Batwoman attempts to catch the Executioner, a criminal targeting members of law enforcement with methods of execution.
Tropes:
- 1-Dimensional Thinking: Stanton tries to flee a stream of electrified water by running away from it and climbing a metal fence, which gets him killed. Had he thought of simply running to the right, the Executioner would have had to work a little harder to kill him.
- Absurdly Sharp Blade:
- The Executioner's axe knocks down a power pole and cuts right through a fire hydrant cap and a padlock.
- Kate throws a batarang that ends up embedded halfway into the door of a prison transport van.
- Anti-Villain: While The Executioner's deeds are brutal, he is committing them to pay for his sins in killing innocent people and he targets corrupt people.
- Armor-Piercing Question: Mary draws a comparison between what she thinks Sophie is about to do (reveal Batwoman's identity to the Crows), and what she previously did to Kate (lie about being in love with her). Suffice to say Sophie doesn't take this well.
- Artistic License – Chemistry: While the stated combustion ratio for the hydrogen cyanide is more or less correct, the amount present in the room is well beyond a lethal dose and would have killed Kate and Jacob before she could ignite it.
- Booby Trap: The Executioner leaves one behind which kills a cop and injures Sophie.
- Broken Pedestal: Luke is very reluctant to admit Stanton might be a Dirty Cop, because Stanton was nice to his family and it would mean admitting there is a good possibility that Stanton helped frame an innocent man rather than actually catch his father's killer.
- Car Fu: Used accidentally by the Executioner. He rams his truck through the chemical depot's doors to break in, and happens to plow right into Batwoman, who was just on the other side.
- Casanova Wannabe: The warehouse guard tries to proposition Batwoman as she asks him if he's seen anything unusual. Incompatible Orientation aside, Batwoman quips that the warehouse hasn't seen any action, and clearly neither has the guard.
- Complete-the-Quote Title: "Judge, Jury, Executioner."
- Given the season's Idiosyncratic Episode Naming, the next part of the actual quote is "said cunning old fury"
- The Corrupter: Mouse keeps pushing Alice into being more murderous.
- Crazy Jealous Guy: Mouse is clearly jealous of Alice wanting to maintain her relationship with Kate, however twisted it may be at the moment. He accentuates it by killing the guy he was impersonating, just to make a point.
- Dead Man's Switch: The Executioner rigs his gas chamber trap to a heart rate monitor so if he's killed, it will release the gas. Jacob ends up triggering it when he shoots the Executioner to save Batwoman.
- Destroy the Evidence: The judge tries to destroy all the evidence of his corruption. By the end of the episode however, he still faces justice for his crimes.
- Dirty Cop: The judge, district attorney, and detective were all part of a scheme to fabricate evidence and force confessions of out innocent people just so they could make arrests and convictions.
- Electrified Bathtub: The Executioner kills Angus Stanton by knocking down some power lines then opening a fire hydrant so the electrified water stream will kill him.
- Hypocrite: The Executioner briefly poses as Chris the Fist in order to eliminate one of his targets, a corrupt detective familiar with the Fist, when his entire motive is based on the system wrongfully convicting people.
- The Executioner: The Villain of the Week turns out to be the executioner at Blackgate Prison.
- Improbable Aiming Skills: Batwoman is able to throw a batarang into a van door a couple of inches and still keep the flash drive taped to its other end intact. It's less a matter of the target's size and more a case of throwing an unbalanced projectile with the precise amount of spin.
- Incompatible Orientation: The chemical security guard flirts with and tries to get a date with Batwoman, obviously unaware of the problem.
- Internal Reveal:
- Sophie unquestionably figures out Kate is Batwoman. She also learns about Mary's clinic, Batwoman having dumped her there after she was shot for lack of anywhere else to leave her.
- Mouse gets Alice to reveal that Kate is Batwoman by pretending to be Kate over the phone.
- In the Back: How the Executioner dies, courtesy of Jacob.
- It's Personal:
- For Luke, as Stanton was the one who caught the (supposed) killer of his dad, which is why he is furious when Kate acknowledges Villain Has a Point, as seen below.
- Jacob considers the GCPD lighting up the Bat-Signal rather than calling the Crows to be this, as he blames Batman for the damage done to his family.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Jacob's comment about the Superhero Paradox comes more out of his personal dislike for Batman than a genuine belief, but Kate doesn't even try to claim that he doesn't have a point.
- Karmic Death: The Executioner kills his victims via electrocution, Firing Squad and hydrogen cyanide gas—the three approved methods of legal execution in Gotham.
- Kick the Dog: Mouse killing the hostage simply to make a point to Alice.
- The Kindnapper: Kate leaves Sophie handcuffed to a hospital bed until she has a chance to persuade her not to reveal Batwoman's Secret Identity. She's able to free herself before Kate returns, but elects not to turn her in anyway.
- Latex Perfection: Mouse wears a face mask of an employee at Hamilton Dynamics, which is good enough to fool a facial scanner.
- Lockdown: The courtroom has a lockdown protocol which causes metal blast doors to seal the room. The Executioner uses it as part of his gas chamber trap.
- Made of Iron:
- Sophie gets shot in the side and is able to walk out of Mary's clinic within 24 hours.
- Kate gets hit by a truck while wearing the Batsuit and only seems to have bruised ribs.
- Magnetic Weapons: Another Batsuit-piercing Hand Cannon, this time a coilgun.
- Mathematician's Answer: When Mary asks what Sophie was shot with, Batwoman simply responds with "A bullet." Mary meant what kind of bullet, to better know how to treat the wound, but Batwoman didn't have that info.
- Mythology Gag:
- Kate mentions that she played soccer as a child, which is true in the comics.
- Stanton is mentioned to have prosecuted Jack Napier, the given name for the version of The Joker from Batman (1989), named in tribute to actors Jack Nicholson and Alan Napier.
- Luke Fox states death by firing squad was implemented when Oswald Cobblepot was mayor of Gotham City, a reference to the latter being elected just as the New 52 began.
- 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 door. Never mind that, at that same time, he helped his father by lying to Jacob and Kate that Beth wasn't there and that he 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.
- Not Helping Your Case: One of the men who was framed by the corrupt law enforcement officers made himself look even worse by threatening to kill the prosecutor in front of the entire court.
- "Not So Different" Remark:
- Pointed out between Kate and the Executioner, including by Jacob.
- Kate realises that she and her father are both blaming someone else rather than face their own guilt over failing to rescue Beth.
- Oh, Crap!:
- Batwoman, when Sophie says "thanks, Kate".
- Mouse, when he walks straight into Catherine at Hamilton Dynamics. Through a bit of bluffing and dumb luck, he manages to avoid being outed as an imposter.
- The real Dean Devereaux has one when he beats Alice at checkers. Luckily for him, she just flips over the game board.
- Pink Mist: Happens to Devereaux when Mouse shoots him with the coil gun, though through the torso instead of the head.
- Posthumous Character: Lucius Fox is revealed to have been murdered a few years back. And with the corrupt justice system handling the case, it remains to be seen if his real killer has been apprehended after all.
- Pragmatic Villainy: Alice claims to be willing to kill Kate if her We Can Rule Together plan fails.
- Psychological Projection: Both Jacob and Kate realize and admit that they've been doing this; Jacob blames Batman for his wife's death and Beth becoming Alice to avoid facing his own guilt over the whole thing, while Kate redirects her own guilt for not rescuing Beth onto her father.
- Red Herring: Chris "The Fist" Medlock, an ex-con who swore vengeance on the judge who (wrongfully) sentenced him, is initially hinted to be the Executioner.
- The Reveal: The weapon Alice wanted Catherine to give her is a coil gun, which would be able to pierce the Batsuit.
- Ripped from the Headlines: Racial profiling gets a few Take That!'s in throughout the episode, with The Executioner outright stating that he only executed poor minorities throughout the years, never rich white guys.
- Schmuck Bait: Subverted. Batwoman breaks into the Executioner's home and finds a hydrogen cyanide canister just sitting on his coffee table. After getting tired of waiting for Luke to figure out if it's a trap or not, she just opens it, revealing a thumb drive that contains his confession.
- Secret-Keeper: After initially wanting to reveal Kate's secret to Jacob, Sophie decides to keep it after a talk with Mary, and witnessing Kate and her father embracing each other, knowing that revealing this secret will tear them apart.
- Shout-Out: A street named Rucka Avenue is mentioned.
- Shown Their Work: Hydrogen cyanide is indeed used in gas chamber executions as claimed, and has a flammability concentration of 5.6%, close to the stated 6%.
- Sore Loser: When her hostage beats her in Checkers, Alice throws the game board away.
- Stay Frosty: Luke to Kate when he warns her there may be a trap waiting in the Executioner's apartment. Turns out there's only a recorded Motive Rant.
- Stealth Hi/Bye: Batwoman does a stealth hi on Mary and the judge, and a stealth bye on the chemical warehouse guard.
- Superhero Paradox: Briefly discussed by Jacob, who blames the loss of his family on Batman, due to him being the reason that so many supervillains were terrorizing the city in the first place. It becomes clear that much of it is just guilt projection, though.
- Symbol Motif Clothing: The Executioner wears an executioner's hood and wields a big axe.
- Taking You with Me: It's implied the Executioner intended to die in his own gas chamber trap, given his confession left at his home and the fact he had a dead-man's switch to activate it.
- Two Scenes, One Dialogue: Happens when Luke and Kate research possible Executioner suspects at the same time Jacob and Tyler do.
- Villain Has a Point:
- Even Kate acknowledges that The Executioner has a point in pointing out the corruption in the system.
- When Batwoman tries to talk him down, the Executioner points out that if she had any real faith in the justice system, she wouldn't be Batwoman in the first place. Kate counters that though the system has problems, murdering people isn't the answer.
- Wham Line: Sophie calling Batwoman "Kate".
- What the Hell, Hero?: Mary calls out Sophie for treating Kate like crap. It gets her to think enough to not reveal her secret to Jacob.
- Wounded Gazelle Gambit: The Executioner claims to have hostages and requests a specific detective meet him. When the detective waits too long, he seems to start hurting the hostages, forcing the detective to throw caution to the wind. Batwoman and Sophie, having snuck inside, realize too late that the "hostages" are just recorded voices meant to lure in the detective, who is gunned down by tripwire-triggered guns the moment he steps inside.
- Writing Indentation Clue: A variation; the Batsuit records deformation impact data—as from bullets or blunt force trauma—which software can then analyze to reveal patterns. When the Executioner hits Kate with his truck, part of the license number is recorded this way.
