The appearance of Beth in Gotham causes all sorts of issues, but with Mouse demanding the release of Alice and holding some powerful people to ransom to get it, and the police refusing to use the Bat Signal for ‘political reasons’, this may be the least of Kate’s worries.

Beth’s reappearance at the end of the previous episode was a surprise, but the explanation as to where she was from seemed fairly obvious, so that’s not going to detain us any longer here than it does the characters in the episode. What it does provide is some interesting glimpses into how things were different in her version of Earth, and more importantly why it’s been so hard for Kate to accept that her sister is gone and Alice is all that’s left.

Meanwhile, Alice herself is locked up by the Crows and waiting transfer to Arkham. Sophie thinks it’s worth interrogating her while they have her, to see if she can get a confession out of her about the murder of Catherine and exonerate her boss. But has interrogating Alice ever really ended well for anyone so far?

Mouse, upset that his best friend is locked up, kidnaps a couple of high-profile victims and holds them to ransom to demand her release. This should be a job for Batwoman, but the police are somewhat reluctant to flash the Bat Signal, apparently feeling that Batwoman’s revelation that she’s gay somehow means involving her would be ‘political’. It’s equal parts impressive that a show which is rooted in fantasy and could do whatever it liked cleaves this much to real-world stuff like this and frustrating that it has to, given that’s the state of the world in which we live.

Still, if Kate thought that the police force’s latent homophobia would be her biggest obstacle to saving the day here, she’d be wrong. Far bigger and scarier barriers stand in her way, as the show really works to use certain unique elements in its format to challenge its protagonist. It also gives us more insight into exactly how good a person Beth really was, and how very tragic her being Alice in this Earth actually is.

Verdict: Plenty of action, plenty of drama and another stunning turn from Rachel Skarsten who is as good at playing a genuinely decent human being as she is a damaged psychopath. 9/10

Greg D. Smith