After it’s so-so premiere, the CW’s Batwoman regains some momentum with its second episode, The Rabbit Hole, as the show directly explore the relationship between Kate (Ruby Rose) and Alice (Rachel Starsten) and fixes some of the issues it had in the pilot – yet still falls a little flat.

Overall, The Rabbit Hole does a solid job starting to set Kate in her own direction by having her directly get to the bottom of things with Alice being her supposedly dead sister Beth rather than drag it out throughout the season. While the whole family drama thing is a cliché, especially for these CW shows, it is something that at least stems from the comics and puts relationships that Kate has with Alice and her father (Dougary Scott) in a new direction for the series to follow. Starsten is definitely still one of the best parts of the series with her performance add some delightfully twisted fun to the show and adding a personal conflict for Kate to have. Not to mention, seeing the Wonderland army brought to life is a definite treat.

In terms of her relationship with Kate, there’s an interesting conversation between the two of them at a childhood location that causes Kate to make tough choices when her father and the Crow security team comes for Alice. The divide between Kate and her father grows as he refuses to believe that Alice is Beth and there’s a choice that Kate is forced to make between saving Alice from the Crow security team or her step-sister Mary (Nicole Kang) from Dodgson (Brendon Zub), who Alice has sent to kill her. The choice, while definitely a cliché Batman choice, does lead to more of Kate in the batsuit, which is always great, and does end with some intriguing reveal that will play a big part in the rest of the season. Having Alice hint that she knows that Batman hasn’t returned, and that Kate is the one running around Gotham is great and is something that’s rarely done with Batman. Not to mention, we also see that Kate’s stepmother Catherine (Elizabeth Anweis) has a plan of her own with it being revealed that she’s been using her own security team to keep things quiet about Alice.

All of this definitely shows that the series is at least making some strides to step out of the Dark Knight’s shadow, but the same problems from the pilot still exist. Most of the side characters feel pointless and don’t really add much to the show. Luke Fox (Camrus Johnson) is just a more annoying and, as Kate points out, less useful version of Lucius Fox and Alfred, Mary, while interesting at times, can’t make a strong enough impact, and the entire Crow security is still a big mystery to me that’s not getting more interesting. The use of voiceover and flashbacks are little bit better here as the v.o. is more utilized to get Kate’s views on things and the flashbacks does give viewers some strong moments between Kate and her father. However, they’re still unnecessary and what’s even more unnecessary is the music used, which is just typical for these kinds of shows, as it’s just distracting in key emotional moments.

Although The Rabbit Hole presents some things to be excited about with some late reveals and an incoming villain that’s a personal favorite of mine, Batwoman still struggles to find its own identity. Hopefully, as the world gets more delved into, less generic forms of storytelling are introduced, and more interesting plotlines rise the series can find a unique voice that it’s severely lacking as of now.

Watch the Trailer Here: