Batwoman’s Bruce Wayne Cliffhanger Creates an Arrow Plothole

Tonight’s season finale of Batwoman may not have been exactly where The CW series expected to close out its first season thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, but it still left fans of the Arrowverse with a lot of twists, turns, and developments to keep them wondering what’s next for Gotham’s caped hero when the show returns next January. Among those twists was a massive one that, in a sense, introduces something that Arrowverse fans have been clamoring for for years. The exciting twist is one that opens up a world of possibilities for Batwoman but in the process creates a potential error of sorts for the franchise – specifically when it comes to Arrow.

Major spoilers for the Season 1 finale of Batwoman, Mouse!” below.

Over the course of the season, Batwoman established that Beth Kane/Alice (Rachel Skarsten) was a gifted seamstress of sorts, something that August Cartwright brutally twisted by forcing her to sew elaborate faces for his disfigured son, Jonathan/Mouse (Same Littlefield). It’s a skill that, in adulthood, allowed her to craft various faces that were used as part of her criminal undertakings. Her biggest, boldest creation, however, came in “O, Mouse!” when Alice created a new face for Tommy Elliot/Hush (Gabriel Mann): the face of billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne.

With Tommy wearing Bruce’s face, it allows Alice to gain access to Wayne Tower via Tommy so that she can get her hands on the piece of Kryptonite Lucius Fox kept there but for fans playing close attention, the revelation of Bruce Wayne — or at least what he looks like — potentially creates a bit of an error of sorts for the Arrowverse. In “O, Mouse”, Tommy-as-Bruce is played by Warren Christie and if he looks familiar to you, it’s because he also appeared on Arrow as another handsome man of wealth and success: Dr. Carter Bowen.

In Arrow‘s first season episode “Legacies”, Cater and his mother sat down with the Queen family for brunch, catching up after Oliver’s (Stephen Amell) miraculous return after being believed dead for years. Carter is revealed to be practically perfect. A renowned neurosurgeon, acclaimed author, national chess champion, and budding media sensation on top of being affluent, handsome and, well, perfect, both Oliver and his sister, Thea (Willa Holland) both have a bit of resentment toward him. Fortunately for Oliver, that brunch is the only time Carter is really seen in the series.

It’s an interesting situation. While it’s most likely that this is just a matter of an actor just happening to get cast in multiple roles across a franchise — and to be fair, Christie’s Carter appeared in the first season of Arrow, long before there was an actual Arrowverse — but given the long shadow Bruce Wayne and Batman has had over the Arrowverse for years it’s certainly an neat coincidence. And, for Batwoman star Rachel Skarsten, it felt like pretty perfect casting.

“I mean, all the love and respect to Batwoman, love, her, but I was like a diehard Batman fan growing up, and if I was ever asked the question, this was long before I was on Batwoman, what super hero would you want to be, I’d go Batman,” Skarsten told ComicBook.com. “To introduce Bruce Wayne is so cool. I was so excited. I just feel like they cast him so perfectly, like he just looks exactly like what a Bruce Wayne should look like. He played it so well.”

For those who have trouble reconciling the Carter Bowen/Bruce Wayne situation, however, there is a simple fix: just blame it on “Crisis on Infinite Earths”. After all, Earth-Prime is a whole new world, maybe one without Carter Bowen.

Did you catch that the same actor who played Arrow’s Carter Bowen is the face of Batwoman‘s Bruce Wayne? Let us know in the comments below.

Batwoman will return for a second season January 2021.