BATWOMAN: Caroline Dries and Meagan Tandy on Kate and Sophie’s Past and Future

[Warning: This post contains spoilers for the Sunday, November 17 episode of BATWOMAN.]

The Sunday, November 17 episode of BATWOMAN dove deeper into Kate (Ruby Rose) and Sophie (Meagan Tandy)’s past—while sending them apart, at least for now, in the present.

In “Tell Me the Truth,” Sophie struggled with her certainty that Kate was Batwoman—going so far as telling her boss/Kate’s father, Jacob (Dougray Scott)—juxtaposed with memories of their time at military academy together.

“Originally, some of those story beats were [things] I wanted to put in the pilot, because that’s what attracted me to the series,” showrunner Caroline Dries told reporters. “[But] then I realized, ‘Okay, we have to accomplish so much in this pilot. Let’s take our time and do this right and get to know Sophie first, before we reveal all of this weighty backstory.’ So we’ve introduced Sophie as somebody who’s conflicted and who had this whole life before Kate came [back] into it.”

Because the “don’t ask, don’t tell” initiative ended in 2011, working something similar into the show took some work. “[It] was innate to the actual comic books that were emulating,” Dries said. “And what we did is we just did a spin on it because Sophie and Kate were a little bit too young to be in the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ climate, but they would have maybe felt the effects of it at [the fictional] West Point if they had gone there…And then I felt way more comfortable working within our timeline, so we can stay true to historically what happened.”

While Sophie was more cautious that Kate, the flashbacks revealed an outside party actually influenced her decision to deny the relationship and therefore keep her spot in the school: Jacob.

“We didn’t think of it him as ruining [the relationship],” Dries said. “I really actually believe in what Jacob [was doing]. When Natalie [Abrams] and I wrote it, we were like, ‘What is the most grounded way of making Jacob approach this?’ And he’s like I am, which is just very pragmatic. And it’s like, ‘Here are the facts.’ And Kate is very much like, ‘We got this, we can do this’ and her hope sort of blinds her. Whereas Jacob was like, ‘Look, I’ve been out in the real world. This is how the real world works. You do you.’ I think he gave her a gift, because the reality is [Sophie] probably would have gotten kicked out.”

As Sophie was grappling with her complicated feelings toward Kate in the present, she also finally confessed to her husband, Tyler (Greyston Holt), about their past.

“Now that she’s finally told him that in and of itself is kind of just like a weight just completely lifted off of her shoulders,” Tandy pointed out. “But…this is a bomb that I’m dropping on him that he never even knew in the past. And I think he’s going to definitely have some questions about it. I don’t think he’s going to just leave it alone; he’s going to want a little bit more information about it. And so she’s definitely going to have to deal with that element now bringing him more into what her past was like.”

It’ll potentially be a little easier now that Kate was able to convince Sophie that she wasn’t Batwoman—thanks to Julia (Christina Wolfe) temporarily donning the Batwoman suit. But is Sophie really buying it?

“Kate did a very, very good job at having Julia put on that costume and is definitely very convincing,” Tandy said. “[Sophie] could definitely still be wondering, but I think Kate definitely might have sealed that deal for right now. Perhaps there could be something down the line that might make her think again, like oh, this could potentially still be Kate as Batwoman, but right now, I think Kate duped her pretty good.”

However, Kate is letting someone into her life—kind of. With Mary (Nicole Kang) spiraling over the Kane family falling apart, her stepsister invited her to the new building she purchased…a LGBTQ bar.

“We realized in breaking the first few episodes of the season, we have a lot of great beautiful sets, but a lot of our characters don’t have an excuse [to be there],” Dries said. “We wanted to find a place where they can kind of all overlap naturally. You’ll be seeing more of it as it goes through its renovation…It’s called The Hold Up. And it’s named [that because] it’s basically that bank went into foreclosure because it was held up so many times.”

But with Sophie off the trail, don’t expect Kate to willingly expose her secret identity to anyone else in the near-future. “That’s one thing that is sort of sacred to the crux of being a superhero is her identity,” Dries said. “She is so closed off about her feelings anyway. So to let somebody in on this huge secret, it’s just a huge liability. It’s going to continue [that] she’s just going to keep her family as small as possible in that regard, as long as she can.”

[Disclaimer: I’m friends with Natalie Abrams, the co-writer of “Tell Me the Truth.”]

BATWOMAN, Sundays, 8/7c, The CW

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