When Batwoman returns for its second season in a few months’ time, there’ll be someone new beneath the cowl. Ruby Rose exited The CW show after a single year, leaving the producers to recast the lead role with Javicia Leslie. The actress is set to play a brand new character named Ryan Wilder who’ll replace Kate Kane as the Scarlet Knight, and while fans have been worried about how the series will address Kate’s vanishing act, the newly revealed title of the season 2 premiere promises that it’ll be a major plot point and not something that’s swept under the rug.
Episode 2×01 will be called “Whatever Happened to Kate Kane?” which is a structure that DC comic book readers will be very familiar with. Alan Moore’s iconic Silver Age story “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?” picked up 10 years after the last public appearance of Superman, with the mystery surrounding his disappearance being unveiled by the end of the comic. Neil Gaiman later alluded to Moore’s story as well with his own tale, “Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?”
Gaiman’s comic was a surreal, supernatural piece about Bruce Wayne’s ghost attending his own funeral, so it probably won’t be of much inspiration to Batwoman, but Moore’s original story could prove important. Like “Man of Tomorrow,” it’s bound to pick up some time after Kate has gone missing, with her friends investigating what happened to her. Hopefully we’ll eventually get a satisfying answer to the mystery as the season unfolds.
We’ve also been told to expect Ryan Wilder’s ascent to heroism to take a few episodes to play out. Set photos have revealed that she at first wears Kate’s old Batsuit before upgrading it to better fit her own style, and she’ll also swap Kate’s Batcycle for the Batmobile. But the season kicks off by touching on the absence of her predecessor.
Don’t miss Batwoman when it returns to The CW on Sunday, January 17th.