After the pilot had set the team of ragtag teenagers on the run as they escaped the authorities while trying to clear their names, the second episode of “Gotham Knights” introduced them to some serious heat in the form of a direct attack from the Court of the Owls. In the previous episode, stakes were quickly established as Bruce Wayne was murdered, and the suspected trio Duela and Row siblings Harper and Cullen were set up for the crime as they had been instructed to carry out a heist at the crime scene. Later, Bruce Wayne’s adopted son Turner Hayes was implicated in the crime, and the quartet managed to escape custody with the help of Robin, aka Carrie Kelley. DA Harvey Dent, determined to bring his friend’s killers to justice, announces a city-wide manhunt for the fugitives. Turner asks his best friend Stephanie Brown for help, and the watch Harper managed to snatch from the corrupt Detective Ford reveals an engraving of the infamous secret society, the Court of Owls—who are somehow involved with the murder of Bruce Wayne. The episode ended with a Talon, the ruthless undead enforcers of the Court of the Owls, beheading detective Ford in a parking lot.
Spoilers Ahead
What Happens In Episode 2?
Harvey Dent, accompanied by Wayne family housekeeper Cressida, leads a SWAT team into the Batcave. Harvey commands them to confiscate everything from the vicinity and asks Cressida whether she knows about Bruce’s dual life. Cressida answers in the negative, and she also berates Harvey for arresting Turner earlier and forcing him to be a fugitive. Elsewhere, Carrie Kelley, in her Robin attire, intercepts a burglary, which turns out to be the crook trio looting a department store to restock their ‘necessities,’ with Turner as an accomplice.
Mayor Hamilton Hill assigned a task force led by Harvey Dent to apprehend the fugitives. The team of fugitives reaches Turner’s secret hideout, the clocktower, where they speculate about their proclaimed mission to prove their innocence. While Duela keeps reminding the team about the threat of the Court of Owls, the team has no substantial evidence of their existence to build a case around that. At school, Brody gets to learn from Stephanie that she tried to help Turner by hacking into the financial infrastructure of all the banks in Gotham using the Batcomputer in order to trace the transaction between the accused (Trio) and the supposed schemers. He asks Stephanie to stop assisting Turner any further, as it could lead to her being apprehended as an accessory. Stephanie visits the clock tower and meets the team, albeit not on a cheerful note due to the misunderstanding regarding their respective motives. Stephanie informs them that the GCPD has confiscated everything from the Batcave, including the Batcomputer.
At GCPD HQ, Harvey discovers detective Ford’s severed head packed inside a box in his workspace and later finds out Ford’s entire team has been butchered likewise. The Mayor gets livid with the police’s inefficiency in catching the fugitives and presses Harvey further. Detective Deja Dee informs the team that during the fugitives’ escape from the convoy, the banks in Gotham were hacked at the same time, and search activities in Turner Hayes’ account were noticed. Harvey deduces that Turner might have had outside help, and after checking his call records post-arrest, they nab Stephanie Brown.
As the team learns about the news of Detective Ford and his team’s murder, they realize the reason is the corrupted cops’ inability to tie up loose ends—as in killing them. Turner considers the possibility that Bruce’s investigation could be a helpful guide for them. Cassie informs him that they can access Bruce’s private journals from a secret compartment in Bruce’s penthouse in the Wayne Tower. Turner suggests that they can avoid detection by going through Bruce’s private elevator. For entry clearance, the team steals a Wayne security vehicle.
As planned, Turner and Carrie enter the penthouse while Harper, Cullen, and Duela stay on the lookout. Duela suggests the siblings use this opportunity to escape in the security vehicle, which is comparatively secure from the suspicion of the authorities. She plans to sell the Court of Owls insignia engraved watch Cullen stole from Ford to an antiquity dealer who has promised a handsome amount. Harper initially shows interest in joining her but later gets discouraged by her brother Cullen, who insists on staying for Turner and Carrie, going through the ordeal and clearing their names—something he feels lets him assert control over his own life.
Dent interrogates Stephanie, who is unwilling to share anything regarding the investigation, and asks for a lawyer. To Stephany’s surprise, she sees Brody talking to the authorities on her behalf, and she suspects that he has ratted her out. Later, when she confronts Brody about the incident, he protests that he didn’t disclose anything but rather took the fall for her and presented himself as the accessory.
In Bruce’s penthouse, Turner and Carrie come across his last opened journal, which turns out to be the first journal Bruce started writing regarding his first case—the death of his parents at the hands of Joe Chill. Even during his childhood, Bruce had unparalleled analytical skills and managed to uncover the Court of Owls’ involvement in his parents’ murder. From his journals, they also get to know that Bruce discovered that the Court of Owls has hunted the Waynes for several generations, and he became extremely obsessed with searching for them. But in the end, despite several years of investigation, he could not come up with anything regarding their whereabouts and brushed them off as urban myths. As they are about to leave, a Talon ambushes the duo.
The Harper siblings decides to stay and help Turner and Carrie while Duela drives off, leaving the team. Turner bags a katana from his father’s office, and the team somehow manages to escape the Talon and alert authority forces using Carrie’s line launcher. On the other hand, Duela’s plan to sell the watch backfires as the buyer double-crosses her. However, the buyer gets stabbed to death by another Talon, who chases Duela. The team arrives just in time to rescue her, and for a brief while, Turner manages to hold the Talon off thanks to his fencing expertise but soon gets disarmed. Carrie uses incendiary bolts from her crossbow to stagger the Talon, which buys the team enough time to escape.
At the Mayor’s office, Cressida’s conversation reveals her to be a messenger for the Court of Owls, and we also come to know that the Court of Owls had previously assisted the Mayor in getting rid of his political rival. Reminding her of that, Cressida intimidates the Mayor into working in accordance with the Court’s commands and leaves. At the clocktower, Duela reconciles with Turner, whose insistence that the team goes to her was the reason for their timely arrival. Later, Stephanie and Turner discuss how the Talons managed to ambush them at the penthouse, and Turner reveals that the last entries of Bruce’s last journal are torn off. Stephanie wonders why the perpetrator tore the pages off instead of stealing the entire journal. The ending sequence of the episode shows Carrie entering her home, and it is revealed that she took the pages from the journal, which ends with Bruce’s question regarding what will happen when Turner finds out the truth.
Thoughts
“Gotham Knights” managed to offer an eventful, solid episode with a number of Easter eggs scattered around. The mention of Edward Nygma and Catwoman acts as a reference to the Bat mythos, which is neatly capped off by Bruce’s private elevator passcode being 1939 (the year of Batman’s first appearance). There is an obvious air of mistrust among the team members, which will probably dissipate as they realize that only sticking together will ensure their chance of survival. Brody’s goodwill might just be a ruse to keep Stephanie in the dark, and he might have some ulterior motives for which he needs to win her trust. After the menacing tease at the end of the first episode, Talon’s full-fledged appearance and fight sequence is definitely going to be a highlight for comic-book readers who are familiar with the Court of Owls storyline. Although the Talons look as menacing as their comic counterparts, it remains to be seen whether their undead origins are adapted for the screen or not.
The reason for Cassie to steal the entries from Bruce’s last journal might involve her personal investigation regarding her mentor’s murder. She has already shown a clear disdain for the crook trio’s criminal tendencies, so perhaps due to her mistrust for them, she did not want some particular information to be known by the team. Or it might also be that she is holding back secrets that might have far-reaching consequences if Turner gets to know about them, as the last line of the entries suggests. The hunting of Waynes by the Owls is also comics accurate to some extent, emphasizing the infamous New 52 proverb about the owl hunting bats. Regarding the truth, in comics, it was shown that the Court of Owls’ hold on Gotham’s every sector ran extremely deep, and even some of the most trustworthy characters were on the member list. In accordance with that, Wayne’s housekeeper, Cressida, turns out to be a messenger for the Owls. Turner is better off being a fugitive with his amateur vigilante group, and it’s only a matter of time till Gotham’s all-engulfing corruption involving the Owls gets revealed.
