WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Batwoman Season 2, Episode 14, "And Justice for All," which aired Sunday on The CW.
The CW's Arrowverse is no stranger to the supernatural, having gradually integrated more and more fantastical elements from the DC Comics Universe over the years. So far, however, Batwoman has remained one of the more grounded series in the franchise, pitting its Scarlet Knights (first Kate Kane, then Ryan Wilder) against real-world dangers like armed gangs and, especially in Season 2, violent police officers. That changed a little with Season 2, Episode 14, "And Justice for All," which essentially introduced zombies into the equation.
Far from being undead, Batwoman's "zombies" are actually Snakebite users who've injected themselves with a deadly batch of the drug. See, with Ryan's former girlfriend Angelique off elsewhere in witness protection and Ocean laying low following his escape from Black Mask's goons, that left the False Face Society's less-skillful members to try and cook up more of the substance on their own. In an, ahem, utterly shocking turn of events, it turns out messing up the recipe for an injectable drug that mixes psychedelic mushroom oil with Scarecrow's Fear Toxin can lead to some pretty horrifying results.
"And Justice for All" doesn't dive too deeply into why, exactly, the bad Snakebite is leaving users hungry for human flesh; from what Mary is able to tell, this new version of the substance makes them crave other people's memories instead of their own, causing them to develop an appetite for literal brains in the process. As resourceful as ever, she and Luke are quickly able to put together an antidote for Ryan to use on the drug's victims, but with a catch: she will have to inject each of the "zombies" individually, as opposed to distributing the cure via a gas gun. Don't want to make things too easy, right?
The whole "zombie" subplot in "And Justice for All" serves to off-set the episode's real-world horrors of police brutality and class warfare. These are issues Batwoman has wrestled with throughout Season 2 so far, with Ryan -- a Black queer woman who grew up as a foster kid on the mean streets of Gotham -- giving the show the perfect opportunity to incorporate these themes into its ongoing narrative. All the same, they're explored to particularly brutal effect here, when Agent Tavaroff and a group of his fellow Crows gun down several "zombies" before Ryan can administer the antidote to them. Unsurprisingly, Tavaroff doesn't blink an eye at killing a bunch of poor drug users in the name of keeping the city safe.
For now, it's unclear if Batwoman's "zombies" will be (sorry) revived anytime soon. While "And Justice for All" ends with the Crows confiscating the rest of the bad batch of Snakebite, who knows if the corrupt Tavaroff will make certain they're destroyed, now that he's on his way to becoming a full-blown super-villain. It's also plausible Black Mask will try and make more of the substance (which, unlike regular Snakebite, is colored blue), should he decide that turning his clients into human-eating monsters would somehow be beneficial to his business. One can never put anything past the twisted criminals of Gotham City...
Batwoman stars Javicia Leslie as Ryan Wilder, Rachel Skarsten as Alice, Meagan Tandy as Sophie Moore, Camrus Johnson as Luke Fox, Dougray Scott as Jacob Kane, Nicole Kang as Mary Hamilton-Kane and Wallis Day as Kate Kane. New episodes air Sundays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.
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