Lanterns Episode 5 opens with a fun little flashback. The HBO show had already confirmed that Kelly Macdonald‘s Sheriff Kerry Kane was a transplant from Gotham — the legendary home of Batman, Joker, and the rest of the Dark Knight’s rogue gallery of heroes, antiheroes, and villains — but this week we got a glimpse of her in full Gotham getup.

**Spoilers for Lanterns Episode 5, now streaming on HBO Max**

Lanterns Episode 5 starts with a cold open showing a younger Kerry Kane (with bangs) on the run. When her car stalls outside Rushville, she pushes it to the diner we’ve seen many times before in the 2016 timeline.

There, a few men from Gotham catch up to Kerry Kane. We soon learn that Kerry’s now deceased father was mixed up with the city’s infamous crime scene and money is owed. Kerry tries to argue with the thugs, but they cut off her finger in tortuous style.

Then, Zoe (Poorna Jagannathan) comes to Kerry’s rescue. The Manhunter uses her super powers to overtake Kerry’s pursuers and — and!! — regrow Kerry’s finger. All Zoe asks is for Kerry to return the favor someday, setting up the reasons why everyone in Rushville is so willing to do anything for Zoe. She’s saved them all and they feel as though they must protect her in turn.

Of course, this isn’t just an origin story; it’s a glimpse of how Gotham might look in James Gunn’s new DC universe — and how its residents might sound.

“James [Hawes], the first block director, when we were talking about accents, he said, ‘She’s from Gotham, but we don’t want to be heavy-handed with that and make it too much of a New York-y kind of accent,’” Kelly Macdonald told DECIDER. “He said ‘east coast,’ but you know, she’s been in Nebraska a while.”

Macdonald admitted it would have been “much easier to just go full force Gotham,” but Hawes wanted it softer, to reflect the time she’d spent embracing life in Rushville.

The actress also shared that she would “love” the opportunity to explore Kerry’s Gotham backstory more.

“Oh, God, I would love it,” Macdonald said. “But she’s younger then, as well, is the problem.”

“Yeah, I would love to [explore it]. I would have loved a bit more of that,” she said. “But it was tantalizing enough. The way it is, I think, is pretty good. But she does have a history, yeah.”