Kate continues her growth into Gotham's new protector as the war between the Crows and Alice continues.
Tropes in this episode include:
- Abandoned Playground: Not quite abandoned, but the waffle stand is boarded up and the park has clearly seen better days.
- Ambiguously Bi: Discussed when Mary seems quite eager to assign a label to Sophie, much to Kate's irritation, mentioning a number of possibilities (bisexual, bicurious, pansexual etc.).
- Ambiguously Evil: It's not revealed yet what exactly Catherine's motives are for covering up Alice's identity or how she even knows it.
- Ambiguous Situation: The episode isn't explicit about who set the bomb that derailed the convoy or why they did it; was it Alice's gang, in an attempt to free her, or another party attempting to kill her?
- Armor-Piercing Question: When Kate still insists that Alice is Beth, Jacob shows her pictures of the elderly couple she killed and asked if Beth would do something like that. Kate can only respond with silence, not for being wrong, but for what her sister has done.
- Back-to-Back Badasses: Kate and Sophie briefly do this during the attack on Crow headquarters.
- Bait-and-Switch Comment: Kate tells Sophie that, had she known, she would've come to the wedding—to stop it.
- Blood from the Mouth: Dodgson starts spitting blood during Kate's interrogation of him after she hits him in the ribs.
- Both Sides Have a Point: Kate is furious that Sophie betrayed her trust by telling Jacob where Kate was meeting Alice; Sophie hits back that Alice is a dangerous fugitive with multiple deaths and attempted murders (including Sophie herself) to her name.
- Bound and Gagged: Alice and her gang keep an older couple hostage like this while they use/raid their home.
- Break the Cutie: Mary gets pretty shaken up over Dodgson's attack on her.
- Brutal Honesty: Kate is pretty blunt in telling her father that Alice is Beth.
- Cassandra Truth: Obviously, everybody has a hard time believing that Alice is Beth with each having their own reason. The main one it seems is the inability to reconcile the sweet girl they used to know with the psychotic woman she's become.
- Chekhov's Gun:
- When one of Alice's thugs comes to Mary's clinic, she takes a batarang from him as a souvenir. When Dodgson tries to assassinate her later on, Mary uses said batarang to shank him.
- The fire ax Dodgson uses to attack Mary is seen earlier on the wall.
- When showing off Batman's bat-gadgets, Luke draws attention to a bat-cutting laser and a bat-rebreather as examples of why such bat-gear is only meant for Batman. Batwoman later uses both to cut Alice out of a sunken van and save her from drowning.
- Chekhov's Gunman: The Wonderland goon whom Kate batarangs at the beginning of the episode is the same one who shows up at Mary's clinic, whom Kate uses to send Alice a message. His injury also provides Mary with the batarang she later uses to defend herself against Dodgson.
- Continuity Nod: Jacob orders Alice to be sent to Arkham, first featured in the Elseworlds crossover and of course an important part of the Bat-lore.
- Cop Killer: Alice's status as this is in part why the GCPD permits the Crows to shoot her on sight.
- Criminal Mind Games: Alice sets up shop in her family's old home to mess with Jacob's head.
- Cruel to Be Kind: Sophie tells Kate that she's happy with her husband and so she needs to move on.
- Daddy Issues: Alice wants to make her father suffer for not saving her.
- Death Faked for You: The ending strongly implies that Catherine supplied false evidence of Beth’s demise.
- Diving Save: Sophie pulls Kate out of the way of the attacking van, leading to somewhat of a Suggestive Collision.
- Everybody Knew Already: Kate's disguise as Batwoman is less than effective on those who know her well; Sophie asks outright if it was Kate who saved her in the previous episode, and Alice recognizes her easily when Batwoman saves her from drowning.
- False Flag Operation: Catherine has some goons dress as members of the Wonderland Gang to steal Alice's knife from Kate, making everyone think Alice just wanted her knife back.
- Family Eye Resemblance: Used by Alice to let Kate know she's realised Batwoman's Secret Identity. She leaves a box containing a bat and a card saying You have our father's eyes.
- Faux Affably Evil: Alice acts downright jovial while terrorizing the old couple.
- Fire-Forged Friends: Kate derides Luke as useless, but when he works out how to activate the defibrillator in the Batsuit to revive her, she becomes more accepting of his help.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: Which leads to an Ambiguous Situation: In a flashback, Jacob said it was Catherine's investigators who supposedly found evidence that Beth is dead. Cut to the present day, it's revealed that Catherine is trying to cover up that Alice is Beth, which makes you wonder if Catherine had ulterior motives and faked Beth's death.
- Flashback: Once again, this time they focus on Kate and her father's efforts to find Beth and later move on.
- Foreshadowing: Alice bemoans her inability to find her favorite knife, which her henchmen are seemingly no closer to locating. The next scene shows Wonderland gang members attacking Kate and Sophie to steal the knife back, raising the question of how they found it. The end of the episode reveals that they didn't; Catherine (who heard Kate say she had a knife with Alice's DNA) hired goons to steal it to keep Alice's identity under wraps.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Alice sends Dodgson to kill Mary, as Kate is her sister. Apparently, that goes way back, as Beth never liked to share.
- His Story Repeats Itself: Once again, Alice is knocked off a bridge in a car crash and nearly drowns. This time, Kate is able to save her as Batwoman.
- Immune to Bullets: When one of Alice's goons shoots Kate, she discovers that the suit is bulletproof.
- Innocently Insensitive: Mary bringing up Sophie being married at breakfast, when Kate is obviously not over her.
- Internal Reveal: Alice being Beth Kane is revealed to more characters and Alice herself figures out Kate is Batwoman.
- Irony:
- Noted by Mary when she points out that Alice tried to have her killed because she's a Replacement Goldfish, when in truth Kate barely acknowledges her as a sister. The true irony is that Kate saved her life as Batwoman, but can't tell her about it.
- Vesper complains that 'Batman' wasn't there to stop Alice from escaping. She was—to save her life.
- It's All My Fault: Kate has always blamed herself for Beth falling into the river, as she immediately tried to flee the car while Beth was trying to help their mother.
- It's Personal: Alice says this word-for-word about her conflict with Kate and Jacob.
- Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: By the end of the episode, Kate has Dodgson in her captivity and roughs him up for everything he knows about Alice.
- Kick the Dog: Alice terrorizes and murders an elderly couple who just had the misfortune of living in the old Kane family house when she decided to hide out there.
- Kill on Sight: The police give Crow Security the green light to kill Alice. Kate, having discovered that Alice is her long-lost sister Beth, places herself between them as a Human Shield until her father agrees to arrest her instead.
- Like Father, Like Son: Luke is very much like Lucius, even though he denies it at first.
- Locked Out of the Loop: When Alice snarks that they should talk about boys like they used to, Kate notes that they really have some catching up to do.
- Magical Defibrillator: Luke saves Kate with the one in her suit. Amusingly, he would actually have turned it off based on the markings on the button he presses (unless it's a safety deactivation or something).
- Manly Tears: Jacob sheds some in a flashback while coming to terms with Beth's "death".
- Mood-Swinger: Alice swings from amused, to angry, to almost tearful in a single conversation.
- Mythology Gag:
- Kate's reaction to her suit completely stopping gunfire is very similar to how she responded to her new DEO suit doing the same thing in issue #6 of her New 52 series.
- Kate intended to test the knife she recovered in the pilot for Alice's DNA to see if they were really sisters. This is exactly how Kate determined Alice's identity in the Batwoman: Elegy storyline in Detective Comics, though she doesn't actually get to perform the test in the show.
- The card in the box Kate receives at the end of the episode, "You have our father's eyes," are the same words Alice says at the end of Elegy. Unlike the show, Batwoman and Alice's relationship as siblings wasn't established until the end of Elegy.
- Not Me This Time: Alice denies having her goons attack Kate for her knife, as she didn't even know Kate had it. It turns out it was Catherine who arranged the attack, wanting to cover up any evidence that Alice really is Beth.
- "Not So Different" Remark: Alice invokes this in a letter to Kate, writing that Kate wearing the Batsuit makes them equally crazy.
- Not So Stoic: Jacob’s crying in the flashback is juxtaposed with a shot of him in the present sitting stoically at his desk.
- Opposites Attract: Alice is unstable and constantly cackling, while Dodgson is more of the cold, calculating criminal.
- Percussive Therapy: Sophie does some boxing pad work with Tyler while thinking about her complicated relationship with Kate.
- Save the Villain: Kate saves Alice from drowning.
- Serious Business: Alice wants her favorite knife back!
- Shoot the Fuel Tank: A GCPD officer manages to do this to a crashed Crows truck while the truck is underwater.
- Slashed Throat: How Alice kills the elderly couple she was keeping prisoner.
- Something Only They Would Say: Kate has one of Alice's goons deliver the code word "Waffles" to her to see if it is really her.
- Tempting Fate: Mary says the last thing she needs is her own personal security detail. She gets one in the next episode.
- That Woman Is Dead: Kate considers this about Alice in her closing voice-over; the murderous psychopath Alice is a far cry from Kate’s childhood sister.
- Troll: Alice taunts Kate by hinting that she's not Beth and merely used information she found online to impersonate her. She's lying, of course, and is only out to screw with Kate.
- Unholy Matrimony: Dodgson and Alice are in a relationship.
- Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Jacob's main reason for disbelieving that Alice is Beth (aside from having seemingly solid evidence of Beth's death) is that he can't imagine his sweet-natured daughter growing up into a psychopathic killer.
- Vulnerable Convoy: Alice's convoy to Arkham gets blown up.
- Wham Line:
- Kate pretty casually confirms Wonder Woman exists in the Arrowverse, after many hints in the other shows. When and where she operates/operated is unclear.
- Robin is later confirmed to exist as well.
- You have our father's eyes shows that Alice has realised her sister and Batwoman are the same person.
- Wham Shot: Catherine meeting with someone who has Alice's stolen knife, ordering him to destroy it, thereby establishing that she knows that Alice is Beth and she's trying to cover it up.
- What the Hell, Hero?:
- Mary accuses Kate of having never treating her like a sister, which is made ironic since this happens after Kate saved Mary's life (unbeknownst to Mary) as Batwoman.
- Kate calls out Sophie for betraying her trust. In the flashback, she calls out her dad for giving up on the search for Beth.
- The Worf Effect: Even after a barrage of tear gas to soften them up, the goons are barely able to retrieve Alice's knife from Kate and Sophie.
- Would Harm a Senior: Alice kills an elderly couple living in her old childhood home.
- You Remind Me of X: SubvertedKate: You know who you sound like?Luke: I'm sure you're going to tell me.Kate: Lucius Fox.Luke: Trust me, I am a far cry from my father.Kate: I know. He was actually useful.
