Following her debut last fall in the “Elseworlds” Arrowverse crossover, the first trailer for The CW’s upcoming Batwoman series dropped last week, giving us a better feel for Ruby Rose’s take on Kate Kane and how she’ll lead her own show. It also contained a lot more up-front references to Batman than we were expecting, which has got us wondering if the Dark Knight could actually turn up in the series’ first season.
To begin with, we weren’t anticipating this, as “Elseworlds” made clear that Bruce Wayne is out of the picture. It’s explained that Batman has been missing from Gotham City for five years, which has led his cousin Kate to pick up the slack and become Batwoman. This set the stage for the spinoff series to let Kate stand on her own two feet without dancing around why Bats wasn’t showing up (like Supergirl had to do in its first season).
However, the trailer made a big point of alluding to the importance of the Caped Crusader. In particular, the Batsuit appears prominently, as Kate discovers it in the Batcave beneath Wayne Tower. It would seem like a curious decision to go to the effort of making a new Batman costume if there was no intention of having someone wear it at some stage. It’s unlikely Bruce would return in the present to steal thunder away from Kate, but a flashback sequence doesn’t seem entirely out of the question.
We’re also not sure where the licensing of the character stands right now. It seemed like no TV show could get the all-clear to depict Batman, but Gotham just got to finally let Bruce don the cape and cowl in its series finale. More notably, Iain Glen’s appearing as Bruce Wayne in Titans season 2. This could either mean there’s been a loosening on where Batman can show up or that Titans now has the rights to use the hero on the small-screen.
We’ll have to wait and see if Batman answers the Bat-Signal when Batwoman debuts later this year on The CW, but feel free to drop a comment down below letting us know if you think we’ll see him.
