WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Batwoman Season 3, Episode 2, "Loose Tooth," which aired Wednesday October 20th on The CW.
The second episode of Batwoman Season 3 unleashed a monstrous new threat onto Gotham City in the form of a new Killer Croc. A teenager named Steven discovers the original Killer Croc's tooth and is infected by it, causing him to mutate into a similar reptilian creature. While Waylon Jones (the first Killer Croc) is mentioned several times throughout the episode, he never actually appears, and the show provides an incredibly sad explanation as to why.
When the mutated Steven first begins to kill citizens of Gotham, the Bat Team goes over Batman's files about Waylon Jones. Jones was afflicted by a condition that caused him to display reptilian attributes and homicidal tendencies and faced off against Batman several times. Despite this, the Caped Crusader felt a great deal of sympathy for Croc because he believed that his condition was the cause of his rampages.
Batman even had Wayne Tech working on a cure for Jones' condition, but unfortunately, they would never be able to use it. The Gotham City Police Department located Killer Croc's hideout in the sewers beneath Gotham and dropped what Luke Fox describes as "a truckload" of thermite on him. In the aftermath, the only thing left of Waylon Jones was his tooth, which Batman took to lock up in the Batcave.
The reveal of Killer Croc's backstory and death at the GCPD's hands surprisingly manages to create sympathy for the bestial villain. As evidenced by Steven's transformation, Waylon Jones wasn't fully responsible for his actions -- he didn't choose to be a monstrous, man-eating creature and didn't really have a choice thanks to his condition. And this argument is bolstered by the fact that Batman himself was going out of his way to find a cure for Jones.
Batman's villains are usually depicted as raving lunatics with over-the-top gimmicks or schemes, but Batwoman turns Killer Croc into a truly tragic character. He lived with a horrifying condition that turned him animalistic, was labeled as a monster by almost all of Gotham and was killed before he could receive any real help. With the new Killer Croc having been taken off the streets, hopefully, Ryan Wilder and the Bat Team will do everything in their power to ensure that he doesn't meet the same fate as his predecessor.
To see Killer Croc's tragic story, new episodes of Batwoman air Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.