Batwoman type TV Show network The CW genre Superhero

Image zoom Sergei Bachlakov/The CW

EW is exclusively debuting a fresh look at the new woman in Kate’s life: Reagan, played by The Passage‘s Brianne Howey. Reagan will be introduced as bartender at Batman baddie Tommy Elliot’s (Gabriel Mann) party in episode 3 and starts dating Kate in episode 4, as seen in the new images above and below.

“We can expect to see Kate’s story get complicated by her,” Batwoman showrunner Caroline Dries tells EW. “Kate realizes that Sophie’s got stuff to figure out emotionally and personally, and she’s not about to be a home-wrecker. So, she is just keeping her options open like anyone might [and] meets Reagan at this big penthouse housewarming party in Gotham.”

Sophie may indeed be married, but that won’t stop her from feeling “a little bit envious” when she meets Reagan for the first time in the above image. “She knows she doesn’t really have a right to be too opinionated about it because she has supposedly, on paper, moved on. But at the same time, she’s a woman with a heart and can’t help but feel stung, like, ‘I guess I passed up this wonderful, amazing person, and of course everyone else is gonna want to date her next,'” says Dries.

Image zoom Sergei Bachlakov/The CW

Even though Dries intends for Kate and Sophie’s romance to be the “potent love story of the season,” she doesn’t want to keep Kate stuck in that angsty love affair the entire time and hopes this new relationship will show a different side of her. “We’ve only seen her get her heart wrung a bit, and now here is this woman who’s smart, funny, cool, available, and it brings out sort of the smile and hope that Kate can find normalcy in her life,” says Dries. “Of course, like any superhero will tell you, it’s not easy to live two lives and keep one identity a huge secret.”

Dries thought it was important to show Kate in another romantic relationship for several reasons. “When we had a character who was so defined by her sexual orientation, just naturally by the press and what makes her unique, it was important for me that was a major part of the show and that we’re not shying away from it,” says Dries. “On a macro level, we just want Kate to be in a romantic situation. Then on a story level, Kate has now by this time embraced her identity as Batwoman and has kind of committed to being the city’s new hero, and she wants it to be easier than it is and realizes very quickly, ‘Yeah, now I see why Bruce Wayne never had a long-term girlfriend and never got married.'”

Interestingly enough, Dries herself could actually relate to Kate’s struggle to balance her superhero life and her romantic one in this arc. “When we were breaking this episode, we were really in the trenches of starting production — traveling to a different city, running a writers’ room, keeping the editors working — and you just realize what an impossible task it is to be a showrunner like very quickly in the process,” says Dries “At the same time, I was just really empathizing with what Kate would be going through. You sign on for this thing that on paper seems like everything you’ve ever wanted, and then you quickly realize that back home (I have recently been married) you’re all of a sudden asking somebody to make a lot of sacrifices on your behalf for something that isn’t necessarily their passion project. So, it really was easy to kind of pull from that.”

While Dries won’t share how long Reagan sticks around for, she did offer up that the writers “definitely make her story so that she isn’t forever out of the show when she does say goodbye.”

Batwoman airs Sundays at 8 p.m. on The CW.

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