Victoria Cartagena and Renee Montoya are uniting once more… but there’s a catch. The Gotham actress is joining season three of Batwoman as a different version of the DC Comics character. (We first saw this at IGN.) Cartagena first played Montoya during season one of the Fox series, which concluded in 2019 after five seasons. But Gotham is not merging with the Arrowverse. Rather, Cartagena is playing a Renee Montoya completely separate from the one she previously played.
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Cartagena joins the Batwoman cast as a series regular, so we’ll be seeing a lot of Montoya in the coming year. Per Deadline, which broke the news, Montoya is a former Gotham City Police Officer who departed the force due to its rampant corruption. Still Montoya is intent on cleaning up Gotham without the department behind her, operating the “freaks division” which hasn’t seen too much action. However, the description features an ominous “…for now” which means chaos is afoot in Gotham City and Renee Montoya certainly has her work cut out for her.
While Cartagena is specifically not reprising her Gotham role in the Arrowverse, there is a precedent for it. Back in 2014, Matt Ryan played the antihero John Constantine on the NBC series Constantine, which ran for a single season. The actor later reprised the role for Arrow and The Legends of Tomorrow, of which Ryan has been a series regular since season four. (Considering he’s the same character from the NBC series, this makes Constantine, by extension, an Arrowverse show.)
Cartagena celebrated the news on Twitter, teasing her “unfinished business” with her former character.
Most recently, Renee Montoya appeared in the DCEU film Birds of Prey, played by Rosie Perez. With an exciting future in the DCEU (we hope!) and on The CW, things are looking pretty bright for Renee Montoya. Batwoman returns for season three in October 2021.
