Directed by Louis Shaw Milito
Written by Danny Cannon
So, the GCPD have some kids to save, but first they need a better idea of what they're up against. The boy that came to see them is escorted into Jim's office, where he gets over his cliffhanger syndrome and explains a bit more clearly: his name is Will Thomas; his parents were killed in a home invasion shortly after the bridges collapsed, and he was sold into slavery for the Soothsayer gang; they had him and a bunch of other kids bought from across the city building a tunnel. Gordon leaves Will to be checked for injuries, and returns to the radio, where the representative he had been contacting tells him to avoid conflict as much as possible. The way they see it, the Green Zone needs James Gordon protecting it, and they don't want him leaving to chase after another gang. Then they go ahead and say that they won't be sending any more supplies until Gotham airspace is confirmed clear, which could be never. Gordon abandons the radio and meets Bullock and Lucius to discuss their battle plan for getting to the Soothsayers. As much ammo as they got from Penguin, they only have enough for half a magazine each, and they only have a rust-bucket riot van left in working order. It'll have to do. They also have to pass through Barbara's territory to get to them.
Bruce arrives at "The Witch's house" in the city park, easily unlocking the gate outside it. He slips inside, and the place looks like it's been abandoned for years; everywhere, there are vines, covering the walls, the floor, the ceiling. Some places, there are bodies of men and women also covered in vines. The atmosphere is dark and choking. This is a place of evil. As Bruce is exploring, he encounters three men who tell him that searching for The Witch is folly. The bodies are apparently other people who, like Bruce, came looking for The Witch for her help, and it killed them. The three men captured it by trapping it in a room with no water and no light, and intend to kill it, but if they do that, Selina will never walk again. Bruce finally figures out "The Witch" is Ivy, then makes up a story about his brother looking for her, and him needing to talk to her to find out what's happened to him. They buy it hook, line and sinker and take him to see her.
We go to The Sirens' Club, where Barbara is at the bar mourning for Tabitha. Jim appears, and when he apologises for what happened in the warehouse, she flips out and empties the room. She wants his help to kill Penguin, and she thinks convincing him to give it will be easy enough in their current predicament, but that's not what he's here for: he wants transportation. When they get to the Soothsayers, he's going to need vehicles to get the kids out. Barbara gives them up with zero fuss— "Knock yourself out". She gives him the keys to the garage, and screams at him as he leaves to pick up his new rides, like she's releasing a valve. She cries soon after.
In the Dark Zone, Gordon and the GCPD are passing through dark, empty streets. These are the badlands, the blocks abandoned by all the major powers of the city and left to the smaller gangs and the dispossessed. The power was never restored here, and even in the aftermath of previous city-wide catastrophes, the area was left behind. Soon, though, they're attacked by Ramos Silva and her gang of skull mask-wearing thugs, who fire arrows at the GCPD convoy. Many pierce the metal and come within inches of killing Bullock, but they're lucky and escape largely unscathed.
Later that day and some distance away, in the Soothsayer Factory, a kid is being tased by a gas mask-wearing goon for not working when an older kid, more a teenager, comes to their rescue. The goon identifies the teen as Gabriel, the kid who got Will out of the factory, and scolds him for refusing to help them get him back. He takes off his mask, revealing the slightly blistered but otherwise normal face of a man. The mask is constantly pumping weed into him, and he wants more. The kids are building a tunnel to the mainland, which the major powers will pay them to use; the money will get them all the weed they could want, but the tunnel needs to exist first. Gabriel warns him the tunnel is unstable, and will flood as soon as they hit the river. The goon is threatening him when another goon comes, identifies the goon we were following as Sykes, and tells him to come out to the yard.
Outside, Jim and the GCPD are set up; Jim singles Sykes out as the leader of the gang, and tells him to let the kids go, persuading him to cooperate by pointing out they have ammo courtesy of Penguin. Sykes wants the bounty on Gordon's head, but he relents and drops his gun, ordering his men to do the same. Jim goes inside the factory and finds the kids. Back outside, the Soothsayers almost succeed in getting the drop on the GCPD, but Jim gets back out with the kids and takes a shot at a goon coming up behind them. A gunfight ensues. Gabriel gets the majority of the kids into the vans, and the GCPD drives off, leaving Gordon, Bullock, Gabriel and two kids following him in the yard, taking cover behind the one remaining vehicle as the Soothsayers rain down fire on them. Before Gordon can get in the car and start it, the tires are shot, forcing them to run on foot.
Back at the city park, Ivy picks herself up off the floor of her cell to greet Bruce. She offers a different story for what happened at the house; the bodies Bruce found and the men he encountered were allied, and had come to kill her. When they tried, the plants underneath the house came to her rescue, trapping them. Bruce tells her why he came— a 'friend' has a severe spinal injury, and the nurse told him to seek out The Witch. She tells him that the plants deep underground produce a seed that, when ingested, repairs all tissue and bone damage, and that she will take him to it in exchange for letting her out.
At Falcone Mansion, Riddler comes to yet again, with no recollection of the past few hours. He panics, wondering where he is, and then sees the padlocked belt around his waist strapping him to the bed, and is overjoyed. He's conquered his sleepwalking! He unlocks the belt and gets up, positively beaming, and goes to the bathroom to do his ablutions. Without thinking, he pulls back the bath curtain, and sees a man bound at the wrists and ankles sitting in the bath. Immediately, he yanks back the curtain, dismayed as he realises that he has not, in fact, conquered his sleepwalking. He pulls the curtain back again and asks his captive who he is— the man replies that he is Tank, of the Street Demonz gang. Riddler wonders why he has Tank in his bathroom, and when Tank won't tell him, he brings him out to interrogate him all over again.
Somewhere in the Dark Zone, Gordon and co. are on the streets, looking for cover, somewhere to wait out while the GCPD finds them. They spy an old theatre and go inside. The entry hall is old and disused, but there is evidence of occupancy— a single lit candle on a windowsill. Gordon recites some old story about how, back in the olden days, a single candle was lit to show somewhere's safe. Maybe that's what's happening here. While Gabriel and the kids stay in the hall and make themselves comfortable, Gordon agrees to investigate the upper floors and Bullock the basement. Upstairs, Gordon enters one room and inside the wardrobe finds a scared boy. In the basement, Bullock passes a table covered in bowls filled with possessions - necklaces, glasses, fingers - and to the side of it, a burning furnace with a skeleton inside. This place definitely isn't safe. A woman in Victorian dress and a mask appears behind him and tries to kill him, but Bullock sideswipes her and runs for the upper floors, screaming "JIM!".
Back in the Falcone Mansion, Ed has Tank in the centre of the salon, interrogating him about what he was looking for. Before long, he switches to asking Tank what he was like when he was interrogating him the first time. Cagey, nervous and hazy, he says. Sounds like Ed Nygma. He tells Riddler that he was looking for the leader of the Street Demonz when he instead brought him to the mansion, and agrees to take him to the man now. At the city park, Bruce leads Ivy out of the cell. He tries to convince the men outside to let them go, but when they step toward her, she slashes all of their throats in an instant, leaving the vines to cover them, and wraps her hand around Bruce's throat. She asks him who his friend is— he tells her Selina. She tells him she has no intention of helping her after she destroyed her Lazarus Water, and then suggests Bruce's body would make the room bloom all the better. Thinking quickly, he points out that the room isn't blooming so much as it's filled with rotting bodies. This stops her. Nature should be beautiful, not grim. She agrees to give him the seed for Selina if he never bothers her again.
Bullock reaches the room Jim's in and tells him there's something chasing them. The boy Jim encountered tells them that he's an orphan, that there's a ghost in the house that he's been trying to escape from, and that the ghost has him call it "Mother". They all run into the next room, with the boy at the back, and when Jim and Bullock see that there isn't another door in this room, the orphan closes the door behind them and holds it shut. Inside the trap, it goes pitch black, and then strobe lights start flashing at such a frequency and intensity that it nauseates and incapacitates the two. The boy wants them to give in to it. Behind Gordon, Mother appears and lunges at him. He deflects it, and then tries to dodge further attacks as the flashing persists. Once, the knife Mother is wielding lands and cuts Jim's hand. When Jim starts tiring, Bullock grabs a chair and hurls it at a window, letting light into the room and stopping the effects of the strobe lights. Unimpeded, Jim easily defeats Mother and removes her mask, prompting her to talk about how she saved Orphan, giving him the tools to survive, before she slips from Jim's grasp and escapes out a secret door in the wall.
At the Street Demonz HQ, Riddler and Tank are perturbed by the silence. It's a biker gang's base, it should be a cacophony. They turn a corner and see bodies strewn all over the floor, the leader Riddler had been looking for with a knife in his back, dead. On the wall above them, Penguin was here has been spray-painted. Tank falls for it, figuring that Penguin should pay for this, but Riddler sees through it. In what world would Penguin, Oswald Cobblepot, kill an unobtrusive biker gang and make it known he was the perpetrator? Tank then points out that whoever did commit this atrocity has started a war.
Ivy brings Bruce to an ancient tree, from which she retrieves the seed in question. It's black as pitch, with a blood-red core. Bruce asks if it really is human blood. Ivy does not answer. She warns him that the seed may heal her, or it may kill her— it depends on how strong she is. Even if she survives, she will be forever changed, her darkest angels brought to the surface. Sounds like this seed does the same thing as the Tetch virus. She wonders if Selina can live with that. If Bruce can. Bruce runs back to the hospital. In the theatre, Gordon and Bullock get back to the entry hall and pick up Gabriel and the kids. They all get back out onto the street, and Gordon jogs over to a nearby car and smashes the window to try to get into it, when they hear a truck. The soothsayers have caught up to them. Sykes gets out and starts strolling towards Gordon; he's come to claim the bounty for himself. At the opposite end of the street, Ramos Silva appears with her own gang, and is intent on claiming the bounty for herself. Gordon is trapped between a rock and a hard place, and he only has two bullets left.
At the hospital, Bruce is debating whether to give Selina the seed. What if she doesn't survive it? Selina tells him to give her the seed, as she doesn't care whatever the outcome. She takes the seed, swallows it, and feels unchanged. Some moments pass, and she doesn't die; she starts reminiscing about the first time she took Ivy under her wing, shivering and alone. However she changes, she will always be little Ivy Pepper to her. And then she starts seizing. In the streets of the Dark Zone, the two gang leaders are advancing towards Gordon, but they've already forgotten about him. Instead, they're arguing over who gets to kill him and claim the bounty. Seeing his chance, Gordon gets a headshot off on Ramos, killing her. Sykes, attention refocused, tries to close the distance to Gordon, when out of the smoke behind Silva's gang, a jeep with a mounted turret appears and exterminates the rest of Silva's gang and incapacitates Sykes. The rest of the Soothsayers run off. Out of the jeep comes Barbara, who strolls towards Gordon. As she gets near him, she turns her back to talk to him, and Gordon sees Sykes raising his gun behind her. He shoots him non-fatally, using his last bullet, a fact that amuses Barbara. She lets them all get on the jeep and drives them back to the Green Zone. Lucius introduces them to an apartment complex that's been repurposed as a home for all the refugees in the zone, and cautiously warns Gordon that it will be full in a matter of hours. Jim responds that they'll find somewhere else.
At the hospital, Bruce wants to know how Selina is. Her condition stabilised, he is told, and she is resting in the ward. Bruce goes towards said ward and looks the window in the door only to see no occupied beds and an open window. He rushes in, concerned. Why wouldn't he be? Behind him, Selina steps out of the shadows, and she's standing. The seed worked. Bruce is overjoyed, and the two embrace; unseen by Bruce, though, her pupils become slits, like a cat's. Catwoman has been born.
Tropes:
- Big Brother Instinct: Gabriel is one of the oldest "children" held by the Soothsayers, being in his teens, and is very protective of the others, jumping in when one of them is being shocked and trying to convince Sykes that the tunnel will fail and that anyone down there will die when the river breaks though and floods it.
- Bound and Gagged: Riddler finds Tank, a Street Demonz gang member, tied up with rope and his mouth gagged with duct tape in the tub of his bathroom.
- Brown Note: Orphan tricks Jim and Harvey into a room where strobe lights flash at a frequency and intensity intended to nauseate them and render them helpless. Harvey defuses the threat by breaking the boarded-up window and admitting normal light from outside.
- Burn the Witch!: The people who have cornered Ivy intend to do this to her. For additional points, Ivy has become known as 'The Witch'.
- Call-Back: Ivy is still sore about Selina betraying her last time they saw each other.
- Chained to a Bed: Riddler does this to himself to stop himself from going somewhere in his sleep. He thinks it worked when he wakes up and he's still where he was, only to find a man tied up in the bathroom who tells Riddler that he kidnapped him.
- Continuity Nod: Selina was healed by Ivy once before.
- Creepy Child: There's something off about Orphan even before he turns out to be Mother's partner in crime.
- Did Not Think This Through: Gabriel implies this about the tunnel, saying that it's too narrow for what the Soothsayers want to do with it, and with water already leaking in, it's just a matter of time before the river breaks through and floods the entire thing.
- Disappointed in You: The leader of the Soothsayers calls Gabriel a disappointment for not seeing his vision, as he hoped Gabriel would take his place one day. The leader decided to just shoot him, and would have if Gordon hadn't arrived in time to rescue the kids.
- Drowning My Sorrows: Obviously hurting from the previous episode, Barbara is in the middle of a decent sized bottle when Jim drops by to ask for vehicles.
- Emergency Transformation: The nature of Ivy's cure for Selina. It heals her paralysis, but turns her into something distinctively nonhuman.
- False Flag Operation: Nygma believes that this is the case regarding whoever killed the leader of the biker gang and left the message "Penguin was here" on the wall.
- Garden of Evil: Ivy has turned the city park into a death zone full of killer plants.
- Godzilla Threshold: Despite knowing that Ivy is just as likely to poison Selina as cure her, Bruce and Selina still agree that she doesn't have much choice other than to take the medicine Ivy provided.
- Hope Spot: For Riddler: he awakes and sees that he's still strapped down to his bed, meaning he didn't wander off during his sleep. He then discovers a man bound and gagged in his bathtub who reveals that Riddler is the one that brought the guy there last night. And then chained himself back to the bed in his sleep, apparently just to troll his waking self with this trope.
- Mêlée à Trois: The episode's climax sees Gordon's group caught between two rival gangs, both gunning for him.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Bruce asks this question after Selina starts seizing.
- Mythology Gag:
- The comics' No Man's Land story included Ivy making a park her domain, getting overpowered and kept prisoner (also by using salt) until rescued by Batman, and later Ivy heals and "improves" an injured woman (Harleen Quinzel).
- One of the gangs after Gordon resembles the Neon Gang from Batman Forever.
- Selina's eyes transforming is like what Helena used to do in Birds of Prey.
- Nobody Poops: Averted. Riddler uses the bathroom right after he wakes up and can be heard peeing.
- One-Hit KO: Mother, being just a normal woman, seems to have only succeeded in her killing by ambushing her victims or disorienting them. When she loses the element of surprise, she's easily subdued with a single punch, but escapes due to knowing a hidden passage in the room.
- Pet the Dog: Ivy providing the medicine to heal Selina's back simply because she used to be her friend. Though considering their falling out, Ivy also takes clear delight in the idea that this healing will come at a dark price for Selina as well.
- Power at a Price: Ivy warns Bruce that her medicine will save Selina's life, but will change her as a result.
- Samaritan Syndrome: While running away from Mother, Gordon thought of going back to save the Orphan, despite helping Mother trap people. However, Bullock tells Gordon "not everyone wants [his] help."Gordon: I'm trying to keep the city from falling apart.
Barbara: Too late. - Suddenly Shouting: The leader of the Soothsayers screams "SO NEGATIVE!" for saying the tunnel is a death trap (see Did Not Think This Through).
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Bruce delivers a scathing one to Ivy, shaming her into helping Selina.
- Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Selina reminisces on taking Ivy under her wing, teaching her how to survive. Selina admits that no matter what Ivy looks like now, Selina will always see her as that little girl.
- Villainous Rescue: Barbara shows up to save Gordon when he's stuck between two gangs that want the bounty on his head.
- Visionary Villain: The leader of the Soothsayers wants to build a tunnel to the mainland, so that they can establish and control a flow of supplies into the city.
- Weaksauce Weakness: As a plant-person, Ivy is apparently vulnerable to salt which the would-be witch hunters spread on the floor around her. This makes sense as plants do not grow well in soil that contains salt and can die if exposed to higher concentrations of it.
- Wham Shot: The healed Selina's eyes suddenly turning green and her pupils turning into slits, like a cat's.
- Would Hurt a Child: The Soothsayers have abducted at least a dozen children and forced them to dig a tunnel to the mainland. After Will escapes, the remaining kids are punished by withholding food and rest and in general are punished with shocks by cattle prods.
- Wounded Gazelle Gambit:
- Ivy pretends to be an innocent victim when Bruce finds her locked up. After he's tricked into letting her out, she calls him out on his naiveté.
- Also used by Orphan, who tells Jim he's being held captive by Mother but is actually working with her to trap and kill people.
- Wretched Hive: The "dark zone", where the power was never restored after previous catastrophes even before the bridges blew, is this even when compared to the state the rest of Gotham is in.
