According to TVLine, British actress Shivani Ghai (Dominion) has been tapped for a key recurring role in the upcoming second season of The CW’s Batwoman. She will be joining fellow new cast member Javicia Leslie (God Friended Me), who is set to take on the mantle of the titular scarlet knight.
Ghai will be portraying the role of Safiyah, the fiercely protective ruler of a small community on the island of Coryana. She is also being described as a woman with as many enemies as aliases, she is compassionate and charismatic with both physical and psychological prowess. She is beloved by her people and will stop at nothing to protect what’s hers. No one goes unnoticed by Safiyah, specifically when it comes to those who have encountered the Desert Rose. Her character was already mentioned in the first season where she sent the Rifle to assassinate Batwoman. In the series, it is also known that she dislikes Rachel Skarsten’s Alice.
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After Ruby Rose’s sudden departure back in May, Javicia Leslie was cast as the new lead of the series and will be become the first Black actress to play Batwoman in a live-action TV or film production. She is set to portray the role of Ryan Wilder, who is described as “likable, messy, a little goofy and untamed” and that she is “nothing like Kate Kane, the woman who wore the Batsuit before her.” The rest of the description reads as follows:
With no one in her life to keep her on track, Ryan spent years as a drug-runner, dodging the GCPD and masking her pain with bad habits. Today Ryan lives in her van with her plant. A girl who would steal milk for an alley cat and could also kill you with her bare hands, Ryan is the most dangerous type of fighter: highly skilled and wildly undisciplined. An out lesbian. Athletic. Raw. Passionate. Fallible. And very much not your stereotypical All-American hero.
Showrunner Caroline Dries and executive producer Greg Berlanti assured that Ruby’s character of Kate Kane would not be killed off in the series, but rather her disappearance would be “one of the mysteries of season two” while a new character would be introduced in her place who was also an LGBTQ+ character.
Technically, Kate Kane wasn’t the only character to adopt the Batwoman persona in DC’s comic book universe. Almost 50 years before Kate debuted in 2005, Kathy Kane became the first superhero to use this alias in 1956 during the Silver Age. But since her name is so similar to her modern successor, an appearance by this iteration of the hero was probably never in the cards.
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The first season starred Ruby Rose as Kate Kane/Batwoman, Rachel Skarsten as Alice, Meagan Tandy (Teen Wolf) as Sophie Moore, Camrus Johnson (Luke Cage) as Luke Fox,Nicole Kang (You) as Mary Hamilton, Dougray Scott as Jacob Kane and Elizabeth Anweis as Catherine Hamilton-Kane.
Based on the characters from DC, Batwoman is from Berlanti Productions in association with Warner Bros. Television with executive producers Greg Berlanti, Caroline Dries, Geoff Johns, and Sarah Schechter. David Nutter and Marcos Siega executive produced the pilot.
Season 2 is still expected for a January 2021 premiere date.
(Photo by Dave M. Benett/Getty Images)
