When Batwoman returns for season two, it won’t just be a new lead actress replacing Ruby Rose. It’ll be an entirely new character under the superheroine’s cowl.
THR reports The CW has opted to go in an entirely different direction and create a new character to replace Ruby Rose’s Kate Kane, cousin to Bruce Wayne. Rose recently made the surprise decision to exit the freshman series at the end of its first season.
Decider first broke the news, pulling from a since-deleted casting notice on the Batwoman Reddit. The new character currently has the name Ryan Wilder, although that could be a placeholder. The character description goes out of its way to note the differences from Kate Kane, putting as much distance from Ruby Rose as possible…
“She’s likable, messy, a little goofy and untamed. She’s also nothing like Kate Kane, the woman who wore the batsuit before her. With no one in her life to keep her on track, Ryan spent years as a drug-runner, dodging the GCPD and masking her pain with bad habits. A girl who would steal milk for an alley cat could also kill you with her bare hands, Ryan is the most dangerous type of fighter: highly skilled and wildly undisciplined. An out lesbian. Athletic. Raw. Passionate. Fallible. And very much not your stereotypical All-American hero.”
Casting is once again expected to include a member of the LGBTQ community, as Batwoman is the first scripted superhero TV series to be centered on a lesbian character.
Considering the final episodes featured the first look at the long-missing Bruce Wayne, it’ll be interesting to see how Batwoman continues that storyline while introducing a totally different hero with seemingly no connection to him.
