman's Kid Sidekick Robin, by beating him to death with a crowbar.

Dr. Victor Fries / Mr. Freeze

Dr. Victor Fries

Species: Human

A scientist expert on cryogenic science consulted by Dr. Thomas Snow, who froze his wife in order to save her from a fatal disease.

see Titans (2018): Villains page to see the Earth-9 character who bears his name and background

see Batman (1966): Rogues Gallery page to see the Earth-66 character who bears his codename and comic book connections

see Batman Film Series: Villains page to see the Earth-97 character who bears his name and background

see Arrowverse: Other Earths page to see the Earth-99 character who bears his name and background

Ambiguous Situation: Circumstances surrounding his Face–Heel Turn are not elaborated on, nor when or how he died.
Dead Alternate Counterpart: On Earth-99, he was murdered by a psychopathic Bruce Wayne.
Death by Adaptation: He's one of the few Freezes, aside from the DCAU, Arkhamverse, Harley Quinn, and Earth-99 iterations, to have passed on.
Freeze Ray: He's the original owner of the one his wife took after escaping Arkham Asylum.
The Ghost: He doesn't appear in person, just referred to. Justified due to his death.
Killed Offscreen: According to Batwoman, he died before finding a cure for his wife's condition.
Mad Scientist: Eventually, though the circumstances for his Face–Heel Turn and Sanity Slippage are yet to be revealed.
Mythology Gag: His goggles are seen in a storage locker in one of his old cryo-facilities.
Offscreen Villainy: We never get to see his shenanigans on-screen, and given that he's dead, it's unlikely to be seen.
Punny Name: A scientist expert on cryogenics with a surname that is phonetically similar to "freeze".
They Call Me MISTER Tibbs!: He always insisted on being referred to as "Mister" Freeze in spite of having a doctorate.

Oswald Cobblepot / The Penguin

Species: Human

The former Mayor of Gotham and an inmate at Arkham Asylum, noted for his weaponized umbrella.

see Titans (2018): Villains page to see the Earth-9 character who bears his name and background

see Batman (1966): Rogues Gallery page to see the Earth-66 character who bears his name and background

see Batman Film Series: Villains page to see the Earth-89 character who bears his name and background

see Arrowverse: Other Earths page to see the Earth-99 character who bears his name and background

Adaptational Personality Change: Implied - usually, Cobblepot is placed in the more standard prison known as Blackgate Penitentiary, on account of not being criminally insane even by the loose definition of comic books. Here, he’s placed in Arkham Asylum; on the other hand, Luke Fox states one of Oswald's policies implemented during his time in office as mayor of Gotham was death by firing squad, which could justify the latter.
Alternate Self: He has counterparts on Earth-9, Earth-66, Earth-89, and Earth-99.
Dead Alternate Counterpart: His Earth-89 iteration was killed fighting Batman, while his Earth-99 iteration was killed by a murderous Bruce Wayne.
The Ghost: His name only appears on a door in Arkham Asylum.
Iconic Item: His penguin-shaped umbrella, which Batman kept in the cave for display. It gets loose thanks to Black Mask.
Mayor Pain: Luke's words (and the fact that execution by firing squad was a thing under his tenure) imply that Cobblepot wasn't a pleasant leader.
Mythology Gag:
- Cobblepot famously ran for mayor in past live-action adaptations, like Batman^noteIn the episode "Hizzoner The Penguin", Batman Returns and Gotham.
- He also had ownership of the Iceberg Lounge, as with previous continuities.
Noodle Incident: He was apparently the mayor of Gotham City at some point before his incarceration.
Offscreen Villainy: We never get to see his shenanigans on-screen.

Pamela Isley / Poison Ivy

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/pamela_4.jpg

Species: Metahuman

Portrayed by: Bridget Regan

A notorious eco-terrorist transformed from a timid college girl into a plant-human hybrid.

see Batman (1966): Rogues Gallery page to see the Earth-66 character who bears her name and background

see Batman Film Series: Poison Ivy page to see the Earth-97 counterpart who bears her name and background

Adaptational Backstory Change: She's given a brother in this continuity, which she lacks in her mainstream iteration.
Adaptational Badass: Ivy is always a danger to the Bat Family thanks to being a meta, but usually the Crazy-Prepared Batman has tactics to deal with her every time she pops up. In this series, Ivy was so dangerous in her reign of terror, Batman had an easier time dealing with The Joker than he ever did with her. She's also far more dangerous to Batwoman than either Alice or Black Mask were.
Adaptational Modesty: Her Arkham inspired outfit covers up a far greater area than the Stripperiffic suit did in the games.
Adaptational Origin Connection: She used to date Renee Montoya, which her comics counterpart never did.
Adaptational Relationship Overhaul: She has a much better relationship with her family than her comics iteration, as their sufferings provide the backbone of her Freudian Excuse.
Adaptational Sympathy: Ivy's comics iteration was mutated by Dr. Jason Woodrue, aka the Floronic Man, with her backstory implicating her parents were neglectful or abusive, depending on the iteration. She's still mutated in college, but she has a Freudian Excuse that her brother was poisoned by toxic waste in the water, and her family's inability to afford health insurance and being forced to use herbal remedies instead led to his death, causing her to develop her environmental crusade against the worst of Gotham.
Adaptational Villainy: Ivy's various counterparts have some standards in their villainous acts, usually in regards to who they hurt, and a few of them are willing to have other people in their lives (i.e. Catwoman and Harley Quinn) to help them out. This Ivy has no qualms about who gets hurt in her desire to protect Mother Nature, with her relationship with Montoya being toxic at best.
Adapted Out: Her relationship with Harley Quinn is not present in this series (due to Harley being barred from Arrow thanks to the DCEU), so Renee winds up taking the Clown Princess of Crime's place as Ivy's flame.
Alternate Self: She has one on Earth-66 and Earth-89.
And I Must Scream: Her initial fate. Renee drugs her with a special chemical that saps the water and sunlight from her body, putting her in an induced coma. The only way to wake her up is to expose her to either element, so Batman stuffed her in the darkest part of the Batcave he could think of, but even then it's implied that she has enough strength through nature that she can go about business as usual (albeit just barley).
Big Dam Plot: How she plans on destroying Gotham, by breaking a damn open and flooding the city. Renee stopped her the first time before she could implement it, but once she's revived a decade later, she decides to go right back to it.
Cleavage Window: Her outfit has a prominent one, as is typical of Ivy.
Composite Character: She blends her comics counterpart's origin with her more humanistic appearance, motivation, and personality from Batman: The Animated Series and a more modest version of her Batman: Arkham Asylum outfit.
Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: Compared to Alice and Black Mask, Ivy is far more dangerous. Alice and Sionis are Badass Normals that rely on their wits and sadism to enact their plans (with the former being Ax-Crazy and the latter being a Manipulative Bastard), but Ivy is a full-fledged metahuman. Moreover, while Alice is obsessed with getting Revenge and hit with Ignored Epiphany after Ignored Epiphany, and Sionis is obsessed with being seen as Gotham's true hero, Ivy wants to wipe the city off the face of the Earth for the sake of Mother Nature, and has the ability to do so anytime she wants.
The Corrupter: It's because of her that Mary pulls a Face–Heel Turn and becomes the second iteration of Ivy. And she was in a coma when she did that.
Dating Catwoman: She dated Renee Montoya back when the two of them were younger, but they developed very different worldviews that set them apart. This motivates Renee to find her in later years, out of guilt for having left her to rot in a sewer for so long.
Destructive Romance: It didn't use to be this way, but the moment Ivy was transformed, any moments of nicety she had gave way to a woman who would destroy everything in her path to ensure nature would reign. Montoya is tragically the abused one in the relationship, and though she's well aware of Ivy's faults, she's trying to hunker it out in the hopes that Ivy will change.
Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Subverted. Whatever feelings Ivy had for Renee were second only to her crusade, even when Renee revives her over a decade later.
Fate Worse than Death: According to Montoya, Ivy was dumped in the sewers by Batman, leaving her with little to no sunlight or water. And this was done at Montoya's own request.
Fiery Redhead: She's a very passionate environmentalist with a very luscious head of red hair.
Freudian Excuse: In this version, Pam's obsession with plant-based eco-terrorism stems from her family being poisoned by industrial waste in their drinking water, which killed her brother when he was barely 13. Her interest in botany started because her mother turned to herbal remedies to treat her brother's illness since they didn't have health insurance.
Friend-or-Idol Decision: When she goes off to blow up a damn, Renee gives her a choice between continuing her crusade or continuing to be with her. To Renee's regret, she chooses the former. Renee drugs her up and has Batman dump her in a sewer to keep her from doing anything again.
The Ghost: Her name only appears on a door in Arkham Asylum. Season 3 reveals that Batman dumped her into a sewer at Montoya's request, keeping her in a place lacking sunlight and water so she can't threaten Gotham again. As such, she starts to influence the actions of others around her. But then, partway through Season 3, she's woken up...
Godzilla Threshold: Her reign of terror evidently got so bad that Montoya asked Batman to stuff her in the darkest corner of the sewer so she couldn't get access to light or water. Said act was her planning on blowing up a damn, which would have flooded the city and killed thousands in the process.
Hidden Depths: Before she was mutated, Isley was a very big baseball fan.
High-School Sweethearts: More like College Sweethearts, but Ivy and Montoya met and fell in love while attending university.
Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Courtesy of her vines, many of Ivy's victims end up this way.
Irony: Nearly all of her iterations spend ages trying to get Harley to leave The Joker because he was being abusive to her, but it took her years to listen because she was so madly in love with him. This version is being the abusive one, and Montoya won't leave her because she's so madly in love with the person she used to be.
Insane Troll Logic: After her mutation, she started fighting her crusade because she believed plants couldn't fight for themselves.
Interspecies Romance: Downplayed, but Ivy is a mutated plant-metahuman hybrid in a toxic relationship with the human Renee Montoya.
It Is Beyond Saving: She views Gotham as irredeemable, and part of her plan to destroy it via a Big Dam Plot is so it can be purged of those harming nature.
Karma Houdini: After her plans are stopped, Renee works out a deal for herself and Pamela with Sophie, allowing the two lovers to go into exile on Coryana.
Ms. Fanservice: True to form, Ivy has a very flattering figure highlighted by skintight clothing.
Mythology Gag:
- Ivy's outfit is a more modest version of her outfit from Batman: Arkham Asylum, as noted by the red jacket. The rest of the area that was exposed in that game is covered by a green, leather outfit, though she has fake vines on there to further homage the design.
- When she's placed in suspended animation, her skin turns a pale green, like some of her iterations are colored.
Offscreen Villainy: We never get to see her shenanigans on-screen prior to Season 3 of Batwoman.
Outside-Context Problem: She is one of the few surviving members of Batman's rogues gallery who has real, honest-to-God superpowers, and even he struggled to come up with a way to stop her. This also makes her far more dangerous to Batwoman than Alice and Black Mask ever did, as they're actually dealing with a metahuman rather than a Badass Normal.
Plant Person: Though unseen for most of the series prior to Season 3, a conversation between Alice and Safiyah confirms that Ivy has control over powerful (and dangerously fast-growing) plants. The ending of Season 2 shows her plants escaping from a capsule and growing widely out of control, hinting at her return, and Season 3 shows her influencing Mary Hamilton into becoming her successor. Conversations with Montoya also confirm she follows her comic counterpart's origin into being mutated into this trope. Then she actually shows up in the flesh, and demonstrates this power to its full extent.
Rule of Symbolism: Her debut episode features a great deal of lillies — the symbol of forgiveness.
Truer to the Text: Compared to her last TV appearance on Gotham, she's depicted closer to her comics counterpart's origin of an eco-terrorist mutated by a mad scientist into a Plant Person rather than being a little girl subjected to a Plot-Relevant Age-Up.
Unseen No More: After a few mentions throughout the show, she finally shows up in the flesh in the middle of Season 3.
Used to Be a Sweet Kid: She was actually a nice person before she was mutated into Ivy.
Villain Has a Point: She isn't wrong that the environment is being trashed; she is wrong in her way about going around trying to fix it.
Vine Tentacles: Can use her vines as whips.
Well-Intentioned Extremist: She wants a better environment for plant life to flourish in, and will go to any lengths necessary to achieve it.
The Worf Effect: Subjects Team Batwoman to this compared to their other rogues. Alice was a dangerous psychopath, and Black Mask was a Manipulative Bastard, but neither of them had powers; she's nowhere near her enemies, and yet comes dangerously close to killing them several times while they're trying to hunt her down. The only reason she doesn't kill them is because she's not up to full strength.
Younger Than They Look: Her actress is 39 years old, but she appears to be in her mid 20s. Justified to an extent, as she was placed in suspended animation by Montoya for at least 11 years.

Basil Karlo / Clayface

Species: Metahuman

An inmate at Arkham Asylum.

see Batman (1966): Rogues Gallery page for False Face, the Earth-66 character who bears his name and comic book connections.

see Arrowverse: Other Earths page to see the Earth-99 character who bears his codename and background

see Birds of Prey (2002) page to see the Earth-203 character who bears his codename and background

Alternate Self: He has one on Earth-66, Earth-99, and Earth-203.
The Ghost: His name only appears on a door in Arkham Aslym.
Offscreen Villainy: We never get to see his shenanigans on-screen.
Pragmatic Adaptation: He will appear in a tie-in comic to the series, Earth Prime, and not the show itself, presumably due to the expense of depicting his powers in live action.

Edward Nygma / The Riddler

Species: Human

An inmate at Arkham Asylum, who's obsessed with riddles and puzzles.

see Titans (2018): Villains page to see the Earth-9 character who bears his name and background

see Batman (1966): Rogues Gallery page to see the Earth-66 character who bears his name and background

see Batman Film Series: Villains page to see the Earth-97 character who bears his name and background

see Arrowverse: Other Earths page to see the Earth-99 character who bears his name and background

see DCEU: Gotham Underworld page for the character in an undesignated Earth who bears his name and background

Alternate Self: On Earth-9, Earth-66, Earth-89, Earth-99, and in the DCEU.
Dead Alternate Counterpart: His Earth-99 counterpart was killed by a murderous Bruce Wayne.
Expy Coexistence: Arthur Brown, alias Cluemaster, acts in a very similar manner to him, right down to his gimmicks, yet both parties exist in the series (with Riddler being The Ghost as of now).
Green-Eyed Monster: Cluemaster claims Riddler is this of him (though it's implied it's the other way around).
The Ghost: His name only appears on a door in Arkham Aslym, along with the mention that Enigma is his daughter.
Mythology Gag: It's thanks to him that Tommy Elliot learns that Bruce Wayne and Batman are one and the same, as with the original story.
Offscreen Villainy: We never get to see his shenanigans on-screen. One such action was discovering Bruce Wayne was Batman for Tommy Elliot.
Outliving One's Offspring: Enigma, who is his daughter, was killed by Ocean, while every mention of and allusion to the Riddler suggests he's alive.
One-Steve Limit: He's the third Edward in the Arrowverse, after Edward "Eddie" Thawne and Edward Clarriss.
Riddle Me This: Nygma's whole gimmick is his obsession with riddles, and a compulsion to leave them for the police and vigilantes. Right outside his cell in Arkham "What's Black and Blue and Red all over?" is written on the wall.
Small Role, Big Impact: He hasn't even appeared, but it's thanks to him that Tommy Elliot knows Bruce Wayne is Batman, which influences and fuels his crimes. Being the father of Enigma also gave Black Mask a key ally in his efforts to take over Gotham.

Jonathan Crane / The Scarecrow

Species: Human

An inmate at Arkham Asylum, notorious for his use of fear toxin.

see Titans (2018): Villains page to see the Earth-9 character who bears his name and background

see Batman (1966): Rogues Gallery page to see the Earth-66 character who bears his name and background

see Batman Film Series: Supporting Characters page to see the Earth-97 character who bears his name

Alternate Self: He has one on Earth-9 and Earth-66.
The Ghost: His name only appears on some vials of fear toxin, and it's mentioned he was a colleague of August Cartwright. His fear toxin does play a role in the second season, being used to make the drug Snakebite, but he hasn't shown up thus far.
Mythology Gag: Him doing something to the city's trains references Batman Begins, where he used his fear gas to cause enough chaos that would distract the city from Ra's Al Ghul's plans to use the train lines to transport and detonate a bomb that would take out the city.
Offscreen Villainy: We never get to see his shenanigans on-screen, though apparently he tried something involving the Gotham trains that prompted them to switch to a supposedly-unhackable analog system.
Supernatural Fear Inducer: His infamous fear toxin is a biochemical fear inducer. It appears before he does, including as part of a drug called "Snakebite" that the False Face Society is distributing. However, unlike his version of the drug, which makes people see their worst fears, it's been modified to make people live out their greatest regrets, only being changed to where it plays out in a much more positive way. Mix it up incorrectly, and it turns people into cannibals. It can also be used to control the rage induced by Venom, or, as Mary finds out, restore missing memories.

Waylon Jones / Killer Croc

Species: Metahuman

A former wrestler turned into a reptilian behemoth by a disease, and part of Batman's Rogues' Gallery.

see Batman (1966): Rogues Gallery page to see the Earth-66 character who bears his name and background

see DCEU: Task Force X - Original Team page for the character in an undesignated Earth who bears his name and background

Adaptational Backstory Change: The comic-book version of Croc was born with scales, but this version used to have a more human appearance before contracting a disease that changed him.
Adaptational Sympathy: From what little is spoken of him, his condition drove him into becoming a monster, leading Batman to take pity on him and try to find a cure. Most other Crocs usually have this aspect to their characterization, but some are perfectly fine with being a monster and seek no cure, while others were stuck with this mutation since childbirth.
Alternate Self: He has a counterpart on Earth-66 and in the DCEU.
Bit-by-Bit Transformation: His mutation occurred over several weeks, slowly taking the human side of him away.
Death by Adaptation: He's one of the few Crocs who wind up dead, unlike other iterations who've held on as long as Batman himself.
Dropped a Bridge on Him: According to Luke, he was killed when the GCPD blew up a tunnel around him.
The Ghost: Kate humorously namedrops him while discussing Batwoman in bed with Reagan.
Scary Teeth: One of his dangerously sharp teeth were kept in cold storage in the Batcave.
Was Once a Man: This version of Waylon actually looked human once, before a disease gave him scales, claws, and jaws.

Maxie Zeus

Species: Human

An inmate at Arkham Asylum.

The Ghost: His name only appears on a newspaper clipping in the Batcave about his capture.
Offscreen Villainy: We never get to see his shenanigans on-screen.

The Penny Plunderer

Species: Human

An inmate at Arkham Asylum.

The Ghost: His name only appears on a newspaper clipping in the Batcave about his capture.
Offscreen Villainy: We never get to see his shenanigans on-screen.

Nora Fries

Species: Human

Played By: Cassandra Jean Amell

First Appearance: "Elseworlds, Part 2" (Arrow 7x9)

Appearances: Elseworlds ^note(Arrow)

Victor Fries's wife, who escaped during a mass release of prisoners in Arkham Asylum. She needs to stay exposed to extreme cold or she'll die.

see Arrowverse: Gotham City Citizens page for the post-Crisis Earth-Prime character who bears her name and background

see Batman Film Series: Supporting Characters page to see the Earth-97 character who bears her name and background

Abled in the Adaptation: Downplayed. Nora Fries is bedridden/in a coma and is dependent on life-support in the comic books and in several adaptations. Here, she can still live like normal as long as she's exposed to extreme cold.
Adaptational Badass: An Implied Trope. In the comic books, she's extremely ill. Here, she's seen imprisoned along with many of the infamous members of Batman's Rogues Gallery. However, she did have extremely powerful metahuman abilities as Lazara.
Adaptational Superpower Change: In the comics, Nora's powers as Lazara are fire-based, in contrast to her husband's ice-themed abilities. Here, she seems to have the same condition as he, and needs to be in extreme cold. (This became Ret-Canon when DC Year of the Villain reinvented her as "Mrs Freeze".)
Adaptational Villainy: Nora Fries is usually a good woman whose condition became her husband's reason for his Start of Darkness. Here, she follows the storyline in the Batgirl story arc Destruction's Daughter, in which she did became a supervillain.
Adaptation Dye-Job: Blonde in the comics, depicted as brunette here.
Distaff Counterpart: It's obvious she's meant to be a female stand-in for the classic Mr. Freeze.
Freeze Ray: She takes her husband's after escaping Arkham Asylum. It's packs enough of a punch to send Killer Frost flying.
An Ice Person: She needs to be exposed to extreme cold or she'll die; she makes off with her husband's ice gun during the Elseworlds crossover.
One-Steve Limit: She's the fourth Nora in the Arrowverse after Nora Allen, Nora Darhk, and Nora West-Allen.
Ret-Gone: This version of Nora seems to have been erased from reality during the Crisis, as a different, older Nora has since appeared on Batwoman.

Bane

Species: Human

An old foe of Batman's, who uses a super-steroid substance.

see Batman (1966): Rogues Gallery page to see the Earth-66 character who bears his name and background

see Batman Film Series: Villains page to see the Earth-97 character who bears his name and background

Alternate Self: He has counterparts on Earth-66 and Earth-89.
Fantastic Drug: His Venom, which he uses to increase his strength. His feeding tubes are seen on display in the Batcave.
The Ghost: He hasn't appeared in the flesh as of yet.
Mythology Gag: During the Elseworlds crossover event, a mask based on his iteration from The Dark Knight Rises is seen in the Arkham evidence room.
Small Role, Big Impact: Not him so much as his Venom, which turns out to be the key to saving Kate Kane from being brainwashed.
Unstoppable Rage: His Venom can trigger this in its users, which requires Snakebite to keep it under control.

Jervis Tetch / Mad Hatter

Mad Hatter

Species: Human

An former neuroscientist who used mind-controls hats to make people do whatever he wanted.

see Batman (1966): Rogues Gallery page to see the Earth-66 character who bears his name and background

see DCEU: Gotham Underworld page for the character in an undesignated Earth who bears his name and background

Alternate Self: Other versions of him exist on Earth-66 and in the DCEU.
Death by Adaptation: An article in the ''Gotham Gazette" revealed he passed in 2021, in contrast to other Hatters who are still operating.
From Nobody to Nightmare: He turned to crime because he felt the world wasn't listening to him.
The Ghost: Has yet to appear in the show proper. It's later revealed that he died in 2021.
The Mad Hatter: The Trope Namer, as evidenced by his hat.
Mind Control: His modus operandi, which he implemented courtesy of his hat.

Condiment King

Species: Human

One of Batman's old foes, who used condiments as a weapon.

Ambiguous Situation: It's unclear if he's operating at the time, or if this Condiment King was either Mitchell Mayo or Buddy Standler.
Canon Immigrant: From Batman: The Animated Series, who had made the jump to comics prior to this series.
The Ghost: He hasn't shown up yet.
Harmless Villain: You wouldn't exactly be the most dangerous threat to Gotham if you used a condiment gun, though it was dangerous enough that Batman had it confiscated.
Offscreen Villainy: The audience has yet to ketchup on whatever Condiment King was doing prior to the start of the series.

Phantasm

Species: Human

One of Batman's old foes, who wore a frightening mask.

Ambiguous Situation: It's not clear if this Andrea Beaumont, someone else in the mask, or if the character is even operating at the time.
Canon Immigrant: From Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, although the character had appeared in Tom King's run in the comics prior to this series.
The Ghost: We haven't seen the Phantasm in action.
Mythology Gag: The trophy Batman has of this particular foe is the Mask of the Phantasm.
Offscreen Villainy: Whatever crimes Phantasm has committed have yet to come to light.

Selina Kyle / Catwoman

Catwoman

Species: Human

A notorious cat-burglar and former flame of Batman's.

see Titans (2018): Villains page to see her Earth-9 character who bears her name and background

see Batman (1966): Rogues Gallery page to see the Earth-66 character who bears her name and background

see Batman Film Series: Villains page to see the Earth-89 character who bears her name and background

see Birds of Prey (2002) for the Earth-203 character who bears her name and background

Classy Cat-Burglar: It wouldn't be Catwoman otherwise.
Dating Catwoman: True to form, she and Batman had a fling.
The Ghost: Hasn't shown up as of yet.
Not Me This Time: When a male stripper is found tied up in a garage with multiple whips, Catwoman is the first suspect. Alice is able to deduce that's not the case, pointing to The Flamingo as the true culprit.
Take That!: When discussing Batman and Catwoman's relationship, Alice has some naughty thoughts of what they were doing together, remarking "Heroes don't do that". This mocks DC executives preventing the writing team of Harley Quinn from allowing a scene where Batman preforms cunnilingus on Catwoman — the quote in question coming from their reasoning as to why they wouldn't allow said scene.

The Whip

Species: Human

A small-time criminal who uses whips.

Adaptational Villainy: Most Whips are good guys (aside from the assassin version), whereas this one is a criminal.
Ambiguous Situation: It's unclear which of the Whips (Don Fernando Suarez, Johnny Lash, Rodrigo Gaynor, Shelly Gaynor, or the unknown assassin) this iteration is.
The Ghost: Hasn't been seen as of yet.
Not Me This Time: Is the suspect in the death of a male stripper, but Alice rules Whip out.

Flamingo

Species: Human

A small-time criminal.

The Ghost: He hasn't popped up on screen yet.
Noodle Incident: He randomly kills a male stripper, but it's not clear as to why he did it.

Independent Criminals

Marc Guggenheim

Species: Human

The Ghost: His name only appears on a door in Arkham Asylum.
Offscreen Villainy: We never get to see his shenanigans on-screen.
Take That!: A criminal named after the comic book writer and former Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow showrunner. He did write the third part of Elseworlds, though, so it may have been more of a friendly rib.
Tuckerization: As mentioned above, he's directly named after the comic writer and former Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow showrunner, who also wrote the third hour of Elseworlds, coincidentally.

Roger Hayden / The Psycho-Pirate

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/elseworlds_psycho_pirate.jpg

Species: Human

Played By: Bob Frazer

First Appearance: "Elseworlds, Part 2" (Arrow 7x9)

Appearances: Elseworlds ^note(Arrow | Supergirl)

"Don't worry, Doctor. Everything is as it should be. The stage is set. Worlds will live. Worlds will die. And the universe will never be the same."

An Arkham inmate, who has some connection with the Monitor.

Adaptational Superpower Change: His mask doesn't appear to do anything, as opposed to the comics, where the Medusa Mask can make anyone who sees it feel any emotion. When the mask later pops up on The Flash (2014), it's later revealed to be a Psychological Torment Zone that traps its victims into a horrific mind-scape while it feeds off of them.
Adaptational Wimp: In the comics, his Medusa Mask can make anyone feel any emotion, including fear. In the show, even after he puts on the mask, he doesn't seem to have any powers. But the final minutes of Elseworlds heavily imply there is far more to him than meets the eye.
Demoted to Extra: Sits out the Crisis event despite being an integral character in the original version. His mask, however, plays a small role in the seventh season of The Flash (2014).
Mythology Gag: He is used to tease the crossover for Crisis on Infinite Earths as he was a very significant character in the comic arc. Yet he had no part in the Arrowverse crossover special.

Tommy Elliot / Hush

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/tommy_elliot.png

"Hush..."

^{Click here to see him with his new face on}

Species: Human

Played By: Gabriel Mann, Warren Christie

First Appearance: "Down Down Down" (Batwoman 1x3)

Appearance: Batwoman

Bruce Wayne's childhood friend turned real estate magnate.

Adaptational Dumbass: Comics Hush was a skilled surgeon, as well as a capable chessmaster and master manipulator who can give Batman a run for his money. This one has no medical training (making him unable to change his own appearance and dependent on Alice to get a new face after he lets her remove his), and only thinks he's an intellectual equal of Batman.
Adaptational Job Change: From surgeon to real estate developer.
Adaptational Personality Change: In the comics and their adaptations, Hush is usually a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing in his public persona and a dangerous Knight of Cerebus in his villainous alter ego. Here he's just an all around Jerkass.
Adaptational Wimp: In addition to the above, Hush was an Arc Villain and The Chessmaster in his debut story arc. Here he's just a Villain of the Week that's not nearly as smart as he thinks he is. Even after upping his villain cred later in the season, he's not much more than a glorified attack dog for Alice and Mouse, doing their dirty work rather than acting out any plans of his own. Then, once Ryan gets the drop on him, he's taken down in a few seconds flat.
Ax-Crazy: As Hush, he coldly guns down random people just for the hell of it.
Bandaged Face: After becoming Hush, though unlike his comics' counterpart, this one actually needs the bandages; they cover his skinned face in lieu of the new one Alice promised.
Chekhov's Gunman: Initially portrayed as a Villain of the Week in the third episode, he returns late in the first season and has a far more pivotal role in the Story Arc, including even in the backstory as it ultimately turns out.
Comic-Book Movies Don't Use Codenames: He does not take on the Hush persona. Yet. He finally gets it at "A Secret Kept from All the Rest".
Compensating for Something: He gives Guy Who Just Bought a Boat a run for his money for world's tiniest package.
Connected All Along: In Season 3, Sophie learns that Gotham's elite founded a secret underground organization to treat their children for psychological conditions away from the public eye in order to avoid a PR disaster, and that Elliot was the catalyst for it.
Curb Stomp Cushion: He gives a surprisingly good fight to Kate, indicating he’s somewhat of a Badass Normal. Still no match for Batwoman of course. And when Ryan takes up the mantle, he gets knocked down flat to the point his face falls off.
Decomposite Character: He's not a surgeon like in the comics and thus can't perform Magic Plastic Surgery himself, but that trope is still in play in the series thanks to Alice, who herself learned it from August Cartwright.
Dragon with an Agenda: As Hush, he works with Alice, but he doesn't care about her plans and only helps her because he expects to get something out of it.
Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Averted. He hates his mother, and Batman having saved her life is part of his main reason for turning to villainy.
Evil Former Friend: To Bruce, though it’s implied Tommy has always been like this.
Evil Is Petty: He takes glee in one-upping Bruce in petty ways such as building a bigger building than him.
False Friend: It's heavily hinted that Tommy was never a genuine friend to Bruce.
Inferiority Superiority Complex: His entire motivation revolves around proving he's better than Bruce Wayne.
Jerkass: A monumental one; Tommy is elitist, sexist, self-aggrandizing, smarmy, rude, and insufferable, and that's without taking his criminal behavior into account. Exactly no one has shown a willingness to put up with the guy any longer than they have to.
Kryptonite Ring: Tommy steals a Batsuit-piercing rail gun from Wayne Tech and still fails to take Kate down.
Magic Plastic Surgery: Alice changes his face to resemble Bruce Wayne's.
Malevolent Masked Men: His Bandaged Face appearance, while necessary to cover up his lack of an actual face, definitely gives off this vibe.
Mythology Gag: In his first in-person appearance, he shushes (or rather hushes) Kate.
Politically Incorrect Villain: He's misogynist and classist, making sexist remarks towards Kate and dismissing the lives of working class people.
Put on a Prison Bus: At the start of Season 2, his entire plan to pose as Bruce Wayne and take over Gotham falls apart when Ryan puts on the suit for the first time and flattens him outright. Not only does his face get smacked off, he's carted away to Arkham, and hasn't been heard from since.
Self-Made Orphan: He arranged the "accident" that killed his father and would have killed his mother (if it weren't for that meddling Batman).
Shady Real Estate Agent: Even from his TV ad alone it's easy to tell this guy is a scumbag.
Small Name, Big Ego: Tommy claims that he taught Bruce everything he knows, such as his multiple languages, but the fact that this version of Tommy needs Alice to coordinate his efforts to be any kind of threat to Batwoman says it all about his actual ability.
Smug Snake: Even being carted away to Arkham, he still acts supremely arrogant.
The Sociopath: He has zero empathy, a grandiose self-image, and can only fake human decency.
Stalker without a Crush: After some time in Arkham, Tommy's fixation on Bruce goes from hatred to a delusional belief that the two of them are best friends.
Starter Villain: What he ends up being for Season 2, with Ryan taking him down relatively easily despite her minimal experience in the suit.
Took a Level in Badass: As Hush, Tommy is a lot more dangerous, doing all of his own (and Alice's) legwork, although he still has a ways to go before he poses a serious threat to the likes of Batwoman in a fight.
Unknown Rival: He fancies himself an Arch-Enemy and Evil Counterpart to both Bruce and Batman. Odds are Bruce has no idea that his old pal Tommy is now a villain.
Upper-Class Twit: He’s wealthy and frequently makes an ass of himself.

August Cartwright

Species: Human

Played By: John Emmet Tracy, Sebastian Roché (as Dr. Ethan Campbell)

First Appearance: "Mine Is a Long And a Sad Tale" (Batwoman 1x5)

Appearances: Batwoman

The man who abducted Beth Kane. He collects human faces in an attempt to repair his son Johnny's deformed face.

Abusive Parents: He was controlling and emotionally abusive towards his son. When they meet again years later, Mouse explicitly describes his father as his abuser.
Asshole Victim: Deconstructed. Kate accidentally kills him in a fit of rage, but while Jacob and Alice point out that he was a horrible man that deserved no sympathy, this fact doesn't absolve Kate of her guilt.
Bad People Abuse Animals: He kills a kitten with his bare hands, despite Jonathan and Beth's pleas for him to simply let it go.
Big Bad Ensemble: He's this to season one of Batwoman alongside the Big Bad Duumvirate of his son and Alice, both of whom he made evil in the first place. However, he bites it in Episode 15.
Decomposite Character: While his son is strongly implied right from the get-go to be the Arrowverse equivalent of Batman enemy Jane Doe, it eventually becomes clear that Cartwright is also a take on the character, particularly given the character's traditional Kill and Replace M.O.
Entitled Bastard: Cartwright believes with all of his heart that he deserves nothing but praise and prestige despite his horrific actions, which is why he stole Ethan Campbell's identity. Even when at the mercy of two people who have more reason than any to want him dead, Cartwright's idea of a fair deal is one where he's not only spared, but allowed to go free.
Even Evil Has Loved Ones: His crimes are committed out of a twisted desire to heal his son's face. He also loved his mother.
Even Evil Has Standards: Even he seemed to be somewhat disturbed by his mother's cruelty.
Extreme Doormat: To his mother, Mabel. Despite her less than stellar parenting, he always tried to cave to her demands and never spoke out against her, especially after she moved in and targeted Alice.
Faux Affably Evil: He can appear kind and mild-mannered, but is actually cold to anyone but his son, and fully willing to kill if necessary.
Four Eyes, Zero Soul: He is usually seen wearing a menacing pair of specs, befitting of him being a Mad Doctor. Interestingly, while he still wears glasses in the present day while assuming the false identity of Ethan Campbell, when he reveals his true face he appears to no longer wear them.
Hate Sink: Everything about this man is absolutely despicable. As if kidnapping an innocent girl and holding her captive for years wasn't enough, he even kills Beth's pet kitten right in front of her. It’s little wonder poor Beth became so crazy, turning into Alice.
It Runs in the Family: He appears to have gotten his sociopathy from his mother.
Kill and Replace: It's heavily implied that Cartwright murdered the real Ethan Campbell in order to steal his life and get the praise and laurels he thinks he deserves.
Knight of Cerebus: While other villains in the show are often portrayed in a whimsical or flamboyant manner, August has no such attributes and instantly darkens any scene he appears in due to his no-nonsense demeanor and seemingly boundless cruelty.
Mommy Issues: Played for Horror. As shown in flashbacks in "Off With Your Head", his mother Mabel was a real piece of work who mistreated her son and constantly demanded things from him. Despite this, Cartwright tried to please her to avoid invoking her wrath, even insisting (albeit feebly) to an abused Alice that his mother doesn't hate her and striking her when she insulted the woman. He also couldn't outright refuse giving Gabi Kane's face to Mabel to help her regain her youth despite knowing it wouldn't work. However, it's implied that he also secretly resented his mother, since he doesn't seem too bothered by her murder and tries blaming Alice's entire Sanity Slippage on her.
Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: His full name, including title, is given as Dr. August Cartwright, and he's obviously up to no good. It's somewhat implied the doctorate is related to the medical field, given his experiments on human skin.
Never My Fault: He blames Alice for Mouse turning on him, disregarding his own horrific actions. He also blames Alice's condition solely on his mother, once again ignoring his own horrific actions.
Noodle Incident: Apparently at one point in his life, he was colleagues with The Scarecrow.
Predecessor Villain: It's strongly implied his horrific actions in the past are what molded both his son and Beth into the violent criminals they are today, even if they seemed to be born out of a twisted kind of love for Jonathan to begin with. Also overlaps with Villainous Legacy. This is eventually subverted when it's revealed he's also alive and well in the present day, and is the Big Bad Ensemble of season 1 alongside Alice and Mouse.
The Sociopath: Cartwright has no empathy, not even for his own son, whom he claims to love. He also has no problem kidnapping, abusing, or manipulating children, and believes that he deserves nothing but praise and prestige for his horrible deeds.
Voice Changeling: He's capable of this just like his son, implying the ability is genetic. However, he doesn't make use of it nearly as often.
What Happened to the Mouse?: He was active 15 years ago, but his whereabouts in the present day haven't been revealed. It turns out he had previously faked his death and had lived under the assumed identity of Ethan Campbell, using a lifelike mask he had made.
Would Hurt a Child: What makes him so despicable is the depths of physical and psychological trauma he inflicts on poor Beth, and to a somewhat lesser extent his own son. He also threatens to kill the young Kate (along with Jacob) when the two come searching his house for Beth.

Margot / Magpie

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/magpie__batwoman.jpg

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/margaret_2.png

Species: Human

Played By: Rachel Matthews

First Appearance: "Who Are You?" (Batwoman 1x4)

Appearances: Batwoman

A photographer hired by Gotham City's museum, Margot's obsession with valuables slowly turns her into a jewel thief.

Booby Trap: Margot rigs her secret workspace with a bomb if the room temperature is above a certain threshold.
Character Catchphrase: "Shiny, shiny."
Celebrity Paradox: Frozen jokes often come up when Killer Frost appears. Margot's actress is part of Frozen II's voice cast.
Classy Cat-Burglar: Played with - she has a bird motif rather than a cat.
Femme Fatalons: She has extremely long nails to simulate bird claws.
Mad Bomber: Like her comics counterpart, Margot uses explosives disguised as fake jewelry via 3D printer; she even crafts magpie figures as bombs for weapons. She ends up in Arkham Asylum rather than a regular prison, implying that she does have mental issues.
Meaningful Name: According to Eurasian folklore, the "magpie" bird is attracted to bright, shiny objects.
Knight Templar: She justifies thievery is for the greater good, regardless of lives she might maim or kill, when it's about survival of the fittest.
Rogues' Gallery Transplant: Magpie made her debut in The Man of Steel, where Superman meets Batman for the first time in Gotham City post-Crisis, as part of Batman's Rogues Gallery.
Sibling Team: It's later revealed that Reagan is her sister, scouting the places Margot intends to rob.
Symbol Motif Clothing: She wears a black outfit with feathers and long claws, and uses magpie-shaped grenades. When she tries stealing a Fabergé egg, Batwoman tells her she's taking the bird theme too far.

Stanley Dover

See the Arrowverse: Star City - Independent Criminals page

Bertrand Eldon / The Executioner

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/executioner_2.png

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/bertrand_eldon.png

Species: Human

Played By: Jim Pirri

First Appearance: "I'll Be Judge, I'll Be Jury" (Batwoman 1x6)

Appearances: Batwoman

A former executioner from Blackgate Penitentiary turned vigilante, who begins killing off Gotham City citizens serving the justice system.

Adaptational Heroism: The comic version of the Executioner broke criminals out of prison and then killed them to claim a reward, while the version seen in Gotham was a Brainwashed and Crazy ex-police captain who killed criminals out of frustration with the broken justice system he was supposed to serve. While still a murderer, this version is only targeting corrupt law enforcement officials who condemned innocent people to death.
Adaptation Name Change: His name in the comics was Willy Hooker. Here, he's named Bertrand Eldon.
Booby Trap: Used twice in his appearance - the first is a jury-rigged set of rifles arranged in a line to mimic a firing squad triggered after opening a door, the second is filling up a locked courtroom with hydrogen cyanide upon his heart rate hitting zero.
Cruel and Unusual Death: The Executioner uses allegories for the electric chair, firing squad and Gas Chamber to kill his victims.
He Who Fights Monsters: His Freudian Excuse for killing a prosecutor and a police detective - they, along with a presiding judge, framed innocent men to take the fall for murders they didn't commit. He would execute them at Blackgate not knowing they were innocent until he dug into their histories.
In the Back: How he meets his end, courtesy of Jacob.
It's All My Fault: He blames himself for flipping the switch on innocent victims who were framed by a cabal of corrupt law enforcement officers, openly calling himself a murderer.
"Not So Different" Remark: Jacob points this out between him and Kate.
Roaring Rampage of Revenge: His goal is to kill the corrupt men who duped him into executing innocent people.
Small Role, Big Impact: He appears in one episode, in which he's killed. But since his victims were corrupt city officials, their deaths result in their professional records being scrutinized. Part of that involves a cover-up of Lucius Fox's death, which is a major piece of the second half of season 1.
Villain Has a Point: Kate acknowledges that he does have a point about the corrupt justice system and racial profiling.

The Rifle

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/rifle.jpg

Species: Human

Played By: Garfield Wilson

First Appearance: "Tell Me the Truth" (Batwoman 1x7)

Appearances: Batwoman

Ace Custom: Wields a heavily customized rifle as his weapon that apparently shoots either unique, hand-crafted or personalized ammunition.
Adaptational Expansion: Pretty much by default, since his comic counterpart appeared for literally only one panel and a brief caption box.
Bald of Evil: He's a ruthless killer with a shiny pate.
Cold Sniper: Take a wild guess at how he got his name.
Gender Flip: A woman in the comics, a man on the show.
Professional Killer: How he earns his keep.
Race Lift: An Iranian woman in the comics, a black man on the show.

Reggie Harris

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/reggie_4.jpg

Species: Human

Played By: Seth Whittaker

First Appearance: "How Queer Everything Is Today!" (Batwoman 1x10)

Appearances: Batwoman

An inmate of Blackgate Penitentiary, who was convicted of shooting Lucius Fox years ago.

Big Damn Heroes: Saves Jacob from being killed by Dodgson.
Fall Guy: He's framed for Lucius Fox's murder.
False Confession: What he was apparently coerced to by corrupt Crow agents.
Scary Black Man: Has a very imposing stature and isn't afraid to try and pick a fight with Jacob.
"Shaggy Dog" Story: After just getting released, he is shot by an assassin, possible due to knowing too much about the true circumstances of Lucius Fox's murder.
Wild Card: While he does save Jacob, he doesn't do it out of altruistic reasons, as evidenced by his hostile behaviour towards him earlier, he rather just expects him to repay the favour later.
Yank the Dog's Chain: After spending four years rotting in Blackgate for a crime he didn't commit, he is finally granted a retrial and released from prison on his own recognizance. He doesn't even get to enjoy his freedom for a full day before he is murdered by an assassin paid off by Lucius' real killer.

Natalia Knight / Nocturna

Species: Human

First Appearance: "Drink Me" (Batwoman 1x13)

Appearances: Batwoman

A woman with Porphyria who adopts a vampiric persona to drain people of blood to help mitigate her illness.

Adaptational Mundanity: She's an actual supernatural vampire in the Batwoman comics, but in the show suffers from porphyria. She wears fang implants that she uses to inject victims with ketamine to sedate them.
Adaptational Wimp: Her comic version was able to control Kate with hypnotism and emotional manipulation, but here she has no special powers and Kate firmly rejects her advances.
Adaptation Name Change: Natalia Knight actually is Nocturna's name in Pre-Crisis comics, but that's not the version that ever interacted with Batwoman, who was named Natalie Mitternacht.
Ambiguously Bi: She preys on both men and women, but it's not clear if she has any interest in them other than as sources of blood.
Casting Gag: This isn't the first time Kayla Ewell has played a vampire on a CW show produced by Caroline Dries.
Fang Thpeak: While wearing her dental implants.
Foe Romance Subtext: Nocturna is so obviously turned on fighting Batwoman that Kate tells her You're Not My Type, and makes it clear she doesn't find killing people sexy. That doesn't stop Kate from playing up the eroticism of being bitten by her to troll Luke.
Handicapped Badass: She's still quite a capable fighter despite her illness.
The Resenter: She hates the fact that healthy people ruin their bodies with booze and drugs while she suffers from painful health problems, driving her to murder people to keep herself alive.
Serial Killer: She drains people dry of blood to transfuse into herself.

Duela Dent

Species: Human

Played By: Alessandra Torresani

First Appearance: "Grinning From Ear to Ear" (Batwoman 1x14)

Appearances: Batwoman

A mentally disturbed woman who mutilated her own face and later goes on a rampage, targeting everybody who she felt wronged by.

Alliterative Name: Duella Dent.
Ax-Crazy: A Psycho Knife Nut who loves mutilating peoples faces (including her own).
Composite Character: While her name and general appearance come from Joker's Daughter, her motive of wanting to hunt down the plastic surgeon who fixed her face is similar to the motive of Pretty, one of the rogues from Mother Panic, and much like Pretty, her thirst for revenge is finally sated when her face is removed.
Facial Horror: Her Glasgow Grin alone, however she later even has her entire face cut off by Alice... and willingly!
Glasgow Grin: How her self-inflicted face wounds look. And she also carves them into her victims.
Mythology Gag: Her facial scars recall those of Heath Ledger's Joker, while her having her face removed recalls the New 52 Joker.

George Adler Sr. / The Detonator I

Species: Human

A former soldier in the United States Army who got dishonorably discharged and turned contractor. Later he became a terrorist bomber under the alias of the Detonator.

From Camouflage to Criminal: Member of the U.S. Army prior to his criminal career.
Mad Bomber: Blew up several buildings in Gotham.
Posthumous Character: Passed away in 2013.
Sadistic Choice: He targeted various public figures deemed as heroes with bombing attacks in order to prove they weren't that heroic by placing them in front of them a choice to either save their own life or that of some strangers.
Shell-Shocked Veteran: The reason for him going nuts.
That One Case: Batman and the GCPD never caught him.

Miguel Robles / The Detonator II

Species: Human

Played By: Nathan Witte

First Appearance: "An Un-Birthday Present" (Batwoman 1x11)

Appearances: Batwoman

A corrupt former agent of Crows Security (former head of the Crows Homicide Division) turned GCPD officer, and the true killer of Lucius Fox.

Accidental Murder: He claims that he didn't want to kill Lucius. His plan was merely to rough the man up (on Tommy Elliot's behalf) for his journal, and when Lucius wouldn't break, Robles threatened Luke to make him cooperate. Instead, Lucius went full Papa Wolf and Robles shot him on reflex.
Affirmative-Action Legacy: Afro-Latino and successor to the Caucasian George Adler, Sr.
Forced to Watch: He puts all the bombs his victims have to detonate to save themselves in their hearing range.
Killer Cop: A cop and a murderous bomber.
Legacy Character: Took up the mantle of the Detonator.
Mad Bomber: Just like his predecessor.
Sadistic Choice: His MO is the same one his predecessor used.
Serial Killings, Specific Target: Robles apes the Detonator's MO to make people think the original has returned, but in fact he's trying to destroy buildings which contain evidence of his crimes. He's caught because it's too suspicious that the Detonator would just happen to target locations of specific importance to him.
You Killed My Father: He is the true killer of Lucius Fox and Luke almost kills him in return.

Johnny Sabatino

Species: Human

First Appearance: "If You Believe In Me, I'll Believe In You" (Batwoman 1x18)

Appearance: Batwoman

A well known mobster in Gotham City and the former money launder of Tommy Elliot, for whom he managed the Lookout.

Celebrity Paradox: The CSI-verse is mentioned to exist in the Arrowverse during The Flash (2014) Season 3. His actor was a main cast member of CSI: NY in the entirety of its run.
Dragon with an Agenda: He served as Tommy Elliot's right-hand man but ditches him after finding out he could make more money than him.
Only in It for the Money: His main goal in life is to get his wallet and bank accounts really, really fat.
Secret Identity Apathy: He has Batwoman Bound and Gagged to be sold at an Auction of Evil, but never bothers to look under her mask himself.

Victor Zsasz

Species: Human

Played By: Alex Morf

First Appearance: "Bat Girl Magic!" (Batwoman 2x3)

Appearance: Batwoman

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/averse_zsaz.png

One of Gotham's most notorious hitmen, who tallies marks into his skin with each kill he obtains.

see DCEU: Minor Villains and Criminals page for the character in an undesignated Earth who bears his name and background

Adaptational Attractiveness: His comics counterpart is either really ugly or monstrously inhuman Depending on the Artist, but here he's played by Alex Morf, who is quite the handsome fellow; even having a Goatee of Evil too, where Zsaz is usually portrayed with no facial hair at all.
Adaptational Comic Relief: While he has a reputation for being a badass, he takes after his Gotham counterpart and is also quite a bit sassier and more prone to making jokes than the comic book Zsasz ever was.
Adaptational Job Change: From a Serial Killer to a mob hitman for hire.
Adaptational Nice Guy: A very borderline example. This incarnation of Zsasz is more of an Affably Evil mercenary who's only crazy and sadistic when he has a job. Otherwise, he doesn't really display as much deep insanity and extreme bloodlust as most of his counterparts, who're usually so Ax-Crazy that he can't do anything but think about killing. In fact, when Ryan confronts him in a bar, he's quite jovial and polite, never raising his voice, and turns down the deal without making a ruckus.
Affably Evil: He's a pretty friendly guy for someone who spends his days killing people for hire. If he's not been tasked to kill you, harm you, or otherwise ruin your life, he's actually a decent guy.
Ax-Crazy: Downplayed compared to his comics counterpart, but he's still a murderous psychopath who gets kicks out of killing and torturing, even referencing his gimmick for spilling blood and cutting himself after chasing Mary.
Badass in a Nice Suit: Sports a classy, black suit.
Bald of Evil: He lacks any hair on his head and displays the athletic skills that he has in the comics.
Code of Honor: He doesn't rat out his clients, and he always makes sure to finish his contracts, even if things go wrong for him.
Composite Character: He is an affable and notorious hitman instead of just a Serial Killer, like in Gotham, but he follows along his Birds of Prey (2020) and comics counterpart with inflicting scars on himself.
Covered with Scars: Per usual, his whole body is covered in self-inflicted tally marks. In fact, he runs out of room, so he starts marking his head.
Crazy-Prepared: Batwoman bursts into his apartment looking for information. He gives her a few minutes of his time, then busts out a rocket launcher at her.
Faux Affably Evil: When he's on the clock he turns into this, he'll snark all he wants, but he will kill you if you let him.
Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: He has an amazing capability to kill anyone except those who have a contract out on them. He misses Batwoman when he shot an RPG in close quarters in his apartment, and missed a knife throw when chasing Mary out of her clinic.
Laughably Evil: Whenever he's the focus, Zsasz will most likely have you laughing by the end of the scene. He’s a notorious and cold blooded Hitman, with a reputation of being The Dreaded in prisons the world over, and yet he barely drops his chipper attitude or Affably Evil nature while on or off the job.
Mythology Gag: His character quirks of being Affably Evil towards everyone, including his targets, and playing with his food by constantly cracking wise, are directly taken from his Gotham incarnation. His being bald with a brunet goatee is also similar to his appearance in Batman Begins.
Noodle Incident: He apparently fought Batman once. Ryan's not interested in hearing it, so he decides to save it for another time. Then there's also all those other scars he's got, meaning he has plenty of other kills under his belt.
Professional Killer: He hires himself out as a contract killer, instead of just doing it for the sake of killing.
Punch-Clock Villain: He's a surprisingly affable guy when he's not working a job to assassinate targets. For example, when meeting with Ryan in a cafe so the latter can grab information from him, he's nothing but smiles and sunshine.
A Scar to Remember: For each kill he racks up, he does this to himself.
Self-Harm: All of his scars are self-inflicted; once he kills someone, he adds a tally on himself.
Villain Has a Point: He mocks Ryan for wearing the Batwoman costume, claiming that she's not comfortable with it. He's absolutely on point, and Ryan modifies it to better suit her. He's actually impressed that she did so.

Evan Blake / Wolf Spider

Evan Blake

Species: Human

Played By: Lincoln Clauss

First Appearance: "Gore on Canvas" (Batwoman 2x5)

Appearance: Batwoman

A gymnastic art thief and hacktivist, and old friend of Kate's.

Adaptation Deviation: Evan is a cisgender man in the comics, while in the show they're genderfluid (using both he/him and they/them pronouns).
Adaptational Heroism: In the comics, Evan is selfish and willing to kill if necessary, and is only connected to Kate by happenstance. Here, they are actively helping the search for Kate, and greed isn't the motive for their thievery.
Adaptational Karma: The comic version of Wolf Spider was never captured, and though his plans ended up collapsing, he never received any comeuppance for his crimes beyond getting beaten up once. This version, despite their Adaptational Heroism, ends up severely injured after getting hit by an SUV.
Because You Were Nice to Me: They want to help find Kate, because Kate helped them come out back in high school.
The Bus Came Back: They pop up in "Armed and Dangerous", where they inject the Desert Rose serum into a mortally wounded Luke.
You Don't Look Like You: Downplayed. Evan is blond and of an athletic build in the comics, but is slender and has dark hair on the show. The Wolf Spider costume, on the other hand, looks like it was pulled directly off the page.

Aaron Helzinger / Amygdala

Aaron Helzinger

Species: Human

Played By: RJ Fetherstonhaugh

First Appearance: "Do Not Rescucitate" (Batwoman 2x6)

Appearance: Batwoman

A severely disturbed man working as muscle for a group with connections to Hamilton Dynamics.

Adaptational Attractiveness: His comic-book counterpart is usually portrayed as an ugly, bald giant. This version looks more like a normal guy, except with a scar running down one of his temples.
Adaptation Origin Connection: In the comics, his origins involved a doctor at Arkham Asylum removing his amygdala in a failed attempt to cure his psychotic episodes. In this series, Hamilton Dynamics performed experiments on him, blasting his brain with UV radiation to cure his mental illness. The treatments worked, but the radiation caused a tumor to develop near his amygdala, causing him to revert to unpredictable violence again, and thus he has a personal beef with Mary Hamilton.
Dumb Muscle: Whatever operation he's working for, he's obviously not the mastermind.
Hair-Trigger Temper: According to him, even something as harmless as the sight of a puppy can set him off.

Evelyn Rhyme / Enigma

Evelyn Rhyme

Species: Human

First Appearance: "Rule #1" (Batwoman 2x9)

Appearance: Batwoman

A skilled hypnotist employed by both Safiyah and Black Mask, and the daughter of the Riddler.

Ambiguously Related: Initially Played Straight, then subverted. Her comics counterpart is the daughter of the Riddler, and while she does employ his trademark pose with a cane and wears a nifty shade of green like him, it was unclear whether or not she's related to the Prince of Puzzles. She is later revealed to be his daughter, but this is only after she died.
Are You Sure You Want to Do That?: When Alice learns Kate is still alive and has been brainwashed into believing she's Black Mask's daughter, she forces Enigma to try and come up with a reversal for the hypnosis. Though Enigma is willing to help, she explicitly warns that what she did to Kate was more extensive than what she did to Alice and Ocean; any efforts to remove the brainwashing could return Kate to normal, but it would make her far more aggressive and hostile towards Alice. Alice doesn't care and wishes to proceed — only for Ocean to snap Enigma's neck.
Brainwashed and Crazy: Apparently did this to Beth/Alice by removing all memories of her lover Ocean and any traces of empathy that she might have once had, transforming her into the monster she is today. Though Safiyah and Ryan are quick to tell Alice that she never bothered to change even with this revelation. She later does this to Julia to make her want to transfer to Berlin when she gets too close into the circumstances behind Kate's plane crash, then does this to Kate to make her believe that she's really Black Mask's deceased daughter.
Character Death: Ocean snaps her neck to ensure she can't return Kate to normal, convinced that she's too toxic for Alice.
Crazy-Prepared: She's fully prepared to deal with anyone that tries to confront her. Case in point? Her cane's handle can be removed and its tip used as a syringe with her hypnosis drug. She can also undo her brainwashing on a whim.
Even Evil Has Standards: When Alice holds her hostage, Enigma is quite horrified by how monstrous that her captor can be, especially to how far she'll go to remove any last traces of Kate from her mind.
Laser-Guided Amnesia: She wipes Ocean and Beth/Alice's minds of their memories of one another, and is prepared to do the same to Kate. Alice is apparently seeking out her services yet again to wipe her mind of her memories of Kate.
Named by the Adaptation: In the original comics, she doesn't have a real name, but here, she goes by the civilian name Evelyn Rhyme.
Neck Snap: Is killed off this way by Ocean.
Not So Above It All: Despite having a calm demeanor, she's terrified out of her mind when Alice gets a little testy with her.
Psycho Psychologist: She's actually very good at her job, and does offer genuinely helpful advice; it's just she's also a supervillain who has no qualms about messing with people's minds.

Arthur Brown / Cluemaster

Arthur Brown

Species: Human

Played By: Rick Miller

First Appearance: "I'll Give You a Clue (Batwoman 2x13)

Appearance: Batwoman

A former game-show host that went on a killing spree many years ago, who breaks out of prison to get revenge on Sophie for catching him.

Abusive Parents: He poisons his own daughter, writes entire cryptograms all over her, and locks her in a cage if it means he can get revenge on Sophie.
Adaptational Attractiveness: He looks more like his comics counterpart than his first media depiction in The Batman, which showcased him as an overweight slob.
Daddy's Little Villain: He wanted his daughter to follow in his footsteps. She refuses to do so.
Double Meaning: A lot of his clues have a hidden meaning behind something so seemingly obvious. For example, when he gives Ryan and Mary extra time for solving Gotham City villain-themed trivia, one question is about an ice-themed villain who cut and run when it came to money. Sophie thinks the answer is Mr. Freeze, but Ryan correctly guesses it's The Penguin, who runs the Iceberg Lounge as an underground casino.
Disproportionate Retribution: Gets fired from hosting Quiz Bowl and tries to bomb the place.
Driven to Suicide: When he learns that his own daughter was the one who outsmarted him all those years ago, he locks himself and her in a car and launches a stream of poison gas in the air to kill them both. It fails thanks to Luke.
From Nobody to Nightmare: Went from a simple game show host to a notorious serial-killer.
Green-Eyed Monster: He claims Riddler is this of him.
Insufferable Genius: The reason he got fired from hosting Quiz Bowl is because he thought the network was dumbing down the answers to appeal to a wider demographic, when he wanted to make them mind-challengingly difficult.
Laser-Guided Karma: After breaking out of jail and learning his own daughter got him locked up, Luke stops his murder-suicide attempt. Stephanie points out that he did so because he didn't want to live in a world where his own kin was smarter than him, so Luke retorts that he will now have to live with that truth.
Longer-Than-Life Sentence: He gets sentenced to 13 life sentences.
Revenge: He wants this on Sophie for catching him and locking him up. She describes his motivation for his earlier spree as revenge as well, since he was fired from his hosting duties.
Self-Disposing Villain: Like the Riddler, his tendencies to leave clues behind to his crimes are what gets him caught. Sophie even lampshades this to him when she catches him.
Small Name, Big Ego: He started killing people because he believed himself to be the ultimate intellectual superior on the planet.
Suspiciously Similar Substitute: With his penchant for leaving clues to his crimes behind, his Insufferable Genius tendencies, and his obsession with finding out how he was outsmarted by hyper-focusing on the supposed perpetrator, he's basically the Riddler (though he claims Riddler is jealous of him). Also counts as Expy Coexistence, since Riddler does exist in this continuity.
Taking You with Me: Upon being driven to suicide, he tries taking Stephanie with him. Luke ensures that doesn't happen.
Villainous Breakdown: He gets pissed when he learns that his own daughter, and not Sophie, solved his riddle, so he tries poisoning her again.

Liam Crandle / Mad Hatter II

Liam Crandle

Species: Human

Played By: Amitai Marmorstein

First Appearance: "Mad as a Hatter" (Batwoman 3x1)

Appearance: Batwoman

An obsessive Alice fanboy who managed to acquire Jervis Tetch's old hat. He crashes Mary's commencement ceremony and tries to force her to kill her professor, as he'd played a role in Alice being committed to Arkham.

Broken Pedestal: He finally gets to meet Alice... and she stabs him in the gut. He is understandably disillusioned afterwards.
Canon Foreigner: Zig-zagged. His true name is exclusive to the show, but he does borrow elements from the imposter Mad Hatter from the comics.
From Nobody to Nightmare: He was just a pathetic dork until he happened to buy Mad Hatter's old hat online. Afterwards, he wasted no time in abusing his new powers.
Loony Fan: He is obsessed with Alice and convinced that she's an innocent victim.
Starter Villain. For Batwoman Season 3.
Stupid Evil: He has only a faint idea of how the hat actually works, and his ideas for what to do with it are utterly juvenile.

Steven / Killer Croc II

Steven

Species: Human Mutate

Played By: Unknown (as a human), Heidi Ben (as Croc)

First Appearance: "Loose Teeth" (Batwoman 3x2)

Appearance: Batwoman

A young man from Gotham City, whom, on a fishing trip with his father before heading off to college, finds the tooth of the late Killer Croc and cuts himself on it, transforming him into a monster.

Bit-by-Bit Transformation: His father shows that Steven's mutation occurred over several weeks.
Canon Foreigner: Was made for the show.
Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Tragically subverted. While his father is willing to harm Batwoman herself to keep his son from being locked in a cage, the mindless beast that was once Steven shows no qualms about killing his own parent.
I'm a Humanitarian: He targets whoever he can get his claws on and eats them.
No Name Given: His last name is never revealed.
Tragic Monster: He had no control over being turned into Killer Croc and losing his mind in the process.
Was Once a Man: Like his predecessor, he's turned from a human into a mindless reptile.
Would Hurt a Child: One of his victims is a poor, scared little girl.

Lazlo Valentine / Professor Pyg

Professor Pyg

Species: Human

Played By: Rob Nagle

First Appearance: "A Lesson From Professor Pyg" (Batwoman 3x5)

Appearance: Batwoman

A former chef of Jada Jet's, who was fired and wound up seeking revenge by returning to his criminal ways.

Adaptational Sympathy: Each iteration of Pyg is unquestionably a villain, either a an environmental activist, an actor-for-hire, or just a plain crazy serial killer. This version of the character actually went straight until he was fired from his job, and when things went to pot, he decided to get revenge.
But for Me, It Was Tuesday: On the receiving end of this trope. Jada doesn't remember who Lazlo is, or why she fired him.
Death by Adaptation: Like his Gotham counterpart, he winds up biting it, lasting far less longer than that iteration.
Disproportionate Retribution: On both the giving and receiving end of this trope. He was fired for petty reasons (it's assumed he dished out a meal not to Jada's liking), and then turns it around by killing Jada and her entire family.
Heel–Face Turn: Zig-zagged between this and Face–Heel Turn. He started out as a criminal, but reformed and became a family man. Then when he got fired and his wife left him, he went right back to being a criminal.
Paper-Thin Disguise: He barely makes an effort to hide his identity, using only a fake mustache. Justified since he knew Jada wouldn't remember him.
Pay Evil unto Evil: Subverted. Given Jada's behavior in the series up to his debut episode, including hiring the Black Glove Society to get Mr. Freeze's formula to put her son on ice, you would think he was doing this when he tries to kill her. However, it turns out that Jada, though willingly to stretch her morality, has a damn good reason to act the way she did: her son is the next iteration of THE JOKER.
Rogues' Gallery Transplant: He's made one of Batwoman's foes rather than Batman's.

Mary Hamilton / Poison Ivy II

See the Arrowverse: Bat-Family page

Marquis Jet / Joker II

Marquis Jet

Species: Human

Played By: Nick Creegan

First Appearance: "Freeze" (Batwoman 3x3)

Appearances: Batwoman

The son of industrialist Jada Jet and the brother to Ryan Wilder, Marquis Jet's seemingly charming personality is really a front to a violent and sociopathic man who takes after the most horrific villain Gotham has ever seen — the Joker.

Affirmative-Action Legacy: He's the first successor to the Joker in live-action to be played by an African-American.
Arch-Enemy: He claims he is this to his sister, becoming the Joker to her Batwoman.
Attention Whore: True to any Joker, he wants the world at his fingertips, and is planning on making a name for himself.
Ax-Crazy: Befitting of his character and his idol, he's as insane and murderous as they come.
Bait-and-Switch Character Intro: When he first appears, he seems like a Nice Guy who wants a relationship with the sister he never knew, and is willing to go against his Corrupt Corporate Executive boss and mother to make it happen. However, the show reveals she's really the innocent one, and that he's a twisted man who takes after the Joker.
The Bad Guy Wins: He walks away from the midseason-3 finale the biggest winner, as he takes control of Wayne Enterprises, while the cure he swapped Ryan for it winds up being destroyed by Mary when she embraces her inner villain.
Big Brother Bully: He delights in how much his actions screw up Ryan's life.
Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: All his charming and kind words are just an act to hide the fact he's really a dangerous sociopath. Truth in Television comes into play here, as most sociopaths are shown to act in the same way towards people they want to manipulate.
Black Comedy: A lot of his gags are sick and twisted, but executed (sometimes literally) for his own personal amusement.
Canon Foreigner: Given that his sister was made for this show, he too follows suit. It's a double whammy considering he's the first live-action version of a successor to the Joker.
The Chessmaster: Like with his idol, his unpredictable nature gives him an edge against his foes. He's able to escape being put on ice, and manages to force Ryan to hand control of Wayne Enterprises over to him in exchange for the Poison Ivy cure for Mary.
The Chosen One: He thinks that Joker zapped him on the school bus that day to continue his work.
Comic-Book Movies Don't Use Codenames: Unlike Mad Hatter II, Killer Croc II, and Poison Ivy II, he has yet to be called Joker II in the show itself, though in this interview, his actor explicitly refers to his character as The Joker.
Composite Character: Per Creegan's own description, his fashion choices were inspired by Jared Leto's Joker from the DCEU^note, while his more maniacal tendencies are borrowed from Heath Ledger and Joaquin Phoenix's iterations. He also borrows a few traits from James Gordon, Jr.(a psychopathic killer who's related to a Bat-family member), Tim Drake's DCAU iteration (having been turned into The Joker and carrying on his legacy, only to be defeated via an electric joy buzzer), and Punchline (a Loony Fan obsessed with the Clown Prince of Crime).
Connected All Along: It's revealed that the school bus he was riding in when the Joker hijacked it was the same one used to ram the Kane family car off the road.
Convenient Coma: Overlapping with Death by Secret Identity, Ryan jabs him with a cure meant for Mary, causing him to be dehydrated and knocked into a coma, just minutes after he learns who Batwoman really is. This gets subverted when he wakes up after Ivy damages the dam enough to expose him to water.
Daddy Had a Good Reason for Abandoning You: A rare instance where he's the reason for said abandonment. It turns out that Jada willingly gave up Ryan for adoption and had the doctors fake her death so her daughter would never come looking for her was because she was trying to keep Ryan from being targeted by the sociopathic Marquis.
Dark and Troubled Past: Up until the Joker hijacked a school bus he was riding in, everything about his life was normal. Then the Clown Prince of Crime gave him a zap of the old joy buzzer, and he suddenly became a horrific person, hellbent on causing chaos for his own amusement.
Death by Secret Identity: Mary tells him Ryan and Luke's identities so she can spite the two into leaving her alone. By the time he enacts it, Ryan knocks him out with the intended cure for Ivy's infection, putting him into a coma they don't intent to let him out of until he's cured. Unfortunately, it only lasts for two episodes before he wakes up.
Driven to Madness/Driven to Villainy: His sociopathic nature is the result of a brain injury given to him by The Joker's joy buzzer. Jada tells Ryan that he wasn't like this until that fateful day his school bus was hijacked.
Expy Coexistence: He has some similarities to James Gordon, Jr., who was confirmed to exist in this continuity later in Season 3.
Evil Laugh: No Joker is complete without it.
Fanboy: Of the Joker. He admits to Ryan that he admires the man for being the only person in Gotham to actually laugh and have fun with himself.
Foil: To his sister, Ryan. Both of them lived very different lives — he was born in a wealthy lifestyle before the Joker zapped him on the head and turned him into a sociopath, while she was forced into poverty because of him and was a troubled kid from the get-go until she found a loving foster mother who helped her until she was murdered by Alice. Both are also the successors to the roles of Joker and Batman/Batwoman that have embraced these roles wholeheartedly, but while Marquis has taken to Joker's legacy whole hog, Ryan is still struggling to balance out her duties as Batwoman with her responsibilities to her friends and allies.
Foreshadowing: A hint to his true nature is laid out in "A Lesson from Professor Pyg" when he angrily confronts his would-be-assailant in spite of being paralyzed by a toxin.
From Nobody to Nightmare: He intends to invoke this trope, rising from the nameless son of a wealthy industrialist to the CEO of Wayne Enterprises — and the bringer of absolute chaos.
Heel–Face Turn: At the end of Season 3, Ryan is able to use the buzzer to zap Marquis back to sanity.
He's Back!: In "Toxic", Ivy's damaging of the damn winds up waking him up.
Human Pincushion: A favorite tactic of his. Professor Pyg found this out the hard way.
I Just Want to Be Special: He refuses all and any attempts to treat his condition, viewing it as a "liberation" from sanity and allowing him to rise up and make a name for himself.
It's All About Me: As far as Jokers go, Creegan's take on the character is very much "The Showman". Everything he's doing is to make himself the center of attention, with a flair of theatricality that makes certain no one will forget his actions.
Kick the Dog: He shoots Kiki before she can scrounge up a new joy buzzer for Alice to help cure her psychosis for no reason other than he felt like it.
Large Ham: As is typical of Jokers, Marquis delivers most of his lines with a gusto.
Legacy Character: To the Joker, being the first live-action successor to the Clown Prince of Crime.
Manipulative Bastard: He was playing Ryan the entire time, all so he could get her in just the right position to take over Wayne Enterprises.
Mythology Gag:
- When he first unveils himself as being a sociopath, he paints his mouth with blood, calling to mind Heath Ledger's scars from The Dark Knight, as well as Joaquin Phoenix's famous moment from Joker (2019).
- Like with Ledger's Joker, he's fond of using knives.
- His hair is dyed purple, like his idol's suit color.
- His takeover of Wayne Enterprises calls to mind The Joker War and how Joker was able to swipe Bruce Wayne's fortune.
- At one point, he wears a blood-red suit that calls to mind Arthur Fleck's suit from the climax of the Joker movie.
- His final plan for Jokerizing Gotham City — luring everyone out and then killing them all — is almost exactly like what Jack Nicholson's Joker did in Batman (1989). Bonus points for both iterations being named Jack Napier.
Nice Guy: Subverted. He acts like he's this, but it's a ploy to lure his victims.
Obviously Evil: Lampshaded by Luke when Marquis returns from his temporary coma. The fact he's dressed like The Joker and has purple hair should have been a warning to the press, yet they completely ignore it.
Pay Evil unto Evil: He kidnaps all the parents who were a part of the Black Glove Society — a group that went to any lengths to hide their psychotic children's diagnosis and cure them using illicit means — by subjecting them to the same treatments they put their kids through. Burton Crowne, Jeremiah Arkham and Mario Falcone all bite it, but Barbara Kean and his own mother just barley survive.
Practically Joker: Uses knives? Check. A dangerously unhinged sociopath? Check. A skilled manipulator? Check. Has his hair dyed? Check. Gets kicks out of hurting or killing people? Check. Had a blonde psychologist girlfriend that winds up dying and gets forgotten about? Check. Although in this instance, the Joker was responsible for his sociopathy, and he's more of a fanboy of him, so it's justified — plus the added wrinkle that he's the next iteration of the character in the series.
Rich Bastard: He's one of Gotham's numerous wealthy socialites, and is a sadistic sociopath who follows in the footsteps of The Joker. Though to be fair, it's not entirely his fault.
Self-Made Orphan: Implied, as one of the videos Jada gives Ryan shows that Marquis deliberately snuck peanut butter into his father's hamburger during a family picnic. Given that his father was allergic to peanuts, he laughs sadistically as his old man starts to have an allergic reaction — and his epipen is conveniently missing.
Sharp-Dressed Man: His entire style consists of designer suits.
Suspiciously Similar Substitute:
- To James Gordon Junior, a sibling of one of the Bat Family who wound up becoming a sociopath in their later years. Funny enough, when he kidnaps the members of the Black Glove Society, he subjects Barbara Kean (aka James Gordon's ex-wife) to the same chemical treatments she used on her son as "payback", and it's mentioned that the real Gordon is currently rotting in Arkham.
- To the DCAU version of Tim Drake, who was subjected to a horrific electric shock that molded him into a new Joker (albeit that Marquis only had the one dose, and no genetic rewriting was involved). For an added bonus, he is defeated when he's zapped with the joy buzzer, much like how Terry was able to get the original out of Tim Drake's body.
- To Alexis Kaye, aka Punchline, who was a Joker fan that wound up following in his footsteps.
Used to Be a Sweet Kid: According to Jada, Marquis was a sweet little boy. But then when he got on the bus for school one day, the Joker hopped onboard to hijack it (in what's implied to be the same incident that led to the series taking place to begin with), and zapped him with his joy buzzer for a quick laugh. Marquis survived, but he wound up being transformed by the incident into a dangerous psycho that takes after the man who did this to him.
What the Hell, Hero?: He gives Ryan an earful or two for trying to push him away, but this turns out to be invoked on his part, as he's trying to manipulate her to his side.

Two-Face

Species: Human

An enemy of Batwoman's from the Reverse Flashpoint timeline created by Eobard Thawne.

Ambiguous Situation: Harvey Dent has been confirmed to existence in the series back when Season 1 premiered, but at the moment, nothing has been mentioned of him or whether or not he's become his villainous alter-ego before or after Crisis took place. As such, it's not clear if Harvey became Two-Face at some point in the future (or, given how the timeline was erased, if he ever will), or if someone else (i.e. Paul Sloane) took the moniker.
Bad Future: He hails from one, courtesy of the Reverse Flash screwing with history so he can spite Barry Allen for becoming faster than him. Becomes subverted when Barry undoes the damage.
The Ghost: He was never seen in 2031, and there hasn't been any confirmation yet as to whether or not he'll actually appear in the series.
Ret-Gone: He is erased from existence when Barry travels back in time to undo Thawne's changes to history... at least for now.
Two-Faced: If the name wasn't obvious enough.

Kiki Roulette

Species: Human

Played By: Judy Reyes

First Appearance: "Broken Toys" (Batwoman 3x11)

Appearances: Batwoman

An insane toymaker who employs her services to Marquis, acting as the Harley Quinn to his Joker.

Canon Foreigner: Like with Ryan and Marquis, she's a new creation to this series.
Composite Character: She blends Harley Quinn's insane characterization and being Joker's sidekick with a lesser-known Batman villain known as The Toymaker by being responsible for making Joker's equipment.
Connected All Along: Harley Quinn was her personal psychiatrist. And she helped Joker kill Robin by beating him to death with a crowbar.
Dropped a Bridge on Her: Marquis kills her before she can make a new joy buzzer.
Mask of Sanity: She's able to fool a lot of people by pretending to be sane, but Alice sees right through it.
Suspiciously Similar Substitute: To Harley Quinn, who's appearances in the DCEU barred her from being included in the Arrowverse beyond a single cameo. Adding further to this, Harley was her psychiatrist, and Marquis disposes of her without care.
We Hardly Knew Ye: She only lasts two episodes before Marquis adds her to his body count.

James Gordon, Jr.

Species: Human

The psychotic son of Commissioner Gordon and Barbara Kean, now a full-time resident of Arkham.

Abusive Parents: Inadvertently. While his father didn't likely treat him poorly, his mother tried curing his psychosis by drugging him up with untested chemicals. Because of that, he's now a permanent resident of Arkham.
And I Must Scream: Those experimental treatments his mother gave him turned him into a vegetable, and is now rotting away in Arkham because of it.
Chained to a Railway: Of the rare dog variety, he did this to some poor pooch at 15 years old.
Decomposite Character: A lot of his traits from the comics are given to Marquis Jet, aka Joker II.
Enfant Terrible: It's mentioned he kept body parts in his closet, and the inciting incident that led his mom to join Black Glove was him tying a dog to the train tracks.
Truer to the Text: The last time James Gordon, Jr. was featured on screens was in The Dark Knight, which never delved into the character's psychosis (if he had any). From what little is mentioned of him, this iteration hews closer to the psychopath from the comics.

Characters / Arrowverse: Gotham City Criminals

Edit Locked

Criminal Groups

The Wonderland Gang

Elizabeth Marie "Beth" Kane / Alice

Species: Human

Played By: Rachel Skarsten, Ava Sleeth (young)

First Appearance: "Pilot" (Batwoman 1x1)

Appearances: Batwoman

Chuck Dodgson

Species: Human

Played By: Brendon Zub

First Appearance: "Pilot" (Batwoman 1x1)

Appearance: Batwoman

Jonathan Cartwright / Mouse

Species: Human

Played By: Sam Littlefield, Nicholas Holmes (young), Various disguisesMatthew Graham (as Dean Deveraux), Ava Sleeth (voice; as young Beth Kane), Ruby Rose (voice; as Kate Kane), Dougray Scott (as Jacob Kane), Alex Zahara (as Dr. M. Butler)

First Appearance: "Mine Is a Long And a Sad Tale" (Batwoman 1x5)

Appearances: Batwoman

False Face Society

False Face Society

Roman Sionis / Black Mask

Species: Human

Played By: Peter Outerbridge

First Appearance: "Rule #1" (Batwoman 2x9)

Appearance: Batwoman

Candice Long / The Candy Lady

Species: Human

Played By: Linda Kash

First Appearance: "Fair Skin, Blue Eyes" (Batwoman 2x4)

Appearance: Batwoman

Rudy / Panda

Species: Human

Played By: Aason Nadjiwon

First Appearance: "Fair Skin, Blue Eyes" (Batwoman 2x4)

Appearance: Batwoman

Black Glove Society

Marla Elliot

Species: Human

Barbara Kean

Species: Human

Played By: Sarah J. Southey

First Appearance: "Were All Mad Here" (Batwoman 3x12)

Appearances: Batwoman

Burton Crowne

Species: Human

Played By: Eric Ruggieri

First Appearance: "Were All Mad Here" (Batwoman 3x12)

Appearances: Batwoman

Jeremiah Arkham

Species: Human

Played By: Glen Ferguson

First Appearance: "Were All Mad Here" (Batwoman 3x12)

Appearances: Batwoman

Mario Falcone

Species: Human

Played By: Marcio Barauna

First Appearance: "Were All Mad Here" (Batwoman 3x12)

Appearances: Batwoman

Batman's Rogues Gallery

Jack Napier / The Joker

Species: Human

Played By: Nathan Dashwood

Dr. Victor Fries

Species: Human

Oswald Cobblepot / The Penguin

Species: Human

Pamela Isley / Poison Ivy

Species: Metahuman

Portrayed by: Bridget Regan

Basil Karlo / Clayface

Species: Metahuman

Edward Nygma / The Riddler

Species: Human

Jonathan Crane / The Scarecrow

Species: Human

Waylon Jones / Killer Croc

Species: Metahuman

Maxie Zeus

Species: Human

Played By: Sam Littlefield, Nicholas Holmes (young), ^{Various disguises}

Appearances: Elseworlds ^note(Arrow)

Appearances: Elseworlds ^note(Arrow | Supergirl)