‘Batwoman’ 1×05 recap: Alice’s backstory is finally revealed

Sunday night’s episode of Batwoman showed viewers the story behind Beth’s (aka Alice) disappearance and it was truly emotional. The freshman series has been a hit and a miss for me since its premiere, but things somewhat picked up in Sunday’s episode so let’s jump right into this recap.

Beth gets some help but not the good kind

One of the biggest questions coming into the episode was how did Beth go from Kate’s sweet innocent sister to a murderous villain? Well, my friends, that is a long story and thankfully we had 45 minutes to see it play out.

Long story short: Following the accident, Beth woke up dazed and confused. A man and his young son, Johnny (aka “Mouse”) help her and take her back to their sketchy home.

The father tells Beth that the police had been alerted to where she is and were on their way to get her. This was a lie, of course. Beth not only befriended Johnny, who was disfigured and always hiding his face, she also soon realized that the father never called the police and did not want her being found because he wanted her to be Johnny’s friend. Anyone else getting serious Texas Chainsaw Massacre vibes from this?

A (dysfunctional) family reunion

In the present day, Alice is telling this story to Kate in a diner. Kate passes out at one point due to Alice drugging her. She takes Kate back to the house where all this happened to her.

Alice finishes her story: One day, she escaped from the room and called her father. Jacob and Kate drove to the house, searching for Beth. We even see Kate and Jacob inside the house and Kate literally on the other side of the door from her sister. But Beth stays quiet because the man warned her he would kill anyone who came looking for her if she made any kind of noise. This was truly one of the more heartbreaking and emotional moments of the show thus far. You can see Alice describing what happened to her and just how much pain and trauma it caused her. Since she couldn’t leave with Jacob and Kate, Beth was all alone and had just one thing to do: read. And what book was it? You guessed it. Alice and Wonderland, hence why she adopted the “Alice” persona.

It wouldn’t be an episode of Batwoman without a fight scene and we got one in the final moments. Jacob and Sophie chased a lead on Kate’s whereabouts to the house. Jacob tries to talk Alice down, but she ends up stabbing him. A grown-up Mouse attacks Sophie but Alice escapes with her “brother” to find him a new face. So, I guess it was one big happy family moment… well for one group.

Episode Notes

• This really should have been an Alice origin story for the entire hour. The other plot involving Mary and Catherine was pretty boring and not needed.
• The episode kicked off with Alice stealing flesh from morgues around Gotham. Talk about setting the creepy tone for the hour. Yuck!

What did you think of the episode? Let me know in the comments below!

Batwoman airs Sundays at 8/7c on The CW.