What do The Last Jedi, Black Panther, Captain Marvel and The CW’s Batwoman series all have in common? You know, aside from the fact that they each have their roots in pop culture.
They’ve all fallen victim to review-bombing, of course, which occurs when a group of very vocal audience members attack a perfectly good movie (or TV show!), resulting in a woeful audience score, regardless of whether it’s on Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic. It’s self-selecting negative bias run amok, though whether it actually damages an IP’s performance is difficult to properly measure.
Either way, it seems The CW’s standalone Batwoman series has fallen victim to the online trend after its pilot episode, with an average audience score of just 9 percent. By stark contrast, the review aggregator on Rotten Tomatoes sits at 72 percent, indicating that Kate Kane’s solo flight isn’t as bad as people would have you believe. And by ‘people’ we mean online trolls.
Now, that’s not to say the show is above criticism – far from it, in fact. It’s when review aggregators like Rotten Tomatoes lead to visibly biased polls. And then there’s the very real concern that some viewers have taken umbrage with Kate Kane’s sexuality, given Batwoman is the first CW series to feature an openly gay character from the get-go.
It’s not much worse (or better) than any another Arrowverse series on The CW, so it doesn’t take a soothsayer to realize that a vocal minority is rallying against the spinoff series and its lesbian lead, even if many of the negative user reviews don’t explicitly reference sexuality or politics.
The inaugural season of Batwoman continues on The CW this Sunday, October 13th, with “The Rabbit Hole.” Will you be tuning in?
