Warning: The following feature contains SPOILERS for the Batwoman Season 2 premiere, "What Happened To Kate Kane?"
The premiere of Batwoman Season 2 marked the first appearance of Ryan Wilder, who took up the mantle of the Bat to protect Gotham following the mysterious disappearance of Kate Kane. The episode showcased Ryan's background and training, revealing what separates her from the original Batwoman as well as her worthiness to continue Kate Kane's legacy.
As "What Happened To Kate Kane?" opened, neither Batwoman's allies nor her enemies had an answer to the titular question. The original Scarlet Knight was said to have vanished mysteriously following a trip to National City, to seek Supergirl's advice on what to do with what she believed to be the last piece of Kryptonite on Earth-Prime. In addition to being deadly to Kryptonians, Kryptonite is also the only substance capable of piercing Batwoman's suit and the unique ballistic weave Lucius Fox created to make it.
Through a twist of fate, the bag holding the Bat-Suit wound up in the possession of Ryan Wilder, who immediately realized the importance of what she found and used it to launch her own crusade against Gotham City's underworld. It also led her into a confrontation with Hush, who no one else in the city was prepared to stop. Here's a breakdown of everything revealed about Ryan's history, her skills and her personality over the course of "What Happened To Kate Kane?"
Ryan Is Living In A Van Down By The River
As the episode opened, Ryan was asleep in the back of the van that she calls home. While early press releases describing the character noted that Ryan Wilder was homeless, nothing was said about where she might be spending her nights. Based on the van's interior, which includes some furniture, Ryan does not seem to have been homeless for very long.
Ryan Is A Lesbian And Had A Number of Girlfriends
As Ryan sleeps, she dreams of a happier time; the day that she and her mother moved into a new apartment. Ryan gushed about how wonderful their new home would be, because it had a balcony her mother could put all her plants on and that it had only two locks on the door. While clearly happy at that news, Ryan's mother dryly noted that also meant that "your little girlfriends will have an easier time sneaking in and out now." An attraction to women and a history of playing the field are two of the relatively few traits Ryan Wilder and Kate Kane share.
Ryan Is Brave And A Helper
Kate Kane was defined by her bravery, being singled out as the Paragon of Courage during Crisis on Infinite Earths. Ryan Wilder showed similar bravery when she was awoken by a piece of flaming plane wreckage crashing to the ground near her van. While most people would panic or seek shelter, Ryan's first response was to run toward the crash and start searching for survivors in need of help.
Ryan Has PTSD From Her Mother's Death And Knows CPR
Ryan found an elderly homeless man on the riverbank, apparently asleep when he was struck by some of the debris from the plane crash. The sight of him lying on the ground not breathing immediately triggered an anxiety attack in Ryan, as she flashed back to the bloody bodies of her mother and her landlord in her new apartment. Despite this, Ryan was able to maintain enough focus to start performing CPR on the man, even as she remembered doing the same thing in a failed attempt to revive her mother. This is another trait Ryan shares with Kate Kane, who began suffering anxiety attacks after she murdered Dr. August Cartwright, the man responsible for turning her sister Beth into the murderous Alice.
Despite Her Courage, Ryan Is Not Used To High-Pressure Situations
Shortly after saving the homeless man, the stress from the anxiety attack caught up with Ryan and she vomited. This does suggest that Ryan reacts very differently to high-pressure scenarios than the ever-ready Kate Kane, but should be expected given Kate spent years training herself to be an elite soldier in the hopes of joining her father's squadron. Despite a rough life, Ryan hasn't received the focused conditioning Kate has.
Ryan Is An Unemployed Ex-Con And A Martial Artist
In a scene that seemed to be a tribute to Arthur Fleck's meetings with his social worker in Joker, Ryan met with a parole officer to discuss her failure to find a job or a new place to live. The parole officer found it hard to believe that someone with Ryan's martial arts experience couldn't find a dojo willing to hire her as an instructor. Ryan countered that it was hard to find honest work without an address and that no landlord wants to rent to an ex-con who served 18 months for drug possession with intent to sell. She also noted that nobody believed her story that she was innocent of the drug charges brought against her and was framed by dirty cops.
Ryan Is An Orphan Who Never Knew Her Birth Parents
When Luke Fox and Mary Hamilton tracked Ryan down, she told them her real name and of her intentions to use the Batsuit to avenge the murder of the only parent she ever knew. This gives Ryan an unexpected connection to Bruce Wayne, who famously devoted his life to crime-fighting after witnessing the murder of his parents. Ryan also revealed that she was adopted after her biological mother died in childbirth. Later, as Luke and Mary tried to learn everything they could about Ryan to find her, they learned that Ryan's biological father died before she was born.
Ryan Had A Rough Childhood
Ryan's relationship with her adoptive mother was not always as rosy as it seemed in Ryan's dream. According to what Mary is able to discover searching on-line, Ryan was a teen runaway who dropped out of high school and spent her formative years bouncing from group home to group home. However, Ryan reconciled with her mother, earned her GED, and seemed poised to turn her life around before her conviction on drug charges. This is decidedly different from Kate Kane's privileged background, which Ryan reads about in an article profiling Kate in the wake of her disappearance.
Ryan Is Tech-Savvy
As a homeless person, Ryan was used to living off-the-grid and operating without the benefits of modern technology. Despite this, she showed a remarkable aptitude for working with advanced electronics and was quickly able to master the various features built into the Bat-Suit. She also proved capable of deactivating the GPS contained within the costume, preventing Luke and Mary from finding her until she was ready to return the suit.
Ryan Has A Grudge Against Alice
Mary eventually discovered why Ryan felt she needed the Batwoman costume to go after her mother's murderer; the murderer in question was Alice. A flashback revealed that as Ryan and her mother went into their new apartment for the first time, they discovered it was being used as a hideout by several members of the Wonderland Gang who the landlord didn't know were squatting on his property. The landlord and Ryan's mother was beaten to death and Ryan herself was left for dead after the villain Alice arrived and ordered her followers to make a run for it. This established a point of kinship between Ryan and Mary, who has her own issues with Alice after having her mother die in her arms because of the mad villain's dramatic schemes.