The CW’s Batwoman is bringing a familiar DC character into its third season, and she’ll be played by a familiar face, too. Victoria Cartagena, who played former Gotham City cop Renee Montoya on Fox’s Gotham, is now joining the Batwoman cast as… Renee Montoya.
Before you start screaming “crossover!”, know that Deadline, which broke the news of Cartagena’s casting, specifically notes that “the universes are not connected.” So don’t expect to see Ben McKenzie’s Jim Gordon popping up to hang out with Javicia Leslie’s Ryan Wilder. It’s certainly unusual for an actor to play the same character twice on unrelated (other than source material) series, but Cartagena framed it nicely in her excited tweet after the news was released:
I guess #Reneemontoya and I have some unfinished business❤️ So very excited to join this new group of talented artists, writers & crew who are doing their thing over here! They have welcomed me wholeheartedly! Grateful, humbled, hype AF… #batwoman #fullcircle https://t.co/eeNCmptT7v
— Victoria Cartagena (@VickiCartagena) July 20, 2021
Season two of Batwoman wrapped last month — with Ryan Wilder finally assuming the Batwoman identity after Kate Kane (Wallis Day, who replaced Ruby Rose with a convoluted plot necessitated by Rose’s departure from the series) left town, presumably for good — which means Cartagena will make her debut as a series regular in season three. And she’s not the only Gotham alum to migrate to Batwoman; Alex Morf, who played a gang leader named Sykes on the Fox show, which ended its run in 2019, was introduced on Batwoman’s second season as the villainous Victor Zsasz.
Deadline describes this take on Montoya (who also appeared on the big screen in Birds of Prey, played there by Rosie Perez) as “a former GCPD officer who left the force when she could no longer stomach the corruption inside the department. She now runs the ‘freaks division,’ which hasn’t seen a lot of action… until now. Righteous and pragmatic, and LGBTQ+, she’s a woman with a very personal (and mysterious) mission to help clean the streets of Gotham in the right way, by whatever means necessary.”
Season three of Batwoman arrives in October on the CW.