Ryan’s Kryptonite wound is getting worse, hindering her ability to do her job as Batwoman. A doctor at the Hamilton institute is determined to recreate the miracle cure which saved so many Gotham citizens from the bat bite virus, and will stop at nothing in his quest.

Last week we got what felt like a pivotal moment in the tenure of Javicia Leslie as Batwoman, as Ryan Wilder finally stopped acting like she was doing the job of Batwoman under the sufferance of Luke and put her foot firmly down. This week, the show as a whole finally starts to feel less like its narrative is pining the star it lost and more like it’s starting to centre the one it has.

It’s bugged me for a while now that Ryan hasn’t really paid attention to the fact she’s carrying what’s obviously a nasty, infected wound from where she was shot with a kryptonite bullet and she’s just done nothing about it. Here we find out why, when she finally can’t hide it from Luke anymore, and the logic not only makes sense but ties in with the whole arc the character has had from her introduction. This has been a slow-burner of a plot, but I sympathise that it must be difficult to suddenly change course so abruptly when your lead has walked away after one season, and to be fair they seem to be pulling in the right direction.

But there’s a lot more than that going on this week. An awful lot more. The ‘threat of the week’ comes from a very… focused doctor looking to replicate the cure that miraculously healed all the folks infected by Hamilton’s own virus delivered by bat bites, and little things like his patients dying and basic ethics aren’t about to get in his way. When this leads to Jacob and Mary being kidnapped by a less than stable individual, it opens up several new cans of worms in the Kane family. What’s particularly clever is the nuanced way the script approaches all this, leaving neither Jacob nor Mary either wholly in the right or wrong, and it sets up a potentially fascinating dynamic for the characters moving forwards.

What’s cleverer still is the way that this subplot weaves into others to refocus the whole direction of travel for the narratives. Several different people, all for their own very specific reasons, now want to find their way to Coryana, meaning that Napier’s real painting is even more highly sought after than ever. Suddenly, locating Kate is just one of the reasons to beat a path to the mysterious island, with a much more pressing one finally centring Wilder properly in the show’s arc.

As if all that wasn’t enough, Ryan also has to contend with issues in her private life. That Angelique is still dealing bothers her hugely, and leads her to make a decision she may regret in the short term. But I’m not entirely convinced it’s one that she’ll live to regret overall. Sophie continues to stray perilously close to various lines she shouldn’t be crossing, making her a far more interesting part of the show than she ever got to be in the first season, and Alice’s own quest to recover her past also takes some interesting turns. By the end of the episode, it seems that there isn’t anyone in the show who doesn’t need to find their way to that mysterious little island, and that means plenty of trouble up ahead, I suspect.

Verdict: Starting to really come into its own as Leslie’s vehicle now, and getting better by the week for it. 9/10

Greg D. Smith