Batwoman is approached by Commander Kane and Agent Moore to boost an infamous work of art that reveals the way to Coryana - and Kate. Despite her reservations, Luke and Mary convince Ryan to take the assignment, causing tensions within the Bat-team to escalate. Meanwhile, as Alice attempts to fulfill Safiyah's insidious request, she slowly discovers that she may not remember everything about her time on Coryana.
Tropes:
- All for Nothing: The fiasco at the exhibition turns out to have been completely pointless; Ocean stole the painting before it had even been put on display and left a fake behind so no one would be the wiser.
- Amnesiac Lover: Alice recalls at the end of the episode that she and Ocean had been involved on Coryana.
- Anti-Villain: Evan Blake, Wolf Spider, isn't dangerous or violent (though he does give Ryan a decent fight); he's just a masked Banksy expy who steals the painting because he wants to help find Kate.
- Arc Welding: At the end of the episode, Ocean is revealed to have stolen the Napier painting, tying Alice's B-plot to the A-plot.
- Assassin Outclassin':
- First done by Ocean towards Alice.
- Later Alice and Ocean team up to defeat the Many Arms of Death.
- Audible Sharpness: Wolf Spider's knife makes a low shing noise when cutting Napier's painting from its frame.
- Blatant Lies: A violent Crow justifies hitting Wolf Spider with a car by claiming the thief had jumped in front of it. Sophie doesn't believe it and fires said Crow.
- Bluff the Impostor: Evan compliments Ryan's outfit and mentions where it's from, which she goes along with blindly. He then reveals he was lying and assumes she's a poser until Angelique bails her out by claiming her as a plus 1.
- Body Horror: Ryan's kryptonite wound is still getting worse, and even seems to be growing.
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Broken Aesop: The episode addresses the real world issue of Police Brutality using the Crows as a substitute for the police. Except... the Crows, despite acting like it and apparently having powers of arrest, are not the police. They're a privately owned, for-profit organisation, which would make their issues of corruption and violence an internal issue, not a societal one (in the real world, they'd have been sued into oblivion long ago). On top of that, both Ryan and Kate have behaved violently towards criminals (in the previous episode, Ryan beat the subdued Candy Lady to get information out of her, and here, she keeps the Pike chained up to make him talk), and as vigilantes, they have even less legal authority than the Crows, making Ryan's condemnations, no matter how accurate they may be, lose some of their impact. - …But He Sounds Handsome: When Angelique hears about Batwoman being seen with Jacob in the news and makes critical remarks about it, Ryan quickly jumps to her defense, telling her that she doesn't know why they met.
- Cain and Abel: While they are not blood-related, Ocean still refers to Safiyah as his sister. Yet, for some reason, she now wants him dead.
- Call-Back:
- Just like she had with Kate, Vesper Fairchild assumes that the new Batwoman is straight and ships her with a male law enforcement professional (in this case, Jacob Kane).
- Like Kate did with Dodgson, Ryan keeps a prisoner chained up in the Batcave, but fails to get any information out of him.
- Luke tells Ryan about his father's death at the hands of a Crow.
- Ryan's dress while undercover is very similar to (if not the same as) the dress Mary wore when rescuing Kate in "If You Believe In Me, I'll Believe In You".
- Car Fu: The two Crows chasing Evan knock him out by sideswiping him with their vehicle after the driver's partner can't manage to reload his taser. This causes him serious injuries and would have killed him had Batwoman not rushed him to Mary's clinic.
- Commonality Connection: Ryan and Luke find some bleak common ground: they've both been victimized by the Crows.
- Contrived Coincidence: Angelique happens to be attending the art auction at the same time as Ryan, which helps Ryan get in.
- Cyanide Pill: The Pike uses one when he realizes he said too much about Napier's painting.
- Dance Battler: Wolf Spider uses a lot of fancy flips, kicks, and footwork to stay ahead of Batwoman.
- Didn't Think This Through: Evan Blake refuses to cooperate with Jacob and Sophie when it comes to retrieving the Napier painting, even though he shares their goal of finding Kate. His solution is to steal the painting while it's on display (instead of taking it from storage or in transit), leading to a fight with Batwoman and the Crows and his own severe injury when a Crow gets too aggressive in stopping him, all of which would have been avoided if he'd worked with the heroes in the first place.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: The slogan "ACAB" is a thing in this universe too, only here it stands for "All Crows Are Bastards".
- Do Wrong, Right: Ocean knocks out Alice then criticizes her for her sloppy technique, as if she wanted him dead she had a dozen opportunities to do the deed with far more grace than her clumsy attempt to break into his place. Of course, Alice could have done those things, but she wanted to talk to him to investigate why she suddenly remembers him.
- Dramatic Irony: Sophie has no idea where the new Batwoman's loathing for the Crows comes from, unaware that she is Ryan, whom Sophie has personally arrested several times.
- Enemy Mine:
- Ryan has no love for the Crows or Sophie, and Jacob isn't pleased about working with the new Batwoman, but they reluctantly team up to retrieve the painting. Despite Ryan's belief that the Crows wouldn't honor any deal, Sophie holds up her end, and the arrangement only goes sideways when a Crow needlessly injures Wolf Spider, leading Ryan to deem the entire Crows organisation corrupt and refuse to work with them again.
- Ocean reluctantly accepts Alice's help against the Many Arms of Death and then goes on the run with her.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Alice was in an apparently genuine relationship with Ocean five years ago.
- Everyone Has Standards: After a Crow hits Wolf Spider with a car, his partner is horrified, though that doesn't save him from losing his job as well since he didn't report the incident.
- Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor: The title of the Napier painting is "Let It Out", another way of saying "spill your guts"; the Joker made the painting by throwing human viscera all over a canvas.
- Exact Words: Angelique claims to be clean to Ryan. When Ryan meets her at the gala later, carrying a stash of Snakebite, Angelique insists she's just selling the drugs and has been clean for four months.
- Failed a Spot Check: Alice is the most wanted criminal in Gotham, yet is able to just walk into a bar without a disguise, with no one recognizing her.
- Fragile Speedster: Wolf Spider is nimble and can run like a track star, but his suit is just spandex compared to Batwoman's bulletproof armor. After being hit by a car, Mary lampshades that he should invest in something a little tougher.
- Honor Before Reason:
- Ryan initially rejects working with the Crows out of hand due to her (not entirely unjustified) disgust with the organisation, despite the fact that their resources would be valuable in the ongoing search for Kate, only agreeing to it after being outvoted by Luke and Mary. After the fiasco at the art auction, she doubles down on her refusal to work with them, intending to carry on the search without their help (or the much-needed painting) rather than work with a group that sells justice to the highest bidder and treats its suspects with brutality and violence.
- Jacob initially refuses to work with the new Batwoman, refusing to "beg" for help from a woman filling Kate's shoes. Sophie brings him around by pointing out that, little though anyone likes it, the two parties need each other.
- Hypocrite: Ryan is aghast at Jacob beating the Pike to make him talk. Her outrage would carry more weight if she hadn't kept the assassin chained up and was planning on starving him into talking.
- Hypocrite Has a Point: While she's not exactly gentle with criminals herself, Ryan is right that the Crows' abuse of suspects is unacceptable; Sophie even agrees with her and fires the Crows who injured Evan.
- Internal Reformist: How Sophie justifies her wanting to stay with the Crows. Ryan doesn't buy it and refuses any further partnership unless Sophie is willing to ditch them.
- Internal Reveal:
- Ryan finally tells Mary about the Kryptonite wound and has her treat it (though it still grows worse).
- Ryan lets slip to Sophie that she's attracted to women.
- In the Back: Jacob's contact for the Collective gets speared in the back by the Pike henchman.
- It Is Beyond Saving: Sophie offers the badges of the officers that hit Wolf Spider as a gesture of good faith to Batwoman, but Ryan is adamant that the entire organization is corrupt and won't accept anything less than seeing it burnt to the ground.
- Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: Ryan keeps the Pike chained up and intends to starve him until he cooperates. After being given access to the prisoner, Jacob goes for the simpler method of beating him into talking.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: Both Alice and Ocean's memories have been tampered with; they were lovers on Coryana five years ago, but they don't remember a thing about each other.
- Laser-Guided Karma: The Crow who rams Wolf Spider leaves him because "Moore wants the painting, not an excessive force headline"; Sophie fires said Crow in disgust for his brutality.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: This exchange when Ryan is at the clinic:Mary: Kate would pop two of these and she'd be back in fighting shape.
Ryan: Okay, cool.
Mary: But if you're hurt, you should sit out a few days.
Ryan: Right. Did Kate ever sit out?
Mary: Kate was never shot with anything that pierced through the Batsuit. And you shouldn't compare yourself to her.
Ryan: What's my choice, huh? Everybody else is. - Left for Dead: The Crows who run down Wolf Spider leave him to bleed out on the street, on the grounds that Sophie doesn't want an excessive force headline. Batwoman finds him and they get outed anyway, losing their jobs.
- Mad Artist: The MacGuffin painting was made by the Joker, who splattered human guts on an existing painting. Evan goes so far as to describe Joker as a "celebrity artist" whose painting is only on display for that reason, as it otherwise lacks any semblance of talent.
- Mythology Gag: The Joker's method of creating art by killing people is similar to that of Gala from Mother Panic.
- Old Friend: Evan Blake is an old acquaintance of Kate.
- Parenthetical Swearing: Jacob addresses Ryan as "Batwoman" with a tone of deep scorn, clearly not over the idea of someone new inheriting Kate's role.
- Police Brutality: One of Ryan's many issues with the Crows is their reputation for treating suspects violently, and they prove that reputation true: Jacob beats the Pike to get him to talk, and one Crow hits Wolf Spider with a car to subdue him, then leaves him to bleed.
- Poor Communication Kills: Batwoman, the Crows, and Wolf Spider all had the same goal: use the Napier painting to find Coryana and therefore, Kate. Evan's refusal to cooperate or explain why he's stealing the painting leads to a fight and his own severe injury. Adding insult to injury, the painting was a forgery.
- Posthumous Character: The Joker is long gone, but a past deed of his is vital to the plot of this episode.
- Psychological Projection: It's implied that Ryan's own fears of failing to measure up to Kate influence her attitude towards Luke; after he expresses genuine concern at the injury that affected her during the climax, Ryan treats it as a condemnation and chews him out over it.
- Red Herring: Despite his painting being vital to the plot of the episode, the Joker himself is all but irrelevant to the actual story; by coincidence, he splattered some poor soul's guts all over a map to Coryana and dubbed it modern art. The painting is important despite what he did, not because of it.
- The Reveal:
- The Jack Napier painting is a map to Coryana (or rather, the painting beneath it was before the Joker splattered human viscera all over it).
- Details of Ryan's past arrest are provided: she stole Angelique's drug stash in the hopes of getting her clean, and, after a Crow made sexist remarks at her, she flipped him off and was subsequently searched, arrested, and sent to prison.
- Ocean is Safiyah's brother (though not by blood). Also, he and Alice were in a romantic relationship on Coryana five years ago but have since had their memories tampered with.
- Saying Too Much: The Pike lets slip that Coryana and Napier's painting are connected, from which Batwoman deduces that the latter is a map to the former.
- Swiss-Cheese Security: Exactly no one tries to stop Wolf Spider from stealing the painting until he's already removed it.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Ryan gives Luke, Mary, and Sophie hell for what happens to Evan.
