With time running out to save Mary from herself, Ryan turns to Jada for help, but is the price of that assistance going to be too high?

All that lovely tension that was bubbling over between the various members of Team Bat kinda gets put on simmer this week as Luke, Sophie and Ryan must combine their efforts to try to save their friend Mary before it’s too late. But first, Ryan needs to do a solid for her mother – one that she may come to regret.

Having achieved that though, she’s free to spill all to Sophie about precisely why she trusts Jada. Though it clearly helps, it’s obvious that this particular conflict isn’t all the way over yet It also has the added twist of Sophie being forced to reveal to both Ryan and Luke that she spent the night with Montoya, which is obviously a blow to Ryan personally but more importantly means that Sophie didn’t go home last night, meaning her roommate was left to her own devices.

And when your roommate’s Alice, that’s a bad thing Of course we know that she and Mary took off together but what happened next? Well, we skipped a bit before we catch up with them but clearly they have been getting into all kinds of mischief. With night fallen, Mary reverts to her own self, and is immediately horrified at where and with whom she finds herself. But Alice has a proposal – help her out and she’ll make sure that nobody – Team Bat included – is able to lock Mary away for the rest of her days.

Once again Rachel Skarsten gets to have a ton of fun with the character of Alice. What’s pleasantly surprising is how well Nicole Kang matches her, both as an increasingly disillusioned Mary and as the femme fatale version of herself, the new Poison Ivy. As she starts to get a grip of her new powers, and gets slowly seduced by Alice’s heartfelt appeals to not just their genetic sisterhood but the actual bond they have which Mary failed to get with a team who took her for granted for so long, it’s clear that maybe those two halves of her personality aren’t as far apart as her friends might think.

And those friends have other problems too, when the favour Ryan did for her mother backfires on her in spectacular fashion. As the episode races to its conclusion, and the mid-season break, Team Bat finds itself in all kinds of trouble. Ryan may be the best – possibly only – version of Batwoman who is equipped to travel the road ahead of her now. She’s a survivor who fought her way up from nothing once – surely she’ll manage to do it again?

Verdict: A blistering mid-season finale that delivers surprises, thrills and drama in equal measure. 9/10

Greg D. Smith