Batwoman Season 3: Batwing, New Gotham Villains, Promise Wild Year

Batwoman‘s second season had a lot of ground to cover following the departure of Ruby Rose as Kate Kane post-Season 1. Let’s recap! Season 2 introduced Ryan Wilder (Javicia Leslie) as the new titular hero with Ryan finding the Batsuit among the wreckage of  Kate Kane’s crashed plane. From there, she decides to use the suit to get justice for her adoptive mother’s death. Mary and Luke let Ryan keep the suit warm and keep the city safe while they wait for Kate to return, eventually growing into a tight team of their own.

Season 2 had to ask the question: what happened to Kate Kane? And devoted much of its top half exploring the answer. Kate was presumed dead after the plane crash, then thought to be Safiyah’s captive, then presumed dead again, until it was ultimately revealed that she was brainwashed by Roman Sionis to believe she was his late daughter, Circe.

Ryan and Alice confronted Circe and were able to dose her with aerosolized Snakebite, which finally brought Kate back. Mary, Luke, Sophie—and the audience—were all able to get closure with Kate, and Kate gave Ryan her blessing, officially passing the torch. Season 2 was one of reinvention, and it solidified Ryan Wilder as Batwoman. The finale also left us with some major clues as to what to expect in the forthcoming third season, which is set to premiere in October. Let’s discuss all of the major happenings set to occur in Batwoman Season 3, from new villains and heroes, to which mysteries could be solved…

Luke Becomes Batwing

One of the biggest moments in the Batwoman season 3 finale came when Luke finds a Batsuit created for him by his late father. He suits up for the first time and saves Mary from a Bane-ified Tavaroff, signaling his introduction as a new hero, Batwing.

Luke comes out of the season with a new suit and a new outlook on life, but it wasn’t without some major derails. After surviving near-fatal gunshot wounds, Luke went a little dark side until a run-in with John Diggle (David Ramsey) reminded him of who he was. 

“I think that scene between them was one of the best parts of the episode,” Ramsey told us when we spoke to him about a potential relationship between Diggle and Luke. 

“Both of them are still on a journey,” Ramsey says. “Part of Luke’s journey, part of that transition, John Diggle’s already made.” 

Diggle started out as Oliver Queen’s bodyguard and evolved into the hero fans know and love. Luke Fox was Batwoman’s “Man in the Chair,” and helped both Batwomen make the suit their own before stepping into a suit himself. 

“For Fox to begin to walk those same steps and to have a man that looks like him, that sounds like him, that lost his father like him, to have those similarities… I think it’s good writing for Fox, specifically, because he doesn’t know John Diggle,” Ramsey says. “So this will be a totally new relationship.”

Luke is a Black man in a notoriously corrupt city who will be taking up the mantle of Batwing. Without the direct guidance of his late father Lucious Fox, or the original Batman, Bruce Wayne, Diggle could serve as a mentor, a role we’re not used to seeing that character in. 

“I think in terms of our universe we haven’t really seen that. Just having this character begin to grow into a Batman, and to have someone who’s already done it, that has been through the same thing he’s been through, looks like him, can talk to him, I think that kind of mentorship on television, I think, is just rich.”

Ultimately, the people behind the mask are who we root for and who we tune in to see week after week. Batwoman has given us characters and relationships that are compelling and resonant. Luke has always been integral to the team, and his experience in becoming Batwing will be important to explore.

“To come back [from what Luke experienced] and then find another Black man who took interest in him, who sees the similarities, and can speak to that, can speak to fatherhood, can to speak to mentorship, can speak to losing his own father, can speak to coming into his own heroship, if you will… it’s great because ultimately you can see them fight together,” Ramsey says. “All the superhero stuff is there, but I just think about it on the other side of it, in terms of storytelling between these two Black men, one younger, one older, I just think it’s great for TV.”

There’s a lot of potential for Diggle to mentor Luke, especially as Diggle makes his own heroic transformation. 

“Obviously, John Diggle has his own destiny that he’s going into,” Ramsey says, hinting at the Green Lantern journey Diggle is on. “But how he fits, going into the mythos of other shows, I think that’s one of the things I would love to recreate, just that relationship between Diggle and Fox.”

The Truth About Ryan’s Mom

After Ryan and Alice temporarily team up to rescue Kate and recover her memories, Alice is arrested by GCPD, and Kate leaves Gotham to find Bruce, officially passing on the Batwoman mantle to Ryan. When Ryan visits Alice at Arkham Asylum, Alice reveals that Ryan’s birth mother, presumed to have died in childbirth, is alive and well. That’s a major revelation for Ryan and it’s going to be a major part of her story going forward.

Robin Givens was recently announced as a series regular, Jada Jet who is described as “passionate and hard working, a woman who has worked her way through life’s ups and downs to climb her way to the top — all while being extremely protective over her impetuous son. A woman with a deep past that forced her to give up her first-born child, Jada is a woman with a good heart, but will do whatever it takes to protect her family.” 

Ryan has survived a lot of trauma, and overcome a lot of personal obstacles. The discovery that her biological mother is not just alive, but thriving, could completely upend her reality.

Batwoman Season 3 Villains

Batwing will feature prominently in Batwoman season 3 and he’ll be likely recovering the villain trophies Circe stole from the Batcave. If the items that washed up on a Gotham river are anything to go by, the Bat Team may be facing off against iterations of Penguin, Mad Hatter, and Poison Ivy. The latter seems especially likely, given that Poison Ivy was name-dropped in an earlier episode, and may have existing ties with the current crop of Bat heroes.

Poison Ivy and Penguin are both iconic Batman villains, and bringing them to Batwoman is a strong declaration of faith in Ryan Wilder⁠. 

Poison Ivy is a meta who can manipulate greenery, and control people using pheromones. Penguin is a physically-deformed criminal mastermind.  

Both characters have been mentioned in the Arrowverse before⁠⁠—Lex Luthor wrote about Pamela Isley/Poison Ivy in his journal, pre-Crisis, and Penguin was name-dropped by Cluemaster. There is also an inmate in Arkham Asylum named O. Cobblepot⁠—but they haven’t yet appeared on-screen. Allowing Ryan and Luke to face-off against A-list villains shows confidence in the show and in the characters.

Batwoman Season 3 New Characters

Dougray Scott (Jacob Kane) exited as a series regular post-Season 2, but Batwoman is shoring up the ranks with a new series regular: Victoria Cartagena will be joining the cast as Renee Montoya for the third season. Montoya has seen several on-screen incarnations in recent years, including in Birds of Prey and Gotham, where she was—pause for dramatic impact—also played by Cartagena.

This version of the character is not intended to be related to the Gotham version. She is (via Deadline) a “former GCPD officer who left the force when she could no longer stomach the corruption inside the department. She now runs the ‘freaks division,’ which hasn’t seen a lot of action… until now. Righteous and pragmatic, and LGBTQ+, she’s a woman with a very personal (and mysterious) mission to help clean the streets of Gotham in the right way, by whatever means necessary.”

We’ll also get Nick Creegan as Marquis Jet, who, according to Deadline: “A sexy playboy who grew up in a lavish lifestyle, Marquis is too charming for his own good and wields his power with a ne’er do well attitude. He views life as one big joke and that sense of recklessness has a tendency to clash horribly with his no-nonsense mother Jada Jet. When he meets Ryan (Leslie), he sees in her a like-minded young go-getter who like him is just waiting for the right opportunity to make his mark on Gotham.”

What are you excited for in Batwoman Season 3? Let us know in the comments below.