CW’s Gotham has a new permanent resident. Deadline reports that actress Victoria Cartagena has been added to the cast of Batwoman as a series regular for the show’s third season. Cartagena will portray Detective Renee Montoya of the Gotham City Police Department. Per the Deadline report, Cartagena’s Renee will head the GCPD’s “freaks division,” which presumably will bring the character into conflict with a certain masked vigilante.
Interestingly, Cartagena comes to Batwoman having already portrayed Renee Montoya on a different series, Gotham, in seven episodes from the series’ first season. The CW’s Arrowverse and Fox’s Gotham are set in different universes, though, so Cartagena’s Renee appearing in two of them could probably just be considered a quirk of the post-Crisis multiverse.
Renee Montoya was created by Paul Dini, Bruce Timm, and Mitch Brian for the seminal Batman: The Animated Series, though she made her first comic book appearance in Batman #475 before the animated series aired. She became a fixture of the GCPD, rising over the years from officer to detective. As a central figure of the 40-issue Gotham Central series, writer Greg Rucka revealed that Montoya is a lesbian, and ultimately had her quit the GCPD after the murder of her partner, Crispus Allen, by a corrupt cop. During the weekly 52 series Montoya trained under a dying Vic Sage, and eventually took on the identity of The Question following his death, a role she apparently shares with Sage now following multiple universe restarts.
Cartagena is the first actress to portray Renee Montoya in live-action. Renee appeared on the big screen as a main character in 2020’s Birds of Prey, portrayed there by Rosie Perez. Cartagena’s addition as Renee Montoya is the latest change to the cast of Batwoman. Earlier this month Deadline reported the addition of Robin Givens to the cast of the series, and in June it was reported that actor Dougray Scott would be leaving the series now that its second season has finished airing.
The third season of Batwoman is slated to debut on its new night of Wednesday on October 13th, 2021.