“A Mad Tea-Party” is episode eight of season one of Batwoman.
Kate is writing that choices define us and, though she fears she’s lost her sister forever, she hopes Beth is still there. As Batwoman, she drops in front of a Wonderland rabbit. After knocking him down, she demands his jacket. He protests that it’s vintage. Kate snaps her staff in half and hurls part at him. He hands over his jacket and she leaves as the police arrive.
Back at the Batcave and Kate hands the jacket over to Luke. It’s not his size or style, and is that blood on the collar? She shouldn’t have. Beth wants him to check the GPS on the rabbit’s phone and see if it can be used to track Alice. Luke says she broke the staff. Kate thinks it would be cooler if it came apart. Well, it doesn’t, is Luke’s response. One of the locations is a warehouse in the Bowery.
Kate heads there, as Kate, and Alice is throwing clothes around in a part at the centre where there’s furniture, complaining she has nothing to wear. If Kate is going to kidnap her again, could she wait until Alice has changed. Kate wants to know if Alice hired the Rifle to kill her in the previous episode, “Tell Me the Truth”. Alice points out that Kate is still alive. Yes, but he shot someone he thought was Batwoman – it wasn’t; it was Julia Pennyworth – with a gun he thought would penetrate the Batsuit, and the man who designed it was found with a butterfly knife in hie heart.
Alice rephrases things. She ensured that an attempt to kill her twin sister wouldn’t happen and hands Kate something. That? That is a multimillion-dollar piece of technology that makes the coil accelerator penetrate the Batsuit. It’s the only one that exists and everyone who knew how to make it is, well, past tense. Alice tells Kate her sister isn’t here any longer, even if she has got a photo of the two of them. Now, she’s busy and has nothing to wear.
Commander Kane, who is still upstate, though some think he’s back, is leaving a message that he will be back in Gotham later that night when he is ambushed by some rabbits and bundled into a van.
Kate is at her new, unfinished, bar when Mary enters. Mary wants Kate to accompany her to the Gotham Humanitarian Gala. Which is honouring Catherine, who told Kate and her father that Beth was dead. Mary realises it borders on too soon, but this is important to her and she hoped it would make it important to Kate. Kate is still holding out hope for Alice, after all, who is the actual most evil person in Gotham. Kate replies that Alice is her family. Oops. No, of course Mary is her family too, but it’s different. Mary tells Kate to stop digging. She also says that Kane is going. Well… that is likely not true.
Commander Kane seems to be at the Crows, but it’s probably Mouse. She wants to talk about Catherine. You don’t just walk away from a decade and a half of relationship that easily, ‘Kane’ tells her.
Actual Kane is chained up and Alice wants a chat. No, she doesn’t think Kate will know he’s gone. She wants to know why he never had the skull fragments tested himself. He had no reason to think Catherine was lying. And it was possibly easier than waking up every morning with hope and going to sleep at night, broken. He failed Beth. It’s the day of Alice’s mad tea-party. She’s fairly certain Kane will attend. But how, if he’s still here? Kane is at the house where Beth was kept.
Kate is at Wayne Tower, drinking, and Luke asks if this is what has got her drinking Bruce’s good stuff, not Alice’s killing spree. Alice was brainwashed; this is different. Her father is choosing to forgive a woman who lied about the death of his daughter. It doesn’t make sense. It’s not him. And that makes Kate think. She calls her ‘father’ and mentioned something during the call. He failed the question. Kate realises that it’s Mouse.
Tyler and Sophie are waiting to be briefed by ‘Kane’ and, as the meeting starts, Kate sends Sophie a text message, saying it’s Mouse. Sophie replies she’s on it, but too late, as Mouse tranquilises them both.
As Vesper Fairchild talks rather sarcastically about the gala, Mary, Catherine and Kane are in a car heading there. They are drinking champagne. That’s probably not a great idea.
Alice is still at the same place when Kate arrives. She wants to know where their father is. Alice tells her. Only he’s not there when Kate arrives.
Luke is running facial recognition on the people at the gala and discovers that the Crows are not Crows. Sophie and Tyler have woken up but are ion a soundproof room with one-way glass. Catherine is making a speech when the teleprompter changes. Alice has changed the speech. There’s a message saying the Wonderland Gang is here, so keep reading, or else. The speech does not do Catherine any favours and says the true enemies of Gotham are in that room. Then she collapses as blood comes from her nose. Alice has got a cunning plan and a whole lot of things go wrong for others.
For the first time, there is a post-logo scene, and things continue in the Supergirl episode, “Crisis on Infinite Earths: Part One”.