Batwoman: A Surprising New Villain Emerges in “Take Your Choice”

Gotham City has no shortage of bad guys. As any fan of DC Comics can tell you, the iconic fictional city is the home of some of the worst and weirdest criminals in all of the DC Universe and that’s certainly the case on The CW‘s Batwoman. The series isn’t even through its first season yet and we’ve already seen Batwoman take on Magpie and Executioner in addition to her ongoing battles with Alice and the Wonderland Gang and next week’s episode brings the arrival of the vampiric Nocturna. However, Sunday night’s episode revealed that even villains can have villains with the surprising reveal of someone who may be looking to cause trouble not for Batwoman, but for Alice instead.

Spoilers for tonight’s episode of Batwoman, “Take Your Choice”, below.

With Jacob Kane (Dougray Scott) in jail charged for the murder of his wife Catherine (Elizabeth Anweis), Mary (Nicole Kang) is desperate to find an expert that can help make the case for what seems impossible: that someone created a highly realistic mask of Jacob’s face and impersonated him in order to kill Catherine. Mary manages to convince Dr. Ethan Campbell (Sebastian Roche), a well-known plastic surgeon to consider the situation, though he insists that he needs to meet with Mouse (Sam Littlefield) before determining if he will be willing to testify on Jacob’s behalf.

Dr. Campbell pays Mouse a visit in the hospital where he is being held after he was apprehended trying to kill Kate (Ruby Rose) and the son of Gotham’s mayor and the son of Gotham’s police commissioner, but it becomes clear that the doctor isn’t exactly who he presents himself to be. It turns out that Dr. Campbell is actually August Cartwright, Mouse’s believed-dead father. He himself has been wearing a false face and immersed himself in a new life, but now he wants to deal with something he considers to be a major problem: Alice (Rachel Skarsten). The not-so-good doctor sees Alice has having turned Mouse against him and led him astray so now he wants his son to reveal where she is so he can handle the situation.

The idea that Dr. Campbell is really the deranged elder Cartwright has major implications for Batwoman going forward, particularly as things pertain to Alice. He is the man responsible for making Alice who she is as he kept her imprisoned in his home for more than half her life following the car accident, forcing the young Beth to be a friend to his son and using psychological abuse and terror to keep her in line. He even murdered her pet kitten in front of her, then forced her to learn to make masks of human skin for Mouse’s scarred face. Given that he is the source of much of the Kane family’s suffering, he’s likely to be an enemy of Batwoman’s as well as of Jacob Kane’s, but more than that, he poses a real threat to Alice.

The idea that Dr. Campbell being a threat to Alice is something that bears out in the episode as, in the final moments it’s he who ends up killing Beth after Kate saves her from Earth-Prime’s cosmic balancing, shooting her through the heart having apparently mistaken her for Alice. It’s an act that unintentionally ensures that Alice survives another day, but now that this new villain is in play, how many days Alice has left is anyone’s guess.

Were you surprised by this latest villain reveal? Let us know in the comments below.

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