Batwoman (2019)

[sorboares]

So happy Kate has been recast. Why cant they bring Kate back as Batwoman and then have Ryan become her own new character. Kate and Ryan can be a team!

[Caivu]

Batwoman's ratings and the coveted 18-34 has fallen pretty badly from season 1.

https://tvseriesfinale.com/tv-show/b...n-two-ratings/

And when the CW actually cares about live ratings, this will be concerning. Your own link shows it had more than a 20% increase last week. I'm so sick of the narrative that this show is in some kind of death spiral.

Yeah this is definitely in response to the ratings, because if they were fine with spoilers:

recasting Kate

end of spoilersfrom the jump they would never have brought in Ryan.

There's no way that's the case. They were already doing prep work for this episode (as in, there was already a script) back in late November last year. Season 2 hadn't even premiered then.

And if this actually is a truly recast Kate, it just makes you wonder why the heck we're stuck with Ryan Wilder at the end of this. And the answer appears to be 'so the show could score some cheap PR points and snag some headlines.' Which is not a good sign.

A more charitable and less cynical answer would be "they thought it would make a good story" coupled with "this gives us more time to properly recast Kate." Seems to be working okay so far.

[Guy1]

So happy Kate has been recast. Why cant they bring Kate back as Batwoman and then have Ryan become her own new character. Kate and Ryan can be a team!

Batwoman and Batwing?

[ZeroBG82]

Seems to be working okay so far.

Agree to disagree. The first season was mediocre, but watchable. The second season has been terrible. Arrow S4 terrible. Which, to be fair, Arrow recovered from. And I'm not saying Batwoman can't or won't manage the same. The behind the scenes problems between the seasons are clearly looming large.

And alienating a sizable portion of the audience by recasting Kate now, and not doing so from the beginning, isn't going to help. They could have delayed S2 if they had wanted, Covid gave them every opportunity to take as much time as they wanted to get Kate right. Instead they chose this path. I don't blame some fans for being grumpy about that choice. It's bad faith from the people running the show, as far as I'm concerned. Either commit to Ryan or don't abandon Kate, don't try and have it both ways.

[Caivu]

Agree to disagree. The first season was mediocre, but watchable. The second season has been terrible. Arrow S4 terrible. Which, to be fair, Arrow recovered from. And I'm not saying Batwoman can't or won't manage the same.

I don't understand what you think it needs to recover from. It's not been disastrous by any stretch, especially since it easily could've been.

[Frontier]

I think Ryan and Alice both writing a letter to Kate is the first time I've really felt a connection between the two of them, even if the intent of said letter were the complete opposite.

I don't know what's worse, Ryan taking serious medical advice from youtube video or the fact that it actually worked.

Not sure what to think about the plant knowing it came from Angelique, but I guess it really saved Ryan in the end.

Even Ryan thinks it's impractical to have two characters in the same show using the same codename. Do we need to have two competing main characters?

So Batman in this universe not only don't have a Batwing but they don't even have a Batboat, so Batwoman has to ride in the storage of some random plane. I guess things really went downhill after Bruce left.

Safiyah seems very...sexually repressed. I'm not convinced she's completely over Alice just like I'm not unconvinced she partially wants Sophie to join her because she wants to get into Sophie's pants.

Hey now, you never know when you'll need Shark Repellent .

Tatianna continues to be utterly useless, and it turns out she's to blame for Safiyah having to deal with Alice again. No surprise she's likely to be kept in a perpetual state of stabbing moving forward.

I guess I'm glad Ocean didn't get stabbed for nothing because Alice finally admitted to herself that she doesn't want to kill her sister. Seems like he deserves better than that, even if it looks like he's stuck back with Safiyah now.

The Many Arms of Death continue to not be impressive when one of them ends up getting subdued by, basically, two civilians. I mean, sure Julia needed to finish the job but it was still not a great showing.

Wow, Ryan's barely known Alice and she's got her seriously pegged and seems to empathize with her far quicker than I was expecting.

I guess if anything it's nice that Sophie and Ryan's relationship seems to be improving to some degree given Ryan got to see Sophie commit to saving Batwoman and was willing to sit with Ryan in her perceived last moments.

The world was denied the possibility of a magical medical cure-all because of Alice's pettiness. I mean, I get why she was mad, but still.

I thought it was pretty bad form to have your former main character's body parts spread out from a plane explosion, but was that really Kate...? She somehow survived the plane crash and now has numerous skin grafts to set up a recasting? What the heck is going on ?

Plus the Batmobile is the lamest most generic car on this show...

I actually think it's a pretty solid Batmobile for a TV budget.

[Vakanai]

I actually think it's a pretty solid Batmobile for a TV budget.

If that's true, then I'm glad Batman is saved for movies/films over tv.

[Caivu]

I actually think it's a pretty solid Batmobile for a TV budget.

Exactly. They have at least two of them, too.

[Frontier]

If that's true, then I'm glad Batman is saved for movies/films over tv.

I mean, it doesn't really look that far off from other Batmobile's I've seen in other mediums. Even Pattinson's.

[chamber-music]

I was one of those that wanted Wallis Day recast as Kate when Rose left so it's cool to see she finally landed the role. The whole thing of introducing Ryan Wilder only to bring back Kate Kane is lame though.

[Vakanai]

I mean, it doesn't really look that far off from other Batmobile's I've seen in other mediums. Even Pattinson's.

I'm also not a big fan of Pattinson's - it's the one I was calling the most generic "just a car" until this version popped up (obviously excluding the black and white theatrical serials).

[Vakanai]

I was one of those that wanted Wallis Day recast as Kate when Rose left so it's cool to see she finally landed the role. The whole thing of introducing Ryan Wilder only to bring back Kate Kane is lame though.

Apparently they're bringing back Kate but Ryan will remain Batwoman, so...

[SUPERECWFAN1]

And when the CW actually cares about live ratings, this will be concerning. Your own link shows it had more than a 20% increase last week. I'm so sick of the narrative that this show is in some kind of death spiral.

Its the 18-34 demo that they care more about and why its in the crapper. And yep...its in death spiral as its fallen in that demo ...by a big deal.

[gonnagiveittoya]

And when the CW actually cares about live ratings, this will be concerning. Your own link shows it had more than a 20% increase last week. I'm so sick of the narrative that this show is in some kind of death spiral.

There's no way that's the case. They were already doing prep work for this episode (as in, there was already a script) back in late November last year. Season 2 hadn't even premiered then.

A more charitable and less cynical answer would be "they thought it would make a good story" coupled with "this gives us more time to properly recast Kate." Seems to be working okay so far.

There is a zero percent chance the plan all along was to have a new Batwoman, but also still bring back Kate. If replacing Kates actress was always the plan they would never have needed a new Batwoman in the first place and just recast her from the jump and not throw out all the plans they had set up in the first season. They would have just continued on with Kate.

This is a life raft.

[Caivu]

Its the 18-34 demo that they care more about and why its in the crapper.

For live views, which they don't care about as much as streaming. Viewership is down across the board there as well, so it's not like this show is doing particularly worse than any other.

There is a zero percent chance the plan all along was to have a new Batwoman, but also still bring back Kate. If replacing Kates actress was always the plan they would never have needed a new Batwoman in the first place and just recast her from the jump and not throw out all the plans they had set up in the first season. They would have just continued on with Kate.

But that's just it: using a new character wasn't the initial plan. They were going to recast Kate originally since they'd already written at least up until episode 2x03, but Greg Berlanti convinced Caroline Dries to create a new character.