WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Batwoman's Season 3 premiere, "Mad as a Hatter," which aired Wednesday on The CW.
The premiere of Batwoman Season 3 sets the stakes high for the rest of the season. Thanks to the reveal that Ryan Wilder's birth mother is still alive, as well as the threat of the lost Batman villain trophies looming large over Gotham, the Bat Team will certainly have their hands full for the foreseeable future. In addition, the premiere also gives Batwoman some new allies that may end up being more of a help than a hindrance.
In the final moments of "Mad as a Hatter," Batwoman is confronted by Renee Montoya and essentially blackmailed into an alliance with her and Alice, with the intent being that they will work together to track down the missing Batman villain trophies. This sets up a delicate dynamic that calls to mind an iconic partnership from the comics: the ill-fated alliance between Batman, Jim Gordon and Harvey Dent.
Between 1996 and 1997, DC Comics released a limited series by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale entitled Batman: The Long Halloween, which featured Batman tracking down a mysterious serial killer towards the beginning of his career. To progress the investigation, Batman strikes up a partnership with GCPD Captain Jim Gordon and newly appointed district attorney Harvey Dent. Tragically, The Long Halloween ends with Harvey Dent becoming the scarred and villainous Two-Face, leaving their alliance in shambles and taking one of Batman's most ambitious allies out of the equation.
In the years since its release, The Long Halloween has become regarded as one of the most influential Batman stories of all time. Batwoman's premiere seems to be the latest in a long line of pieces of Bat-media to pay tribute to the story, as there are some distinct similarities between their three-person alliances. The most obvious is their lineups -- both partnerships consist of a vigilante, a "good cop" and an unstable third party. While Harvey Dent and Alice are very different characters, they both demonstrate a high level of volatility thanks to their traumatic pasts and untreated mental disorders.
Another similarity between the two alliances is their reason for coming together. In The Long Halloween, Batman, Gordon and Dent unite to combat the Falcone family and the rising number of supervillains that they are enabling to appear in Gotham City. Batwoman, Montoya and Alice also come together to stop the new villains appearing on Gotham's streets, although the reason for Batwoman Season 3's new villains is the Batman villain trophies, not the mob.
The similarities between The Long Halloween and Batwoman's partnerships also raise the question of if Batwoman, Montoya and Alice's alliance will end as badly as Batman, Gordon and Dent's did. If Season 3 of Batwoman is going to continue to parallel the comics, then it's only a matter of time before something terrible and tragic happens to Alice. However, the Wonderland-themed villain has proven to be unrelenting, continuously walking away from near-death situations with nary a hair out of place. If she keeps up this streak, then perhaps Montoya or even Ryan herself will meet with a heartbreaking fate.
New episodes of Batwoman air Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.