Batwoman: How Alice’s Origin Differs From the Comics

Just as heroes have an origin story so do villains. This is especially true when it comes to Batwoman‘s Alice. Both in comics and on screen, the murderous woman who speaks in Alice In Wonderland-inspired rhyme went down a long, twisted road in her transformation from Beth Kane to villain. Tonight’s episode of The CW series takes the time to reveal that road, both for viewers and Kate Kane as well, but while the ultimate outcome — Beth’s transformation into Alice — remains the same, Batwoman takes a very different approach and it’s one that may be even more heartbreaking than the story in comics.

Spoilers for tonight’s episode of Batwoman, “Mine is a Long and Sad Tale,” below.

In tonight’s episode, Kate uses the tracker she put in Alice’s boyfriend to find her deranged sister. After successfully capturing her, Kate wants to know what Alice is up to — particularly, Kate wants to know who or what Mouse is. To find that out, Kate ends up going on a little road trip of sorts with Alice who unfolds her story bit by bit, beginning with what happened to Beth right after she went missing.

Sometime after the car plunging into the river, Beth awakens on a couch in someone’s living room. There’s a young boy playing, one who it is revealed can mimic any voice. His father is also there and reassures Beth that the police will come for her soon. Beth just wants to go home, but she ends up going upstairs and playing with the boy — Johnny, aka Mouse. There, she catches a news report about her own disappearance and realizes that the man lied. He hasn’t called the police. The man then grabs Beth and drags her off to the basement, throwing her into a secret, dungeon like room of sorts and locking her in. While insides he discovers a face floating in a sink. The man reveals that the face is for an “experiment” and that he has no plans to let Beth go. He wants to keep her as a friend for Johnny, who has no friends and no normal life because of his facial scarring.

Eventually, after being held there for weeks, Beth manages to pull a nail out of the wall of her cell, picking the lock to her door. She makes it upstairs where she calls home and her father answers. As she’s begging her father to come save her, the man finds her and takes the phone, telling her that he will kill anyone who comes for her. He then puts her back into her cell. It turns out, though, that Kate remembers this call. Their father had the call traced and it brought them to the very farm where Beth was being held. However, the man managed to convince Jacob that it was Johnny who called with his vocal mimicry. Meanwhile, Kate goes into the basement and too the very door of Beth’s cell. Because of the man’s warning, Beth says nothing. After standing a moment, Kate leaves.

It’s Kate’s leaving that appears to be what broke Beth. She had expected that her sister would be able to sense her, but she didn’t. We don’t get any additional details about Beth’s sad story, but we do find out Beth, now Alice, has been stealing skin from corpses for Mouse, whom has recently escaped form Arkham. In in a final flashback, we see the young Johnny sneak Beth a book — Alice in Wonderland — after he tells her that he doesn’t want her to leave.

While the outcome is roughly the same — Beth Kane becoming the villain Alice — it’s very different from the comics origin. In comics, Kate and Beth are out at a restaurant for their birthday dessert when they are attacked by a terrorist group and kidnapped. Their mother is murdered as well another little girl they had kidnapped, leading Kate to believe Beth was dead. Kate was rescued, but Beth was not even though Jacob thought Beth might still be alive. The organization that took them, the Many Arms of Death, had needed twins to run their organization which is why they took the Kane Twins. When Kate was rescued, Beth was no longer useful, and the traumatized Beth was ultimately sent to the United States to be raised by the Religion of Crime where she is ultimately elected to be their leader by all 13 of its covens when she’s an adult.

What’s interesting about the differences in Alice’s origin story in Batwoman versus the comics is the interesting approach taken to the relationship the Beth and Kate’s father has to them. In the comics, Jacob always knows Beth is alive and it’s when Kate finds out Alice is Beth, that’s what ends her relationship with her father. On Batwoman tonight, however, we see its Kate who has always believed and when Jacob finally accepts that Alice is Beth, it brings he and Kate closer together.

Batwoman airs Sundays at 8/7c on The CW.