Batwoman Brings Back Kate Kane, Recasts Ruby Rose

Batwoman‘s second season has undeniably been filled with surprises in its first nine episodes — and now it looks like the biggest one was just confirmed offscreen. Shortly after the airing of the season’s ninth episode, “Survived Much Worse”, TVLine confirmed that Krypton and The Royals star Wallis Day will be playing the role of Kate Kane in Season 2, taking over the character for Ruby Rose. Day was cited as one of the most popular casting suggestions among fans after Rose departed the role last summer, and some had already been speculating that she could be joining the series in some capacity.

“Wallis Day is going to be playing our altered version of Kate Kane, and she’s an amazing actress,” showrunner Caroline Dries explained. “I’m excited for you guys to see the journey that she endures.”

Tonight’s episode seemed to provide a definitive — albeit, more complicated — conclusion to Kate’s story, with Julia Pennyworth confirming that DNA matching Kate’s remains from her seemingly-deadly plane crash had washed up outside of Bludhaven. To make things more complicated, the episode’s final sequence showed a bandaged woman who appeared to be Kate (who was wearing the matching red necklaces that she and Alice have) hiding in the basement of a Gotham barbershop.

While it had seemed (briefly) as if Kate would definitively be dead within the world of the show, fans will surely be excited and curious to see what Day brings to the character — and exactly how that intersects with the current Batwoman, Ryan Wilder (Javicia Leslie). Given the cultural significance both on and offscreen that Leslie’s take on Batwoman has had so far, the idea of Kate — albeit, a new Kate — returning, and what that means for the overall mantle, is definitely going to get complicated in the back half of the season.

“To be honest with you, I did consider the soap opera version for a hot minute, selfishly, because we had a couple episodes already written, and transition-wise, it would be seamless [since] we already started breaking season 2,” Dries revealed in an interview last June. “But upon further reflection, and [producer] Greg [Berlanti] helped me make this call and he’s way smarter than me about this sort of stuff, he’s like, ‘You know, I think we should just reboot the character in terms of reboot Batwoman as a different character.’ Just to also respect everything that Ruby [Rose] put into the Kate Kane character.”

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