Thomas Elliot, christened Hush by the media, starts kidnapping codebreakers to translate Lucius Fox's journal.
Tropes:
- Apologetic Attacker: Kate towards the guards at Arkham she beats up.
- Bat Phone: Played for laughs when Mary expresses disbelief that Kate has a landline phone on her desk. In this case, it's a direct line to Kate as CEO of Gotham Pride Real Estate, but serves the same function of calling Batwoman into action when Parker's girlfriend calls to let her know she's been kidnapped.
- Bat Signal: Kane himself uses the Bat-Signal, but only to issue an ultimatum.
- Both Sides Have a Point: Mouse argues against kidnapping Luke because Batwoman would no doubt track him to Arkham and expose their ruse. Alice, on the other hand, argues that the only person likely to be able to crack the code is the son of the man who wrote it.
- The Bus Came Back: Parker Torres returns.
- The Cameo: One of the inmates freed when Alice opens all the cells is shorter with bushy hair, and gives a Psychotic Smirk to the camera for a bit. Presumably, this is meant to be Dr. Psycho.
- Can't Kill You, Still Need You:
- Alice is keeping Hush alive because she needs him to find whatever weapons she learns about from the journal. Once he's done that, then she'll kill him.
- Invoked by Parker, who knows Hush won't shoot her if he went to all the effort of kidnapping her.
- Conflict Ball: Aside from creating some friction among the good guys, there was really no reason for Julia to hide her true motives or the fact that she was dismissed from SRR from Kate and Luke.
- Cannot Spit It Out: Sophie offers to keep her relationship with Julia platonic if that's what Kate wants. To the dismay of Mary and Parker who are secretly listening in, Kate says I Want My Beloved to Be Happy. Later Parker suggests to Kate that she might want to try harder to hold onto Sophie, so Kate goes to pay her a visit, arriving just in time to witness a Julia/Sophie Big Damn Kiss.
- Defiant Captive: Parker isn't very afraid of Hush, mouthing off to him even when he points a gun at her face, as she knows that he kidnapped her for a reason.
- Dragon with an Agenda: Hush is doing all of Alice and Mouse's legwork in this episode, but it's only because he expects to get something out of it. He has no loyalty to either of them and spends most of the episode antagonising Mouse, with the two even coming to blows at one point.
- Electric Torture: Alice tortures the codebreakers Hush kidnaps with an electroshock therapy machine dialed up to deadly levels. Then Julia is tortured to force Luke to cooperate.Hush: Arkham's power bills are gonna be through the roof, but just between me, you, and... well, science, I'm not sure how much more you can take.
- Electroconvulsive Therapy Is Torture: Justified as they are deliberately torturing people using a dialed-up ECT machine.
- Enemy-Detecting Radar: Kate uses the sensors in her bat-cowl to detect electric sources and pin down where the ECT machine is, having worked out that Alice is using it.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: The decoded journal page Alice reads discusses "The Resurrection of Ra's al Ghul", and also Azrael and his Suit of Sorrows
, which has yet to be introduced into the Arrowverse. - Friendship Moment: Kate and Luke settle their differences at the end of the episode with a hug.
- Goggles Do Something Unusual: Lucius Fox's glasses have AR lenses that can decrypt his journals.
- Guns Akimbo: Hush, true to his comic counterpart, carries two pistols to great effect.
- Handicapped Badass: Thomas Elliot has lost his face and the bandages covering what's left of it probably don't do his vision, hearing, or breathing any favours, yet he's shown to be even more of a physical threat than in past episodes.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Attempted by Luke and Julia, who are willing to die in order to keep Alice from killing Batwoman.
- Hidden Villain: Safiyah Sohail, who is now after Julia and Kate.
- Hollywood Healing: Averted with Julia complaining of nerve damage after being tortured.
- Hollywood Silencer: Hush uses them on both of his pistols. They sound like they're straight out of GoldenEye and aren't heard by library patrons.
- Hostage for MacGuffin: Batwoman trades the glasses to Alice in exchange for the lives of Luke and Julia.
- I Gave My Word: Alice lets Julia and Luke go after Kate hands her the glasses. Of course, she's already stated she wants a more elaborate revenge than Hush shooting her sister.
- I Lied: Safiyah agreed to spare Kate's life in exchange for Julia bringing her Lucius's journal. Then Julia found out that the journal contained secrets on how to kill Kate anyway.
- Immediate Self-Contradiction: Kate assures Luke that she couldn't be a hero without him. Then Parker comes out of her office and Kate thanks her for her help. Luke immediately lampshades that it took Kate less than a day to find someone who could do his job.
- I Need a Freaking Drink: Mary's reaction when Luke and Kate start arguing about whether Julia can be trusted.
- Inspector Javert: Jacob gives Kate one last chance to leave the city, or otherwise it's war the next time they meet.
- Internal Reveal:
- Kate learns that Reagan is Magpie's sister.
- Luke figures out that Julia is no longer part of the SRR, which he shares with Kate.
- Mary learns about Parker Torres.
- Parker learns the Batcave is real.
- It's All About Me: Alice completely ignores all of Mouse's objections to her actions and destroys the comfortable life he enjoys to fulfill her own goals. By the end of the episode, he's clearly more than a little upset about it.
- Jerkass Ball: Kate grabs it at the start of the episode, accusing Luke of not being trustworthy when he refuses to believe that Julia would betray them. Becomes a (downplayed) version of Jerkass Has a Point though, as Julia indeed kept secrets from them.
- Kick the Dog: Hush walks through the library on a straight line to his target and guns down every library patron in his path, apparently just because he felt like it.
- Literal Metaphor: Parker lampshades that the Batcave is an actual cave with actual bats, as she always figured it was just a nickname for Batman's hideout.
- The Load: Subverted with Mary, who initially screws up and gets overshadowed by Parker, once the latter enters the Batcave, but then she finds Lucius Fox's glasses to decipher the code.
- Love Triangle: Kate is obviously not very happy about the fact that Julia and Sophie, both ex-girlfriends of hers, are now dating each other.
- Luck-Based Search Technique: With nothing to do, Mary pokes around in an archive box of Lucius Fox's stuff and discovers the AR glasses when she casually tries them on.
- Lured into a Trap: Mouse imitates Kate's voice to find out Luke's and Julia's location for Hush to kidnap them.
- More Expendable Than You: Luke argues this to Kate after she saves him at the expense of the journal. Kate, however, points out that she wouldn't be a very effective hero without him.
- Mythology Gag: "The Resurrection of Ra's al Ghul", mentioned under Freeze-Frame Bonus, is a comic book storyline.
- Never Bring a Knife to a Gun Fight: Hush appears to have Batwoman dead to rights with two .45 pistols on an open highway, but she effortlessly knocks both pistols from his hands with her batarangs.
- No Honor Among Thieves: Alice plans to kill Hush as soon as she has the means to kill Batwoman.
- Not-So-Harmless Villain: Thomas Elliot proves to be far more of a threat here than in previous episodes and shows a dangerous competence with firearms, a far cry from the Shady Real Estate Agent with few combat skills he's been previous seen as. That said, he's still no match for Batwoman, fleeing after taking a Batarang to the leg.
- Omniglot: Lucius Fox wrote the code in Aramaic, Babylonian and Mayan alphabets.
- Only Sane Man: Mouse, of all people, is the only villain to point out that their actions risk attracting unwanted attention from Batwoman and could end their control over Arkham.
- Please, I Will Do Anything!: Averted; Luke is willing to break the code to stop Julia being tortured, but once they realise what the journal contains both make it clear they will not cooperate regardless of what Alice does.
- Pragmatic Villainy:
- Mouse objects to Alice and Hush kidnapping codebreakers because he doesn't want to attract Batwoman's attention to their reign over Arkham.
- Hush points out that Alice's method of kidnapping codebreakers, then electrocuting them to death if they can't break the code on Lucius's journal instantly under duress isn't particularly effective. Hush also accepts Luke's argument that he'll work more effectively if he's left alone.
- Prison Riot: Alice frees everyone in Arkham so that the resulting chaos will cover her group's escape.
- Relationship Upgrade: Julia and Sophie finally express their mutual attraction with a Big Damn Kiss.
- The Reveal: Julia cut a deal with Safiyah to retrieve the journal in exchange for sparing Batwoman, but has double-crossed her now that she knows what the journal contains.
- Revenge Before Reason: As Mouse points out, Alice's obsession with revenge on Batwoman is leading her to risk the comfortable new life they've built for themselves at Arkham. By the end of the episode, much to Mouse's misery, Alice's quest for vengeance has cost them the power they held over Arkham and reduced them to cowering in a sewer to hide from the Crows and Batwoman. Alice doesn't care in the slightest.
- Rule of Three: Invoked; Alice gives Mouse and Tommy three chances to find someone to break the code before they go after Luke Fox. Ironically their third choice ends up bringing Batwoman down on them anyway.
- Sadistic Choice: Kate has to choose between giving Alice the glasses to decipher the journal or letting her friends die. She chooses the former.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Reagan's betrayal has left Kate paranoid about Julia, given that she betrayed her in the past and is apparently seeking the journal for herself. When Luke defends Julia whom he's known all his life, Kate accuses him of not being objective. Given that the whole situation is Kate's fault in the first place for not securing the journal, Luke takes up Kate's invitation to take a walk, leaving Kate without a Mission Control when she needs it.
- Shipper on Deck: Mary continues to ship Kate and Sophie, with Parker joining in.
- Superhero Paradox: Commander Kane believes that Alice wouldn't be as serious a problem if not for Batwoman's presence, comparing the two to Batman and the Joker.
- Swiss-Cheese Security: A single key is enough to open all the cells in Arkham when Mouse's isolation cell had a Two-Keyed Lock.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork:
- There is a lot of tension between Hush and Alice and Mouse.
- To a lesser extent, Mary and Parker also don't get along at first, with Mary feeling jealous of some "rando teen" being told the secret before her and feeling useless next to her.
- Telescoping Staff: Batwoman uses one to slug her way through a hall full of rioting prisoners.
- There Was a Door: Kate kicks open the door to Reagan's apartment.Reagan: Oh... my God! I double-locked that.
- This Means War!: Commander Kane warns Batwoman that it will be war between them if he encounters her again. This also counts as Dramatic Irony seeing as Kane is unknowingly threatening his own daughter.
- Voice Changeling: Mouse imitates Kate's voice on the phone to get Luke to reveal his location.
- Was It All a Lie?: Reagan insists that what she and Kate had was real.
- Wham Line: Alice learns about kryptonite from the journal.
- Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Mouse asks Alice exactly this, preferring to get killing Batwoman just over with. But Alice wants to make her suffer first.Mouse: I mean, if you want Kate dead so badly, why don't you just shoot her? I'm sure Tommy will give you the friends and family rate.Alice: So the last thing she sees is his gauze pad and his gun and has no idea what's happening? No. Her betrayal deserves a reckoning!
- World of Snark: Given the Teeth-Clenched Teamwork it's all over the place in this episode.Alice: What do you mean Batwoman showed? Were you followed?Hush: Well, I sort of stopped thinking clearly when she threw a batarang in my leg!
- "[I'm] Mary, otherwise known as the last person to find out that Kate is Batwoman."
- You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Julia encourages Luke, telling him that he is just as smart as his dad, with Luke getting his "Eureka!" Moment and deciphering the code shortly afterwards.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Alice and Mouse plan on killing Hush after he has ceased being usefull.
