Plot summary: When Rose Forrest’s father is killed by The Riddler, she forges a much darker persona and embroils herself in Gotham’s criminal underbelly.
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Notes and Trivia
Episode: 17 (S2.E7)
Original Air Date: July 31st, 2026
Directed: Christina Sotta (7)
Written: Margaret Dunlap (2)
Animation: Doghead Animation (3)
Music: Frederik Wiedmann (17)
The villain in this episode is NOT Poison Ivy, but rather the much older character, Thorn. Debuting in 1947 as Rose Canton, an enemy of The Flash, she was created by John Broome and Carmine Infantino. Canton had a split personality, with the villainous ‘Thorn’ able to control plants. Perhaps her most important lore is that she married original Green Lantern Alan Scott and mothered their children, Obsidian and Jade. She’s been ‘cured’ and ‘relapsed’ back and forth over the decades.
However, there’s also a version created by Robert Kanigher and Ross Andru in 1970, from which this episode is pulling some details from; Rhosyn ‘Rose’ Forrest’s father was murdered by a gang and in her sleep the ‘Thorn’ personality would take over as a (powerless) vigilante seeking revenge. Later versions made the Thorn personality more violent.
Riddler makes the first mention of Bludhaven in the show, suggesting they head there after conquering Gotham. This is a nearby city that Nightwing tends to operate out of in order to ‘be his own man’.
Batman says in regards to Rose that she had “one [very] bad day” and that’s all it takes. This if of course a reference to Alan Moore’s iconic The Killing Joke.
Recap
Riddler murders a florist for mouthing off when handing over protection money. The victim’s daughter, Rose, ostensibly suffers a nervous breakdown, creating the persona ‘Thorn’ in her sleep.
Thorn charms her way into Riddler’s operation, with the two going on a lengthy spree that Batman and the GCPD struggle to keep up with, with Bruce barely escaping one encounter with his life.
Ultimately, Thorn lures Riddler to the scene of her father’s murder and takes her revenge, gunning him down and then fleeing town.
In the aftermath, The Joker informs Riddler’s men that they’ll now be working for him…
Episode Ranking
The basic premise of this episode is mostly fine, and there are some small fun aspects, but I don’t think it comes together properly because it lacks detail.
There’s something small, like Rose/Thorn never telling Riddler her name on camera – I initially wondered if this was to not confuse audiences as Rupert Thorne is a major character in the show, but then Batman gives her the name at the end – to something larger like the fact she’s alone with Riddler plenty of times and could have killed him much sooner, but instead keeps going along with the romance so she can draw out her revenge, I guess. I also see no real reason for her to stop him from killing Batman, even with the generous reading that she’s got singular focus and is not a general murderer. A pet peeve of mine is when you get functionally the same scene two or more times, and this is a textbook example as Batman follows Riddler to the scene of a crime, brawls with his men, but his marks get away… only to follow Riddler to the bar he’s been hiding in all season, brawl with his men, but his marks get away. Just needless script inefficiency. I’d rather have seen more of daytime Rose grappling with what’s happening without her full knowledge at night, but that aspect is dropped after one scene. They’re also super vague about the man in her locket. I assumed he died, but then her dad talking shit about him for not being able to protect her is super harsh. But he seems like a harsh guy, so maybe!
It’s also another instance of Batman’s actions having minimal impact on the events of the episode as he fails to catch the villains, Thorn kills Riddler and then skips town. I generally think that’s not a legitimate complaint, because as I’ve spoken about before, being a detective doesn’t mean always solving every case right on time as much as it means stubbornly pressing forward until they reach the terminus one way or another. But it’s harder to defend such things when the episode is already underwhelming.
Now the death scene itself is pretty cool, with Thorn leading Riddler to the flower shop and having a wreath waiting for him that says “Edward Nygma Rot in Hell” and then shooting him with his own signature tommy gun, with plenty of stylish cutaways, flashes of light and shadow, blood drops on flower petals, all that good stuff. Then they do the transition shot of Thorn looking over Nygma’s fresh corpse, to Batman standing in the same spot a few minutes later. And then of course the somewhat cliched moment where Thorn sees Rose in her reflection for a moment, and the obligatory big Joker debut. All good fun.
Horny Bruce Timm strikes again as Rose walks in front of a window in her nightgown, subtly revealing the curvature of her body for no real reason, and then heading to a lingerie store to acquire the final touches for her costume. It’s far from the most egregious thing he’s ever had his name against, but still, c’mon man.
I’ve talked about them downplaying the social commentary aspect a little for Season Two, but a cop sure did try to solicit sexual favours from a female suspect and then smacked her around when she refused, so that’s fun! Likewise, Flass openly begs for scraps at Nygma’s table and is rebuffed, all but ending that subplot from Season One.
Solid sax-heavy score from Weidmann throughout, playing up to the ‘femme fatale’ nature of Thorn.
But yeah, as I said at the start, while I can point to a handful of little things I liked, the broader episode is just that little too rotten to work for me. Easily the worst of Season Two so far and one of the worst in the show overall.
- Sudden Fear
- … And Be a Villain
- Deep Cover
- The Stress of Her Regard
- The Devil’s Due
- Kiss of the Catwoman
- The Spectral Hand
- Rocket’s Red Glare
- Brute Force
- The Night of the Hunters
- Night Ride
- The Killer Inside Me
- Moving Target
- In Treacherous Waters
- Savage Night
- Her Dark Reflection (NEW ENTRY)
- Nocturne
Best Performance
This is basically set up so only Fryda Wolff can win. There’s a decent contrast between the quiet, apologetic Rose and the sultry villain Thorn, but it’s rather generic stuff overall. But she simply talks far more than everyone else in the episode by a long way, and none of the rest do anything overly noteworthy. I did like her interaction with Alfred in the ruined shop, sounding a little distant as she insists she has a big order to be getting on with, which of course turns out to be Riddler’s death wreath.
Jason Watkins would be my second choice as he’s very warm in that same conversation with Rose, and is also pretty decent in his conversations with Bruce at the beginning and end of the episode.
Of note, Matthew Needham debuts his Joker voice at last. I’ll have much more to say about it in future episodes, but it’s too short an appearance to go into now, which is also why he’s not going to be in Rogues Roundup below.
Rogues Roundup
Thorn (Fryda Wolff) (first appearance)
I assume those who watched this episode thinking it was a Gotham situation where they needlessly changed Poison Ivy’s name (Ivy Pepper remains atrocious) had a bad time and thought this was an awful adaptation because she doesn’t even control plants! And they probably would have been better off just doing their own take on Ivy rather than amalgamating two lesser known characters, purely because they’re so committed to these 1940s villains. But also… is it on them if the audience makes false assumptions? But I digress…
In some comics, Thorn manifests due to Rose suppressing certain emotions, which I figure they were going for here with the comments from her father about “No breakdowns, not like your mother.” Her dad is a retired cop with strong feelings about men being soft, so it holds to reason he would frown on women being hysterical, I suppose, and the result is a meek wallflower with multiple personalities who turns to a life of crime at night, so congrats!
She fits in well enough with Batman’s villains, with the split personality gimmick and a solid character design. I liked the spiked belt coated in digitalis, and it looked legitimately gnarly when she wrapped it around Batman’s neck, tearing his costume to expose a bloody throat. That alone would have been cool, with the toxin a nice little bonus keeping with her origins. But again, I get why fans would want them to just go the whole hog and do Ivy instead.
I think overall she’s a solid little character, but they failed to write a good enough episode around her, relying on her to do the heavy lifting. You could get away with that a bit more in BTAS where there was always a baseline quality of voice acting, music, art direction and animation to let them be a bit lazier with the writing sometimes, but this is a different show.
The Riddler (Ronan Raftery) (third appearance)
Colour me shocked they’d kill Riddler off so quickly. I suppose that’s the point, to do something unexpected, but it felt to me like they were trying to build to something with Nygma and instead he’s cut down by another villain prematurely. On a first watch I thought he’d gradually adopt the more traditional riddles gimmick throughout the season, but it seems all they ever saw for him was this hyper violent, erratic mobster. I talked about how that had grown on me a little in ‘Deep Cover‘ and the problem is more that they chose to call him The Riddler rather than making him an original character or pulling from a different mobster in the Batman mythos. Hell, I wonder if he was originally someone more lowkey and they got some feedback to add more of the Rogues Gallery and this was their way of appeasing their bosses while still doing what they wanted.
In the end, it seems Riddler was only ever intended to be a distraction while Joker ruminated in the background; somebody for Batman to focus on as his ‘main’ villain like Rupert Thorne in Season One. I don’t think he really needed that, as he barely had any face to face time with either villain and the ‘case of the week’ format fits the detective vibe.
This episode doesn’t really do too much for Eddie either way. I suppose it’s decent that he’s so petty about the interaction with Forrest at the start, shooting up his shop in broad daylight over a slightly testy exchange. But we already knew he was this way. Likewise him ditching his girlfriend for Thorn the second she walks in, acting like a bit of an idiot and blindly following whatever she says in order to get laid. Many such cases.
RIP, Eddie. What a weird series of choices you were.
- The Mad Monk
- Harley Quinn
- Clayface
- Roxy Rocket
- Catwoman
- Scarecrow
- Two-Face
- The Riddler (–)
- Thorn
- Firebug
- Rupert Thorne
- The Gentleman Ghost
- Hattie Tetch aka Mad Hatter
- Flass & Bullock
- The Terrible Trio
- Jim Corrigan/The Spectre
- The Penguin
- Hugo Strange and the Monster Men
- The Joker
- Onomatopoeia
- Nocturna
Title Card
The Matt Signal 
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