Gotham Knights 1x12 Review - Exposed - Batman-News.com Archive

With Gotham Knights canceled as far as future seasons are concerned, it seems like a foregone conclusion that we won't be getting any kind of satisfying ending to the show. In this second-to-last episode of the show, it still feels like the show is setting up pieces to play with in later seasons. Spoilers follow for Gotham Knights, Season 1, Episode 12, "City of Owls."

"City of Owls"

The team springs into action after uncovering the existence of evidence that could clear their names. Harvey (Misha Collins) follows a lead that could help him finally piece together what happened the night Bruce Wayne was murdered. After reuniting with her mother, Duela (Olivia Rose Keegan) begins to have second thoughts.

Bad Parenting

Photo: Amanda Mazonkey/The CW -- © 2023 The CW Network, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Many superhero stories are tied to their parents in some way. Gotham Knights' thesis seems to be that parents, mostly, suck. Stephanie had to run away from home to escape her narcissistic father and pill-addicted mother. Harper and Cullen's father forced them out. Turner's adoptive father might have contributed directly to his birth parents' deaths. Carrie's mom is a bit different--she's busy but emotionally present and seems to care about her daughter, so we're going to call her the exception. Duela's mother proves the rule hard this week.

Having disappeared with her own mother, Duela worries about her friends who are now appearing on the news. Over and over, Evelyn tries to isolate her. You need a new name, new identity, we have to get out of town, and so on. We already knew that Evelyn was bad news from her debut in the previous episode, but she takes it to new levels when she drugs Duela with plans to hand her in for the reward.

Even jock-himbo Brody isn't safe from this. His own mother murdered him and shoved him into a coffin. He only got out because the Knights happened to figure out the secret to Alan Wayne's old buildings. If they hadn't found him, he might've been stuck there for months or even years, cursed by the Electrum in his blood to hammer on the coffin without reprieve. Or worse, he could've been buried like that. Immortality sounds sick until you meet someone who really wants to make you miserable and turns the gift into a curse. Don't think about it for too long. But now the Knights have two immortal, formerly-rich jocks on their team.

End Boss

One of the more fun elements of the season has been the slow reveal of Rebecca March as the show's true villain. She was convincing as a damsel in distress earlier, but she's fully unmasked this week. Not only did she murder her own son, she's now murdered her husband and the vast majority of her secret society. The twist that she is the Dr. Leviticus mentioned in the old papers was a fun twist as well. It makes her influence that much more far-reaching and gives a basis for her power and knowledge all this time. As a side note, the last place I remember seeing this actress is on NBC's Community as Professor Slater, so this seems like a big upgrade for her character-wise.

While Rebecca is revealing all of this to Harvey Dent, the cops show up at the scene of the dead Owls and, of course, the Knights standing there dumbfounded. The kids are pretty unbelievably skilled, but the writers have done a good job of consistently putting the Owls one or two steps ahead of the cadre of puzzle-solving, jump-kicking, pick-pocketing adulteens. Every time it seems like the Knights are picking up momentum, the Owls have a rake ready for them to step on. Their real skill is not in outsmarting the Owls, but in escaping their clutches repeatedly. And for that, even Batman would be proud.

The future that never was

Photo: The CW -- © 2023 The CW Network, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

It feels at times like this show should've preceded Batwoman on the CW, with that show building off of this one. Two different shows capitalizing on Batman's absence could've made for great synergy. They even have a villain that would've worked great in either show in Rebecca March, who we now know to be an immortal mad scientist who will happily off her family for a smidge of additional power. But ultimately both of the shows came too late in the CW's life, as it's clear now that the CW was already checking out of the Arrowverse as the last episode of the Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover aired.

6 comments

Fred Fitch

June 27, 2023

I never watched Batwoman, or indeed most of CW's DC-based shows. I found them a mite tedious and predictable, but somehow, even though I only discovered it after it had been on a few weeks, I fell hard for Gotham Knights. It's not a superhero show. Maybe that's it. It's a detective show, and after all, Batman is only super in his ratiocinative abilities. It's a nice variation on a theme. Instead of a Batcave beneath the ground, a Belfry high above it. Instead of every possible science fiction level device, a lot of off-the-shelf tech used creatively (Carrie had some of Batman's toys, but not many).

Most of all, and I can't describe how much I loved this, instead of a lonely secretive world-weary crusader, a team of kids, from extremely varied backgrounds (one of them an aspiring villain), figuring out who they are, what they can do, forming connections, romantic and otherwise, at the age when that matters most.

They still keep some secrets from each other, but the story shows us that's usually a mistake. The more you share, the better you communicate, the stronger a team you become. No costumes, except for Robin, and no capes of any kind. In spite of the often-ludicrous premise and endless plot holes (is Gotham Academy security really that bad?), it felt a lot more real and grounded than this kind of thing usually does.

The budget was low, even for Atlanta, and they only had thirteen 43 minute episodes to tell the story--little budget means little time to figure out how to budget what you have, since time is money. I give the creative team a lot of credit for doing so much with so little, which really was kind of the point of the show itself. They start out in the high tech CGI Batcave, with a supercomputer, and end up in a dusty school attic with laptops and smartphones. (Which somehow the authorities can't trace, you see what I mean about plot holes).

Last season of Superman and Lois was fifteen episodes--also thirteen this season. Probably more like ten next season, and that'll be it, I'm guessing. Hard times are coming to the entertainment world. Tighter utility belts. This show would have gotten a second season, at least, if it had premiered a few years ago. But a few years ago, they probably wouldn't have had Olivia Rose Keegan as Duela, and where's the fun in that?

I'm really curious to see how many plot threads and character arcs they can tie up in 43 minutes. (While I like both couples on the show, Turner and Duela really are the one that needs the most attention here, since 'Sharper' is as resolved as can be in the time remaining).

But yeah, much will remain forever unresolved (Unless DC wants to do a comic book followup? How about some TV movies? Veronica Mars got a movie. It stunk, but she got it.)

PS: Batman didn't kill anybody. Not on purpose. That's not a spoiler. That's a solid gold guaranteed fact. Do we see that confirmed tonight? I have no idea.

Sara

June 27, 2023

Just to follow up on something Fred Fitch (great comment!) said: If they continued this story in a comic, I would read it. And I haven't touched any DC comic since February. I haven't wanted to. And I know that through September there's nothing that I want to read.

I'm not so into the ragtag group of teens defending the world from evil, but the plot, the foregrounding of character and story over action, the reaching into the grab bag of underutilized Gotham lore, and, yes, the *concept* of the show are all good in my eyes. Nothing anyone has said about them has changed that. They are so much better than what the comic ongoings are doing.

The show's concept, as I see it, is about cross-generational strife and history as something we live, not just something that happened in the past. It's about what lies beneath the facade and how some people sink and some don't. It's why Harvey Dent and "Joker's Daughter" need to be here but Jim and Barbara Gordon don't. It is the reason GK is working when the comics are foundering.

Failure to capture a large enough audience to get renewed doesn't prove the concept is bad. It proves that problems in execution and marketing, and corporate politics, can hurt the chances of a good story to get told.

Fred Fitch
June 27, 2023
My take on the concept is based on something Ring Lardner once wrote--"The family you come from isn't as important as the family you're going to have."
Your birth family, good or bad, are inherited wealth (literal and figurative). Your friends and lovers are earned wealth. Your children, if you have any, are the legacy you leave for the future.
Doesn't mean the family you come from is necessarily composed of supervillains, con artists, and addicts but these characters (three of whom are criminals, after all) mainly came from pretty bad families, and it's a bit suspicious to me that they're still emotionally sound (yes, even Duela), but I'll go with it.
So yes, you're right--that's why it's not Dick Grayson, either. Turner had to be a completely new character, because he's got to be free to choose his path, which won't be that of Bruce or Batman--Bruce deliberately kept him from knowing Batman, for that very reason. You don't have to become your parents. You have to decide for yourself what parts of their legacy you want to keep, if any.
And Robin had to be Carrie Kelley (love Navia Robinson), with a much less dysfunctional (but necessarily incomplete) family than in The Dark Knight Returns, because Dick basically had no choice but to follow in Batman's footsteps, to avenge his parents. Carrie rescued Batman, then pestered him into making her his apprentice, because she saw she had a vocation, and he was the only possible mentor. It was 100% her choice, and he tried like hell to dissuade her. Still dubiously ethnical or legal, but that's the genre.
Duela has the most confused background (she's never been terribly coherent in the comics, this is by far the best version of her we will ever see), but in essence she was conditioned to believe she had to be The Joker's Daughter, then found out she had other options. She's got the most interesting arc because she really could go either way, though it's hard to see how she becomes a hero. In Gotham, hero and villain mingle a lot--I feel like there's room for her to be somewhere between the two poles, which was pretty much her wheelhouse in the comics. No matter whose daughter she is, she's always the Joker in the deck.
Cullen and Harper are a bit of a problem, because seriously, these kids are so incredibly skilled, they really should have no problem finding honest work. Cullen's transition obviously complicated matters, Harper's take-no-prisoners attitude probably wouldn't' go over well in the tech world, and they couldn't afford decent schooling, which is why she at first resents Stephanie, who maybe had the worst experience of any of them, but felt like she had to put up a wholesome front. (I really feel like she should have been more understanding of Duela, who had basically no parenting of any kind, but maybe that would have happened next season).
So the show is about the family you were born into vs. the family you make for yourself--a conflict just about anyone who hasn't lived at home all his/her life should understand. Most people live in more than one world, have more than one family. But these kids are forced by their situation to choose. At times it got a bit forced, in part because it was necessary for several of the characters to entirely separate from their birth families. (I wonder if the Big Bad next season would have been The League of Evil Parents). It's based on comic books, with a shoestring budget, so maybe don't expect Sopranos-level nuance? (That was also, when you think about it, about Tony navigating between the family he was born into and the family he made for himself).
Excuse all the typing, but I'm on pins and needles over the defacto finale. So are you. So are a bunch of people. Ah well. Same Bat Time. Same Bat Channel.
1. Sara
  June 27, 2023
  For sure the best Duela we're likely to ever get.
  Something that's worked for me in Gotham Knights is how it portrays Gotham as a vital something extending in time and space, with layers to dig through and channels to get lost in. Not a virtually static or, at best, mechanically operated, flat backdrop for spectacle. Which is what it's become in the comics, for the most part. An aged Joe Chill reminds us that people don't stop existing once they've performed their historic action.
  I'll miss this show existing because it's an alternative to the Gotham (in the broadest sense of "Gotham") of the comics.
  This show has, maybe unintentionally, given me food for thought about how the comics (re/dis)organize their material. (How much here is retconned New 52 canon?) That's another kind of "family" legacy we're dealing with when we talk about an elseworld like GK.
  I think it was a worthwhile experiment.
  1. Fred Fitch
    June 28, 2023
    The idea of Gotham as a character really did work for me. I'm not sure I saw Gotham as Atlanta, but that was just for the outdoor shoots. The overall look of the city was beautiful, dank and Deco--considering the low budget, they did a magnificent job. (Metropolis never looked that good in Superman and Lois, though of course they were almost never there).
    The writers have been repeatedly slandered by some really toxic online fans (DC fans are notoriously insecure, because Marvel), accused of wanting to destroy the legacy of the franchise, when in fact they did intensive research, and creatively fitted together bits and pieces from a variety of past comics (most of which I never read). While I guess I could see them being mad Bruce is the last Wayne, adopted sons are sons all the same, and how is it any different from Dick Grayson taking up the mantle? It's not, but anything new is treated as heresy. Literally. Heresy. As if they had rewritten the Bible, which to these dweebs is what this is, except it's been getting rewritten since the 1940's.
    The Joe Chill ep went up in the ratings, which gives you an idea how iconic he is, but Doug Bradley was magnificent--as was Veronica Cartwright as Eunice. I think recognizing her was the moment I thought "I can't miss one episode of this." There's no disrespect for the legacy of the franchise--they respect it enough to clear away the undergrowth, and put on a fresh coat of paint. This was doing the generational angle right. Which usually does not happen in the comics. Or in Batman Beyond, which I tried to like, but EW.
    Anyway, I've watched the finale several ties, and it hasn't stopped hurting yet. I didn't think they'd go that far with it, particularly since they knew very well from the start this could be the only season. (CW was in very bad shape before they started work).
    I'm afraid I've gotten so invested in Duela, I'm feeling her grief now. She doesn't know, as we do, that Turner is alive and determined to get back to her and the others. She's pretending to be over it, just do the work, carry on the legacy, bullshit.
    Grief, unlike mourning, doesn't go away. Not without a body, and a proper funeral, and there's none of that. So my guess is, that nagging lack of closure would have made this team of detectives dig deep--perhaps literally--and find out something's not right here.
    In the meantime, I imagine Duela singing this to herself. Laughing and crying. At the same time. As am I. I'm worse than a relationshipper, you see. I'm a romantic. :)
    https://www.youtube.com/wat...
    1. Fred Fitch
      June 28, 2023
      Btw, that's 'toothpaste grin'--Larry Hart's words cut to the bone when he's serious--but you know how I heard it. Right?

Fred Fitch
June 27, 2023
I never watched Batwoman, or indeed most of CW's DC-based shows. I found them a mite tedious and predictable, but somehow, even though I only discovered it after it had been on a few weeks, I fell hard for Gotham Knights. It's not a superhero show. Maybe that's it. It's a detective show, and after all, Batman is only super in his ratiocinative abilities. It's a nice variation on a theme. Instead of a Batcave beneath the ground, a Belfry high above it. Instead of every possible science fiction level device, a lot of off-the-shelf tech used creatively (Carrie had some of Batman's toys, but not many).
Most of all, and I can't describe how much I loved this, instead of a lonely secretive world-weary crusader, a team of kids, from extremely varied backgrounds (one of them an aspiring villain), figuring out who they are, what they can do, forming connections, romantic and otherwise, at the age when that matters most.
They still keep some secrets from each other, but the story shows us that's usually a mistake. The more you share, the better you communicate, the stronger a team you become. No costumes, except for Robin, and no capes of any kind. In spite of the often-ludicrous premise and endless plot holes (is Gotham Academy security really that bad?), it felt a lot more real and grounded than this kind of thing usually does.
The budget was low, even for Atlanta, and they only had thirteen 43 minute episodes to tell the story--little budget means little time to figure out how to budget what you have, since time is money. I give the creative team a lot of credit for doing so much with so little, which really was kind of the point of the show itself. They start out in the high tech CGI Batcave, with a supercomputer, and end up in a dusty school attic with laptops and smartphones. (Which somehow the authorities can't trace, you see what I mean about plot holes).
Last season of Superman and Lois was fifteen episodes--also thirteen this season. Probably more like ten next season, and that'll be it, I'm guessing. Hard times are coming to the entertainment world. Tighter utility belts. This show would have gotten a second season, at least, if it had premiered a few years ago. But a few years ago, they probably wouldn't have had Olivia Rose Keegan as Duela, and where's the fun in that?
I'm really curious to see how many plot threads and character arcs they can tie up in 43 minutes. (While I like both couples on the show, Turner and Duela really are the one that needs the most attention here, since 'Sharper' is as resolved as can be in the time remaining).
But yeah, much will remain forever unresolved (Unless DC wants to do a comic book followup? How about some TV movies? Veronica Mars got a movie. It stunk, but she got it.)
PS: Batman didn't kill anybody. Not on purpose. That's not a spoiler. That's a solid gold guaranteed fact. Do we see that confirmed tonight? I have no idea.
Sara
June 27, 2023
Just to follow up on something Fred Fitch (great comment!) said: If they continued this story in a comic, I would read it. And I haven't touched any DC comic since February. I haven't wanted to. And I know that through September there's nothing that I want to read.
I'm not so into the ragtag group of teens defending the world from evil, but the plot, the foregrounding of character and story over action, the reaching into the grab bag of underutilized Gotham lore, and, yes, the *concept* of the show are all good in my eyes. Nothing anyone has said about them has changed that. They are so much better than what the comic ongoings are doing.
The show's concept, as I see it, is about cross-generational strife and history as something we live, not just something that happened in the past. It's about what lies beneath the facade and how some people sink and some don't. It's why Harvey Dent and "Joker's Daughter" need to be here but Jim and Barbara Gordon don't. It is the reason GK is working when the comics are foundering.
Failure to capture a large enough audience to get renewed doesn't prove the concept is bad. It proves that problems in execution and marketing, and corporate politics, can hurt the chances of a good story to get told.
1. Fred Fitch
  June 27, 2023
  My take on the concept is based on something Ring Lardner once wrote--"The family you come from isn't as important as the family you're going to have."
  Your birth family, good or bad, are inherited wealth (literal and figurative). Your friends and lovers are earned wealth. Your children, if you have any, are the legacy you leave for the future.
  Doesn't mean the family you come from is necessarily composed of supervillains, con artists, and addicts but these characters (three of whom are criminals, after all) mainly came from pretty bad families, and it's a bit suspicious to me that they're still emotionally sound (yes, even Duela), but I'll go with it.
  So yes, you're right--that's why it's not Dick Grayson, either. Turner had to be a completely new character, because he's got to be free to choose his path, which won't be that of Bruce or Batman--Bruce deliberately kept him from knowing Batman, for that very reason. You don't have to become your parents. You have to decide for yourself what parts of their legacy you want to keep, if any.
  And Robin had to be Carrie Kelley (love Navia Robinson), with a much less dysfunctional (but necessarily incomplete) family than in The Dark Knight Returns, because Dick basically had no choice but to follow in Batman's footsteps, to avenge his parents. Carrie rescued Batman, then pestered him into making her his apprentice, because she saw she had a vocation, and he was the only possible mentor. It was 100% her choice, and he tried like hell to dissuade her. Still dubiously ethnical or legal, but that's the genre.
  Duela has the most confused background (she's never been terribly coherent in the comics, this is by far the best version of her we will ever see), but in essence she was conditioned to believe she had to be The Joker's Daughter, then found out she had other options. She's got the most interesting arc because she really could go either way, though it's hard to see how she becomes a hero. In Gotham, hero and villain mingle a lot--I feel like there's room for her to be somewhere between the two poles, which was pretty much her wheelhouse in the comics. No matter whose daughter she is, she's always the Joker in the deck.
  Cullen and Harper are a bit of a problem, because seriously, these kids are so incredibly skilled, they really should have no problem finding honest work. Cullen's transition obviously complicated matters, Harper's take-no-prisoners attitude probably wouldn't' go over well in the tech world, and they couldn't afford decent schooling, which is why she at first resents Stephanie, who maybe had the worst experience of any of them, but felt like she had to put up a wholesome front. (I really feel like she should have been more understanding of Duela, who had basically no parenting of any kind, but maybe that would have happened next season).
  So the show is about the family you were born into vs. the family you make for yourself--a conflict just about anyone who hasn't lived at home all his/her life should understand. Most people live in more than one world, have more than one family. But these kids are forced by their situation to choose. At times it got a bit forced, in part because it was necessary for several of the characters to entirely separate from their birth families. (I wonder if the Big Bad next season would have been The League of Evil Parents). It's based on comic books, with a shoestring budget, so maybe don't expect Sopranos-level nuance? (That was also, when you think about it, about Tony navigating between the family he was born into and the family he made for himself).
  Excuse all the typing, but I'm on pins and needles over the defacto finale. So are you. So are a bunch of people. Ah well. Same Bat Time. Same Bat Channel.
  1. Sara
    June 27, 2023
    For sure the best Duela we're likely to ever get.
    Something that's worked for me in Gotham Knights is how it portrays Gotham as a vital something extending in time and space, with layers to dig through and channels to get lost in. Not a virtually static or, at best, mechanically operated, flat backdrop for spectacle. Which is what it's become in the comics, for the most part. An aged Joe Chill reminds us that people don't stop existing once they've performed their historic action.
    I'll miss this show existing because it's an alternative to the Gotham (in the broadest sense of "Gotham") of the comics.
    This show has, maybe unintentionally, given me food for thought about how the comics (re/dis)organize their material. (How much here is retconned New 52 canon?) That's another kind of "family" legacy we're dealing with when we talk about an elseworld like GK.
    I think it was a worthwhile experiment.
    1. Fred Fitch
      June 28, 2023
      The idea of Gotham as a character really did work for me. I'm not sure I saw Gotham as Atlanta, but that was just for the outdoor shoots. The overall look of the city was beautiful, dank and Deco--considering the low budget, they did a magnificent job. (Metropolis never looked that good in Superman and Lois, though of course they were almost never there).
      The writers have been repeatedly slandered by some really toxic online fans (DC fans are notoriously insecure, because Marvel), accused of wanting to destroy the legacy of the franchise, when in fact they did intensive research, and creatively fitted together bits and pieces from a variety of past comics (most of which I never read). While I guess I could see them being mad Bruce is the last Wayne, adopted sons are sons all the same, and how is it any different from Dick Grayson taking up the mantle? It's not, but anything new is treated as heresy. Literally. Heresy. As if they had rewritten the Bible, which to these dweebs is what this is, except it's been getting rewritten since the 1940's.
      The Joe Chill ep went up in the ratings, which gives you an idea how iconic he is, but Doug Bradley was magnificent--as was Veronica Cartwright as Eunice. I think recognizing her was the moment I thought "I can't miss one episode of this." There's no disrespect for the legacy of the franchise--they respect it enough to clear away the undergrowth, and put on a fresh coat of paint. This was doing the generational angle right. Which usually does not happen in the comics. Or in Batman Beyond, which I tried to like, but EW.
      Anyway, I've watched the finale several ties, and it hasn't stopped hurting yet. I didn't think they'd go that far with it, particularly since they knew very well from the start this could be the only season. (CW was in very bad shape before they started work).
      I'm afraid I've gotten so invested in Duela, I'm feeling her grief now. She doesn't know, as we do, that Turner is alive and determined to get back to her and the others. She's pretending to be over it, just do the work, carry on the legacy, bullshit.
      Grief, unlike mourning, doesn't go away. Not without a body, and a proper funeral, and there's none of that. So my guess is, that nagging lack of closure would have made this team of detectives dig deep--perhaps literally--and find out something's not right here.
      In the meantime, I imagine Duela singing this to herself. Laughing and crying. At the same time. As am I. I'm worse than a relationshipper, you see. I'm a romantic. :)
      https://www.youtube.com/wat...
      1. Fred Fitch
        June 28, 2023
        Btw, that's 'toothpaste grin'--Larry Hart's words cut to the bone when he's serious--but you know how I heard it. Right?

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Gotham Knights 1x12 Review - Exposed

"City of Owls"

Bad Parenting

End Boss

The future that never was

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