In “Dark Knight of the Soul,” the Gotham Knights attempt to track down a crucial piece of material to use as leverage in their fight against the Court of Owls. Meanwhile, Harvey Dent tries to protect himself from himself. Let’s break it down!
Suspicious Sample
This week, we open on a shot of Robinson Park. Gotham News Now are reporting on the discovery of Cressida Clarke’s body. Zooming out, we see that Harvey Dent is watching the news update in his office. Inside his briefcase is the blood-spattered Court of Owls mask that we saw him wearing when he awoke from his fugue state at the end of the last episode.
Outside his office, Harvey has a discussion with Aja about the case, which it seems Turner is being framed for (yet again). Aja questions Harvey’s determination to prove Turner’s innocence, but he ends up cutting short the conversation to head back to his office. Shut away inside, Harvey carefully takes a sample of the blood on his mask.
X Doesn’t Mark the Spot
In the Belfry, Duela hasn’t calmed down much from when we saw her in “Belly of the Beast.” She’s still furious that the Knights left Turner and didn’t immediately go to try and rescue him from the Court of Owls. Stephanie is on her side, this time — there’s no way that Turner would have left any one of them behind.
The Twins believe that they made the right move, as awful as it feels. They needed to regroup, or the Owls would have just killed them all. At least they have the map, though it hasn’t done them much good so far. It appears to be a map of Gotham, but there’s no “x marks the spot” that they can see. With all of the Knights on the case, though, they soon work out that Alan Wayne signed the map in a strange spot. It has to be deliberate.
Duela finally looks a little happier as the group agree that the way forward is to get to the Electrum before the Court of Owls does, and then exchange the substance for Turner.
Stephanie and Harper take a field trip to where the map is marked. The area appears to be a construction site, and it looks as if the Owls beat them to it. The Gotham Knights need some way to find out what they are up to. Luckily, Stephanie and Harper quickly come up with a plan to distract one of the construction workers. Harper looks a little wide-eyed as Stephanie pops her top button and demonstrates her dumb-blonde act, but when she unleashes her charms on an innocent Gotham Geotechnical employee, it works like a charm. While he’s helping Stephanie find a coffee cart, Harper snatches his radio.
The radio doesn’t give them much beyond confirmation that whatever the Court of Owls are digging for, they haven’t found yet.
Thank goodness, they still have resident art genius Cullen on the case. He’s been examining the map and what they originally thought were some random holes across it. Cullen believes they’re too uniform — leading to the Knights holding the map up to the light while Cullen joins the dots that are created by the light coming through the holes. They end up with a dot-to-dot of the Gotham City skyline.
Cullen remembers that one of Alan Wayne’s paintings that the court stole was a view of the old Gotham skyline. They look it up, and layer it with the outline from the map. Finally, they have a specific location.
Team Harphanie
The Knights head out to follow their new lead. Stephanie and Harper head down into Gotham’s sewers, using a frequency device of Harper’s to search for strange spots with unknown alloys. The pair are getting along well, exchanging some friendly — and maybe even flirty — banter about their mission as they explore.
Harper makes a comment about getting Turner back, fishing a little about the relationship between Turner and Stephanie. Stephanie is very quick to clarify that Turner is like a brother to her. Before the conversation can go much further, they get a hit on Harper’s device.
Reminding us that she’s not all caution and genius planning, Harper quickly grabs a length of metal and smashes her way through the wall. The tiles break and reveal a thin, wood partition that conceals a hidey-hole in the wall. From within, they pull out a metal box stamped with “A.W.”
Harper and Stephanie take the pretty rock back to the Belfry. The two of them explain the next part of their plan to Duela, Cullen, and Carrie—they’re going to use radio frequencies from the Court of Owls, checking in on the construction site to triangulate a location where they may be keeping Turner.
Duela christens the pair “Sharper” during their nerdy explanation. (She seems to think it’s better than “Harphanie,” at least.) As soon as Stephanie and Harper realize that Turner is being held at Wayne Manor, though, Duela goes right back to her original plan: rescue Turner at all costs. She swipes the Electrum and disappears.
Luckily, the Gotham Knights track her down quickly, and manage to talk her out of putting everyone at risk just for Tuner. They need a plan for Turner’s extraction if they’re going to survive going to Wayne Manor. Cullen convinces Duela that he has an idea.
“I don’t care about everyone, I care about Turner!”
Duela
Cullen’s plan is to create a replica of the Electrum, and he does a great job of it. They organize another team field trip — Duela and Cullen will go in with the rock, with Carrie as their backup. Stephanie and Harper will back them up with comms and a getaway ride.
As the Knights prepare to head out, Cullen takes a minute to question Harper over her interactions with Stephanie. Harper is clearly flustered and protests that she’s not interested in Stephanie, but Cullen isn’t having it. Stephanie is just Harper’s type, he insists — because she only falls for “himbos and straight girls.” People who she can’t take seriously, and people who won’t love her back. Eventually, Cullen voices that he just doesn’t want Harper to get hurt, and the two of them leave it there.
Little Orphan Lost
Meanwhile, Turner is really going through it. The Court of Owls dragged him away to a secondary location, which turns out to be Wayne Manor. Poetic. When the leader of the Owls removes the bag from Turner’s head, he reveals himself as Lincoln March.
Things just get worse from there as Lincoln produces one of the Talon’s blades and, after dipping it into a truly foul, poisonous-looking substance, stabs Turner in the chest with it. Turner cries out, but the wound itself quickly becomes just one of many issues as he slips unconscious.
Turner wakes to clocks ticking, distorted voices, and bells chiming. Or does he wake at all? Everything around him seems fuzzy, and he’s free to stand and move — though he still has the wound on his chest. He presses a hand to it for a moment before staggering off down the hallway, leaving a bloodied handprint smeared on the wall.
Wayne Manor is out of focus and echoey as Turner lurches his way along the corridors, taking turns and trying to work out what’s going on. He passes a bloody handprint on the wall. Wait a minute …. He heads off again, taking a different turn, but still comes back to the handprint. Increasingly frantic, Turner careens from one side of the hall to the other, bouncing off walls and trying every way he can see, but he always comes back to the handprint. No matter what he does, he’s stuck in a loop.
As Turner increasingly panics, he is bombarded by bats, and distant voices taunt him. Finally, he makes his way into a room, and his focus clears as two people turn to greet him — his mom and dad.
Turner, of course, questions whether they are real. He knows his parents are dead. They point out that they’re real to him for now and seem happy to see him. Slowly, though, the conversation begins to turn as they berate Turner for finding out what happened to them.
“Why didn’t you look a little harder for our killer?”
Mrs. Hayes
Turner’s parents demand answers over and over, questioning why Bruce Wayne, the greatest detective, let their murders remain unsolved. Slowly, as they pressure Turner to see that there’s more to it than he realizes, their voices morph into Lincolns.
Turner wakes up. He sees the room in Wayne Manor again, with an unmasked Lincoln and a gathering of anonymous Owls. The hallucination of his parents is over.
Lincoln continues pushing, manipulating Turner into seeing that Bruce Wayne didn’t solve his parents murder for a reason. Why is Turner an orphan? Lincoln pushes over and over, until eventually Turner responds as Lincoln wants him to: he is an orphan because Batman made him one.
In a truly chilling monologue, Lincoln tries to convince Turner that he should deliver justice where Batman did not. Finally, he reveals his plan — he wants Turner to become the Court’s new Talon.
Plan B and Plan B
Lincoln, Turner, and the silent Owls are interrupted by the arrival of Cullen and Duela. The Electrum, they say, in exchange for Turner’s life. Oh, and Duela has a plan B. She opens her coat to reveal an array of grenades, all tied to her wiggling fingers by thin strings. The Joker’s daughter through and through.
After a tense moment, Lincoln calls their bluff. He is still holding the Talon’s blade that he stabbed Turner with earlier. With a vicious slash, he spins around and cuts Turner’s throat. If the rock they are holding is really the Electrum, he says, then Duela and Cullen will be able to heal him.
Duela and Cullen are horrified. They scream as Turner falls to the ground, very quickly beginning to bleed out.
Thank goodness for plan Bs — and not just Duela’s crazy ones. Carrie runs in with the real Electrum and promises Lincoln that she will hand it over if he lets her save Turner. Lincoln acquiesces, and Carrie runs to Turner. She holds the rock up to his throat and the wound closes.
Smug, Lincoln holds out a hand for the Electrum. Reluctantly, Carrie hands it over. As the Gotham Knight’s hurry Turner out of there, Lincoln calls after Turner. His offer, he says, still stands.
Back at the Belfry
A shaken looking Cullen and Carrie help Turner up the stairs into the Belfry, where he’s reunited with a distraught but relieved Stephanie. The two hug for a long moment.
Afterward, Stephanie tries to talk to Turner about what happened at Wayne Manor. He’s reluctant to share, and doesn’t mention what Lincoln told him about his parents, or his offer to become the next Talon.
Stephanie reassures Turner that no matter what happened, she’s there to listen. She reaches out, and the two hold hands for a moment — just in time for Harper to come into the room. Upon seeing the intimate touch, Harper looks distressed. She silently backtracks and leaves them to it.
Elsewhere in the bunker, Cullen approaches Carrie. She’s struggling with the choices they made — though she certainly doesn’t regret saving Turner. Carrie tells Cullen that she always wanted to be a hero, from the first time she saw the bat signal in the sky. But she never realized it would mean choosing which lives to save. Cullen comforts her, reminding her that Turner is alive because of her, and that she is continuing Batman’s legacy.
Duela is untangling her grenades when Turner approaches her. He helps her with them and thanks her for rescuing him, though he’s sure that she had some kind of personal agenda. “No agenda,” Duela admits. “Just you.”
The charged moment between them holds — until Turner starts gagging. To Duela’s shock, he stumbles to a trash can and vomits before falling to the floor, seizing. Duela immediately goes to him, screaming for help.
Hiya, Harv
After getting confirmation that the blood on his mask was Cressida’s, Harvey sets up a video camera in his office. He hits record and begins to tell his tale — he’s going to tell the truth and prove he had no involvement in Mayor Hill and Cressida’s killings, no matter what the evidence seems to say. He addresses the camera, telling the citizens of Gotham that the Harvey Dent that they know is innocent.
After a long explanation of everything that’s happened and his memory lapses, the video camera Harvey is using beeps to tell him the memory card is full. He pulls it over to check and notices that the screen is telling him he’s made two recordings, not one.
Harvey presses play on the second video and his alter-ego fills the screen. “Hiya Harv,” he says, notably different in tone and posture to the Harvey we usually see.
Fugue Harvey predicted that Harvey would be worrying that he was a killer. Smirking, Fugue Harvey leans in to the camera. “You’re no killer, Harvey Dent,” he tells him.
Gotham Knights airs on Tuesday nights at 9 p.m. ET/8 p.m. CT. Stay up to date with our coverage on the show here. Additionally, make sure to check out Your Bat Is Dead, a Gotham Knights podcast by Nerds and Beyond! As always, stay tuned for more updates.
