If you caught the previous episode, you will have seen Beth Kane (Rachel Skarsten) waiting for her sister, Kate (Ruby Rose), at Wayne Enterprises. Kate, not giving it a moment to analyse the situation, jumps to the wrong conclusion. She initially thinks it’s Alice playing one of her sick games, during this latest episode, she discovers Alice (Rachel Skarsten) is still in custardy at Crow HQ.

Beth existing as Beth and not Alice is a consequence of the Crisis. This Beth had been abroad for a semester working on her thesis. After Mary Hamilton (Nicole Kang) reads it, later in the episode, we see her speaking with Kate about how this Beth could have been from another Earth is a potential multiverse. Mary frames the entire situation exactly the way the Crisis unfolded. By reading Beth’s thesis, Mary figured out multiverse theory, the collapse, and subsequent anomalies.

Kate was one of the paragons and possibly wished for her sister to return in the form she previously knew. Could Kate have influenced this entire situation? Before blowing out one of the two birthday cake candles, Kate said that all she ever wanted was a second chance.

Kate and Beth at The Hold Up and Alice and Sophie Moore (Meagan Tandy) at Crow HQ, as scene pairings go, work perfectly. The Hold Up is the name of Kate’s LGBTQ bar. Considering the building was once a bank, the new name seems fitting. The intensity of the scenes, especially those with Tandy and Skarsten, shows how well the actors play off each other.

The crash that happened on Kate’s Earth also occurred on Beth’s Earth. The only difference is that Kate saved Beth on one Earth. This quintessentially shows what occurred on one Earth didn’t play out the same way on another Earth.

Image Credit: IMDb.com

As the episode unfolds, we see well-crafted scenes demonstrate what it is that makes Batwoman such a great Arrowverse series. Beth and Alice, with Kate having managed to pull her sister from the car before it fell into the river, have distinctly different personalities. Skarsten’s ability to personify two distinctly different characters on the same show is extraordinary.

Ava Sleeth, as the young Beth, is required to show us Alice’s origin story. Beth’s trip down the rabbit hole toward becoming the insanely psychotic Alice is a scary one, there is no doubt. In many ways, like Sleeth with Beth, Nicholas Holmes does a convincing job playing the young Johnny.

Beth and Johnny bonded over Alice in Wonderland. Alice in Wonderland, fully titled Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was written under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll by English author Charles Dodgson. The use of randomly placed Alice in Wonderland quotes takes me back to the first time I read the book. Dodgson’s book was required reading when I was at boarding school.

Does the reason GCPD didn’t use the BatSignal pertain to Batwoman having come out as being a lesbian? The article published in CatCo Magazine was penned by journalist Kara Danvers (Melissa Benoist). Could city officials be distancing themselves from Batwoman? I guess it depends on how conservatively minded city bureaucrats are.

I’ve never really thought of sexual orientation as being a political issue. I suspect I am in the minority on that score. But then again … GCPD’s refusal to engage the BatSignal, as noted by Vesper Fairchild (Rachel Maddow) and television news reporters, didn’t go down well with younger Gothamites. The last time I checked, it’s 2020. Why should people care about whether someone is straight or gay?

Beth decides, because her Kate saved her when she was a child, she would do the same from this Earth’s Kate. Whilst Luke Fox (Camrus Johnson) wasn’t completely on board with the plan, it didn’t look like Beth was asking him for his permission. Mary came in to create the proper effect. Even though Mary made Beth up to look exactly like Alice, with Mouse and Alice having their own way of communicating, he picked up on there being something off with the situation. Beth didn’t know the correct response to Mouse’s (Sam Littlefield) question.

With Beth bring trapped in the trunk of a burning car, it looked like Kate was going to lose her sister for a second time. It looked like the writers wanted us to think she was going to die. Kate succeeds in saving her sister before it was engulfed in fire.

As the episode closes, we see both Beth and Alice experience significant headaches. Could this be an indication Earth-Prime is rejecting the existence of doppelgangers?

Previously …