Tommy Elliott, an old friend of Bruce's, comes to town as Kate faces off with a new foe.
Tropes in this episode include:
- Accomplice by Inaction: What Alice sees Kate as, blaming her for letting their dad declare Beth dead.
- Always Second Best: Elliott feels this way towards Bruce, which is why he is so adamant in emphasizing petty accomplishments like having a taller tower than him.
- Artistic License – Geography: When Tommy first indicates his new building, he's in Bruce's office looking out the window and turned to his right; in other words, Wayne Tower would be on the right to someone looking at it from Tommy's building. However, when Wayne Tower is later seen at Tommy's party, it's to the left of his building.
- Armor-Piercing Question: Kate finally asks Luke if he actually believes Bruce is ever coming back. He says no.
- Badass Normal: Even without the railgun, Tommy puts up a rather good fight against Batwoman, the latter of whom is wearing the Batsuit at the time. Plus, she had already batarang'd one of his legs.
- Battle Couple: Tyler and Sophie are shown sparring.
- Be Yourself: In a sense. Kate realizes that she needs to stop pretending to be Batman and instead take up the mantle on her own terms, so she adds her own touches to the suit to distinguish herself from Batman.
- Blatant Lies: Sophie tells Tyler that she and Kate barely knew each other at the academy. Tyler is a little suspicious, though as Reagan points out, he's oblivious to the hints of Kate and Sophie's prior relationship.
- Call-Forward: Alice smashes the Batsignal, explaining why the one in Elseworlds looks different.
- Can't Refuse the Call Anymore: Faced with Tommy's plot to kill dozens of people, Kate accepts the role of the city's protector after previously avoiding the role due to self-doubt and reluctance to be that sort of symbol.
- Catapult Nightmare: Alice has one in the prologue about her younger self finding a human skin mask in a tub of water.
- Chekhov's Gun: Kate picks up a double grappling hook launcher when she and Luke investigate the armory break-in. She uses it later to catch a falling elevator.
- Comic-Book Movies Don't Use Codenames: Having not (yet) become a supervillain, Tommy is never referred to as "Hush".
- Compensating for Something: Elliott gloats about building a skyscraper five stories higher than Wayne Tower and steals a large, powerful gun from a WayneTech; Kate easily zeroes in on the implications, making a dig about Elliott's obvious envy.
- Crazy-Prepared: Applied to Batman, it comes as no surprise. Bruce developed a railgun so he could shoot through the armor of the suit if it were ever stolen. He also developed a sonic weapon capable of neutralizing the railgun in case it were ever stolen and used against him.
- Criminal Mind Games: Alice breaks into Jacob's penthouse and calls him to play a song on Beth's cello that Beth used to play, just to mess with him. She also leaves Catherine an apparent message in the form of three playing cards (two of hearts, eight of clubs, three of diamonds).
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: When Elliott pulls a gun on her, Kate, comparing Elliott's weapon to the railgun, quips that "Bruce's is bigger."
- Driven by Envy: Elliott is very transparently motivated by trying to one-up Bruce.
- Elevator Failure: Well, not exactly failure, more like Tommy blowing them up.
- Entertainingly Wrong: Elliott assumes that with "Batman" having returned to Gotham, Bruce has returned as well; he would have been right if not for the fact that it was Kate in the Batsuit.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Subverted; Kate offers to release Dodgson if Alice can hold off of killing anyone for 24 hours. Alice reluctantly agrees, only to murder a Crow in Jacob's penthouse, half-heartedly reflecting that "Kate's gonna be so disappointed." She later admits to the murder to Kate, casually remarking that Kate will just have to let Dodgson die.
- Evil Is Petty:
- Elliott had his building built a few floors taller than Wayne Enterprises and just across the street, just so he could literally look down on Bruce.
- Along with her more serious crimes of breaking into the Kane penthouse and murdering a Crows agent, Alice also licks the icing off a cupcake on a display stand and replaces it. She then smashes a photo of Jacob, Catherine, and Mary.
- Flat "What": Mary's reaction to Sophie telling her she's Mary's new bodyguard.
- Four Lines, All Waiting: Not a very clean example as many characters’ plot-lines intersect, but they roughly are
- The A-Plot is Kate facing Elliot and taking responsibility for Batman’s enemies as a whole.
- The B-Plot is Alice screwing with Kate and Jacob in particular.
- The C-Plot is Mary irritatedly dealing with Sophie as her bodyguard.
- The D-Plot is the odd Love Quadrangle forming between Kate, Sophie, Reagan, and Tyler.
- Giver of Lame Names: Vesper Fairchild's first suggestions for what to call the new Bat vigilante are "Batlady" and "Batchick".
- Guile Hero: Kate tips Tommy's hand by lying about the stolen railgun containing a GPS tracker, and how unlucky the thieves would be.
- Hidden Depths: When Mary starts barking about helping an injured woman, Sophie protests, "they're professionals, you're a second-year med student!" When Mary expertly figures out what's wrong, she brushes it off as, "I read ahead," but Sophie clearly realizes her entire socialite persona is an act.
- Hostage for MacGuffin: Elliott threatens to drop the people in the elevators if Batman doesn't show up.
- I Know You Know I Know: Elliott steals the railgun knowing it would reveal he knows Bruce was Batman, because he wants to kill Batman.
- Kick the Dog: Elliott drops an elevator full of serving staff just to show Kate that he's not bluffing, making a classist remark as he does.
- Kryptonite Ring: To no one’s surprise, the keeper of the Trope Namer made a Batsuit-piercing gun should the suit ever fall into the wrong hands or he go rogue.
- Lock-and-Load Montage: Kate, when she finally dons her own suit.
- Mama Bear: Catherine has Sophie act as Mary's bodyguard, much to the latter's annoyance.
- Moment Killer: Mary is on the lookout for her future husband, and doesn't want a Crow bodyguard in Sinister Shades scaring off potential suitors.
- Motive Misidentification: Like Bruce in the comics, Kate assumes Tommy is upset because Batman failed to save his father rather than his mother. As it turns out, Elliott is mad because Batman saved his mom... because Tommy had arranged for the "accident" to kill his parents for the inheritance. Thanks to Batman, Tommy had to spend 13 years caring for his mentally ill mother before she finally died.
- My Sensors Indicate You Want to Tap That: Reagan is good at reading people, and so quickly establishes that Kate is into her and they should make a date.
- Mythology Gag:
- Alice gets Kate's attention by shining the Batsignal on Wayne Tower, very similar to how Renee Montoya as the Question shines it on Kate's apartment at the very end of 52.
- Much of Elliott's background matches his comic book persona, right down to how he "hushes" Kate when they first meet.
- When asked how he knows Bruce is Batman, Elliott says he "paid someone to riddle me the answer." This references how in the original Batman: Hush Story Arc, it was the Riddler who deduced Batman's identity first and let Elliott know as part of his Evil Plan.
- "Candy" or "Candy Kane" was Kate's cadet nickname in the comics; here, Elliott calls her the same thing.
- The “Disrupter” Bat-Gadget is straight out of the Batman: Arkham Series.
- Noodle Incident: Alice claims to know from personal experience that it's impossible to torture a corpse.
- Not Me This Time: Much of Tommy's actions are at first thought to be Alice's doing.
- Not Now, Kiddo: Sophie essentially tells Mary this and to let “the real professionals” do their job.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: Mary plays up being nothing but a party-loving heiress and is annoyed that Sophie is now her bodyguard, which could interfere with her real job. It's when she expertly diagnoses what's wrong with an injured woman that Sophie realizes it's an act.
- Obviously Evil: Tommy is this in spades. The first time we see him is in a real estate commercial where his voice and demeanor give off the vibe of a Corrupt Corporate Executive (not helped by him paraphrasing Donald Trump's catchphrase to "Make Gotham safe again"). When he actually meets Kate in person, it's strongly implied he knows Bruce is Batman. It doesn't take long for Kate to correctly guess that Tommy was behind the theft of the rail gun, and her suspicions about him prove correct at every turn. And then there's also the fact that he, you know, shares the name of a well-known member of Batman's Rogues Gallery.
- Obvious Stunt Double: During Sophie and Tyler's sparring, Meagan Tandy's stunt double Rochelle Okoye is clearly visible in one of the medium shots.
- Oh, Crap!: Catherine freaks out when she sees that Alice has left playing cards on her desk that make a number she recognizes, hinting that Alice and Catherine have a deeper connection.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: Elliott takes jabs at Kate being a lesbian and Reagan outright calls him a misogynist, which he demonstrates by referring to Kate by the cutesy nickname of "Candy Kane" and referring to Batwoman as Batman's "side-piece". He's elitist as well, dropping an elevator full of serving staff and threatening to do the same to "people the city will actually miss."
- Railgun: Bruce developed a handheld railgun as a countermeasure in case his suit was stolen, as any other weapon would be incapable of piercing the suit's armor.
- Rogues' Gallery Transplant: Discussed in the A-plot. Arguably the Central Theme of the episode is Kate dealing with being responsible for taking on Batman’s enemies while also distinguishing herself as a new hero.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: Elliott boasts that with some money in the right hands, he'll be free within an hour. Kate shuts him down by pointing out that the police are taking him to Arkham, sarcastically wishing him luck in buying his way out of there.
- She Cleans Up Nicely: Kate adopts a Bifauxnen look for Tommy's party.
- Ship Tease: Kate with Reagan at the end, much to Sophie's silent dismay.
- Shown Their Work:
- The police call for the fake body at the Gotham Gazette is referred to as a 10-54. In at least some jurisdictions, that's indeed the proper code for "possible dead body."
- Luke gives a rather accurate layman's description of how railguns work.
- Smug Snake: Elliott drips smug self-satisfaction every time he appears on screen, but his Evil Plan isn't as well thought out as he thinks it is; not only can the elevators he seemingly trapped people in be physically forced open, he failed to consider that Batman (the very definition of Crazy-Prepared) would have a means of counteracting his own technology.
- That Man Is Dead: Alice insists that Beth is gone and wants Kate to think the same. Kate isn't entirely buying it, though there's no denying Alice's psychopathy.
- Title Drop:
- Alice says the name of the episode in an early conversation.
- Sophie is the first person to say "Batwoman" on the show.
- Uncomfortable Elevator Moment: On the elevator ride up to Tommy's party, Mary is left awkwardly standing between Kate and Sophie as they hash out their issues. Later there is a second one, when she is trapped with Tyler and Sophie, with the latter still trying to hide the obvious fact that she and Kate were a couple.
- Villainous Rescue: Alice knocks Tommy out as he's about to send Kate down an elevator shaft, though she insists this doesn't mean she's forgiven anything, it's more like paying her sister back this one time.
