Kate struggles to balance her new relationship with Reagan and her work as Batwoman while Magpie, a new thief, commits a series of robberies in Gotham. Meanwhile, Alice gives Catherine an ultimatum.
Tropes in this episode include:
- Amicable Exes: Though there's still some tension (romantic and otherwise), Kate and Sophie are capable of working together professionally.
- Answer Cut: Vesper Fairchild demands to know where Batwoman was last night while the Magpie was at work. We get the answer when Kate turns off the radio with irritation and we see she's in bed with Reagan.
- Anti-Climax: Magpie manages to escape by forcing Batwoman to deal with the exploding pearls, then fleeing to an adjacent building on a zipline, only for Batwoman to unceremoniously yank her into a fountain with a well-aimed grapple.
- Bad Liar: Zig-zagged. Kate's on-the-spot excuses to Reagan to hide her Batwoman activities are pretty terrible, a fact not lost on Reagan herself. Kate is much smoother about lying to Sophie about why she needs information on who might have stolen Martha Wayne's pearls, but she realises that Sophie clearly suspects that she's the Bat and wonders how Bruce Wayne was able to get away with living a double life for so long.
- Beneath Suspicion: Magpie takes advantage of her job as a photographer to case her heists without attracting attention.Magpie: People like you [Kate] never notice people like me.
- Blackmail: Alice blackmails Catherine for a new weapon Hamilton Dynamics is developing, in exchange for not outing the fact that Catherine faked her death. After a failed attempt to stop her, Catherine confesses to Jacob herself rather than give the weapon to Alice.
- Card-Carrying Villain: Alice refers to both herself and Catherine as bad guys. Catherine doesn't deny it.
- Classy Cat-Burglar: Magpie, though she has a bird motif rather than a cat.
- Continuity Nod:
- The door Dodgson attacked at the clinic in episode 2 still has axe gouges in it.
- Dodgson's leg wound from when Mary stabbed him in self-defense has become infected by this episode, and Mary notes he'd be dead if it had gone untreated any longer.
- The Dog Was the Mastermind: Magpie turns out to be a photographer working for the museum director.
- Fair-Weather Friend: Vesper Fairchild goes from attacking and downright slandering Batwoman when she fails, to supporting her at the end after she saves the day.
- Fanservice: Kate and Reagan in bed together.
- Femme Fatalons: Magpie has extremely long nails.
- Fingore: Alice easily subdues the goons Catherine sent to deal with her and cuts off the finger of one of them as a message.
- Foreshadowing:
- Luke runs the last print job that Magpie ran, and what comes out is a series of white dots. Given only one thing she stole in the episode has a similar shape and color, it's fairly easy to guess what she printed before Kate figures it out.
- During his drugged babbling, Dodgson says that Alice has big plans for someone called Mouse.
- Get Out!: Jacob tells Catherine to get away from him, after she confesses the truth.
- Guile Hero: Mary pretends to be Alice in order to trick an already-drugged Dodgson into revealing Alice's plan. It proves more effective than Kate's methods.
- Honest Corporate Executive: Kate decides to go into real estate to build affordable housing in low income neighborhoods.
- I Always Wanted to Say That: When Luke at Mission Control calls "Batcave to Batwoman", Kate accuses him of this, which Luke unconvincingly denies.
- I Did What I Had to Do: Catherine justifies faking Beth's death by claiming to have done it so that Jacob and Kate could move on. Jacob isn't particularly comforted.
- Improbable Aiming Skills: Batwoman batarangs an explosive pearl out of a girl's hand from at least 30 feet away, without injuring the child.
- In Vino Veritas: While hopped up on morphine, Dodgson mistakes Mary for Alice. She coaxes him into revealing Alice's plans, though she can't get much out of him because the morphine has also rendered him barely coherent.
- Irony: Mary saving Dodgson's life, after the man tried to kill her.
- Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: Subverted when Kate's treatment of Dodgson not only fails to get any information out of him, but causes serious health problems that require immediate medical attention, mainly his leg wound (caused by Mary) becoming infected. Mary notes that if Batwoman had brought him in any later, Dodgson likely would have died.
- Justified Criminal: Magpie justifies her crime spree as needing a way to pay the bills.
- The Masquerade Will Kill Your Dating Life: Kate's constant obvious lies and her inability to fully let Reagan into her life cause the couple to already break up at the end of the episode.
- "Mission: Impossible" Cable Drop: Done by Magpie for her Villain Opening Scene to avoid a laser grid. Next time she does it, Batwoman cuts her cable and dumps her onto the floor.
- The Missus and the Ex: Reagan and Sophie meet at the expo in a very uncomfortable moment.
- Moment Killer: Luke keeps texting Kate about Bat-business in the middle of her dates with Reagan.
- Mythology Gag: Reagan tells Kate of a rumor that Batwoman is dating Batman. Kathy Kane, the first Batwoman, was originally created as a love interest for Batman.
- Plot Allergy: Kate happens to be allergic to feathers. When she finds Magpie's hideout, she discovers that the main room is protected with a thermal alarm, which triggers an explosion if the temperature inside rises too high. While searching the room, Kate cannot breathe; however, she opens a drawer only to release a bunch of feathers, causing her to sneeze and trigger the bomb.
- Precision-Guided Boomerang: Subverted. When Batwoman uses one of Batman's batarangs and misses, on the return trip it sails to her right and destroys a priceless vase behind her. Luke recalibrates them after this to account for her shorter arms.
- The Reveal: Combined with Internal Reveal. Catherine paid off a coroner to confirm Beth's death using deer bones because Jacob and Kate were unable to move on. She confesses this to Jacob herself, rather than let Alice out her.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: After getting his finger chopped off by Alice, Catherine's goon understandably quits and tells her to handle Alice herself.
- Secret Identity Vocal Shift: Kate starts using a voice changer as Batwoman. This is especially necessary when talking to Mary, who would recognize her voice.
- Shout-Out: Kate quotes Rihanna, more specifically, "Hurt me with the truth, never comfort with a lie." Ironically, at the end of the episode, she concedes that lies are sometimes necessary.
- Shown Their Work: Despite sounding like a mixup of terms, 3D inkjet printing is a real technology.
- Soft Water: Batwoman uses her grapple to yank Magpie off a building when the latter is a good fifteen stories up and drops her into a fountain, yet all this does is wash off Magpie's face paint.
- Squee: Mary briefly geeks out upon meeting Batwoman.
- Symbol Motif Clothing: A Thieving Magpie with claws, feathers, black outfit and magpie-shaped grenades. When she tries stealing a Fabergé egg, Batwoman tells her she's taking the bird theme too far.
- Take a Third Option: Magpie tries to force Batwoman to choose between catching her and saving people from her pearl bombs. Batwoman chooses the latter, but is easily able to capture Magpie after the fact by simply catching her with a grapple when she tries to flee by ziplining to another building.
- Toplessness from the Back: Two for the price of one, with Kate and Reagan lying facedown topless in bed together after having sex offscreen.
- Too Dumb to Live: One of the men Catherine sends to kill Alice in her hideout spots an out-of-place stuffed rabbit on the floor, with a huge wire leading out of it... and decides to kick it. It turns out to be a smoke bomb, and he and the rest of his crew are quickly captured.
- We Can Rule Together: On meeting another black-clad woman with a flying animal motif, Magpie notes they've got a lot in common and should team up. Batwoman snarks back that she's allergic to feathers.
- What the Hell, Hero?:
- Luke points out that while Kate was sleeping with Reagan, the Magpie nearly killed a security guard during a jewel heist.
- Vesper Fairchild chastises Batwoman on her show after the heroine accidentally breaks a priceless vase at a museum during a scuffle with Magpie.
