WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Batwoman's Season 3 premiere, "Mad as a Hatter," which aired Wednesday on The CW.
Season 3 of Batwoman has begun to air on The CW, and with it comes a whole new wave of villains ready to terrorize Gotham City. The villains this season all derive their abilities and gimmicks from the Batcave villain trophies that washed up on Gotham's shores in the Season 2 finale. As such, there are several new versions of iconic Batman villains who will be going up against Ryan Wilder and her team.
The main villain of the Season 3 premiere is Liam Crandle, a mentally unstable man who is obsessed with Beth Kane, also known as Alice. After coming into possession of the Mad Hatter's mind-controlling hat, Crandle adopts the villain's mantle and decides to set out on a crime spree with two purposes - to exact revenge on the doctors who deemed him insane, and to get Alice's attention.
As news of the new Mad Hatter's emergence spreads across Gotham, Ryan Wilder and her team study up on Batman's notes about Jervis Tetch to try and find a way to defeat him. However, the stakes are significantly upped when Crandle takes Mary Hamilton's entire graduating class hostage as part of his plan to get revenge on Gotham's doctors, brainwashing Mary into conducting surgery on one of her mentors. Ryan and the Bat Team realize that they've run out of time to stop the Mad Hatter, and their only chance to stop him is to use Alice.
Ryan travels to Arkham Asylum to free Alice, putting aside her disgust of the villain temporarily to save Mary and her class. As the brainwashed Mary is about to remove her mentor's vital organs, Alice appears, leaving the Mad Hatter star-struck. They talk, and the Hatter reveals that his plan is meant to be a tribute to Alice's exposure of Catherine Hamilton's crimes.
Throughout the whole encounter, Alice is barely able to hide her discomfort with the Mad Hatter's over-enthusiasm, and eventually outright asks him to release his brainwashed hostages. The Hatter starts to get mad and asks Alice if she thinks he's crazy. She denies it, and he tells her that she's his hero and asks for a hug. She acquiesces, but once his guard is down, she stabs him with her butterfly knife and informs him that she thinks he's as crazy as they come. The defeated Hatter falls to the ground, furiously telling her that she's a monster.
The new Mad Hatter's debut in Batwoman's premiere creates a reason for the Bat Team to team up with Alice, but more importantly, it gives the show a villain even more unstable than her. Throughout the series' run, Alice has proven to be one of the Arrowverse's most volatile villains, so the fact that even she is clearly uncomfortable around the Mad Hatter demonstrates the danger that he poses to Gotham. Alice is luckily able to defeat him, but the fact that he is still alive by the end of the episode means that he just may return. With someone as unstable as the Mad Hatter, an incident like this may just flip his obsession from impressing Alice to killing her.
New episodes of Batwoman air Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.