At the end of Gotham‘s season 4 premiere, we got our first glimpse at the latest supervillain to terrorize Bruce Wayne’s home town. Following on from his introduction back in season 1, Dr. Jonathan Crane has finally suited up as famed Batman foe the Scarecrow. In episode two, suitably titled “The Fear Reaper,” Scarecrow will begin to make his mark on Fox’s prequel show. And, thanks to this new batch of images from the episode, we have our best look at the psychotic psychologist yet.
Gotham‘s Scarecrow draws a lot from the character’s modern look in the comics as well as the Arkham video games. The classic sack-like mask is in check as are the rotten, baggy clothes. The costume becomes slightly more ambitious though with thick piping twisting around him, which presumably feed into Crane’s gas mask and also spray out his patented fear toxin from a couple of gas canisters worn on his back.
Dare we say it, this looks like the best version of the villain we’ve ever seen on screen. Cillian Murphy’s performance as Crane in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy was excellent, but his costume left a lot to be desired – to fit the movies’ scaled-back tone, Murphy’s Scarecrow wore a creepy mask, but that was it. Batman: The Animated Series burnt through several redesigns before it found something chilling enough, but the “mad preacher” style they eventually went with was too far from the Scarecrow’s core concept to be totally effective.
The rest of the images from “The Fear Reaper” tease Barbara Kean’s return after her death last season. As fans know all too well by now, death is easily reversible on Gotham and Barbara looks to be badder and madder than ever now that she’s been resurrected. For one, it seems like she’ll square off against the Penguin and his cronies next episode, which has us very excited.
Be sure to catch Gotham season 4 every Thursday on Fox.
