Well, the moment we’ve been waiting for finally arrived tonight when Jerome Valeska made his triumphant return to Gotham. And while he did steal every scene he appeared in, he didn’t eat up too much screentime. In fact, during the time he did stick around for, he was busy planting seeds for what’s to come, hoping to enlist Penguin as the first to join his “Legion of Horribles.”
That said, tonight’s offering obviously didn’t mark the origin of the Joker, something smart money says won’t occur until this season’s penultimate episode, “One Bad Day.” Regardless, it’ll be a few more weeks before we see more of Jerome, but there’s certainly much, much more to look forward to as the saga continues.
In a recent interview with ComicBook.com, actor Cameron Monaghan dropped a bomb by saying he’s actually playing more than one character this season:
“It’s a very strange thing. Obviously I can’t get too much into what the theory is or what that’s like. I will say that I wanted to make this guy feel distinct and I wanted to make him be visually different, I wanted him to carry himself different, I wanted his voice to be different. I wanted everything about him to be accepted. So that’s a challenge in itself, but also a challenge is, you’re basically acting with yourself. It’s a very weird thing. It’s definitely one of the most challenging things I’ve ever had to do as an actor. It was a bit of a head-trip.”
If you were to ask us, that’s one more piece of evidence to add to the growing mountain that supports our theory saying that the Joker will emerge as a new personality, paying tribute to Grant Morrison’s “The Clown at Midnight.” And, as Monaghan continued, it makes it even more difficult to not feel a sense of validation:
“I can’t wait for it to all be cut together, and for everything that happened to make its way forward. I can’t wait to see it. It’s a really unique experience and I think the story, it’s really clever. I think it helps spin the narrative of both Jerome and the Joker, in a new and exciting kind of way. It adds its own twist to the mythos. I think it’s really fun and really unique. So yeah. I can’t tell you enough, it’s a really cool challenge.”
Furthermore, he said that this route was the best way to “have Jerome maybe be involved in the creation of the Joker but have him not be the Joker.” Granted, what eventually does come to fruition likely won’t be a carbon copy of what went down in Batman #663, but it may very well be just as intriguing.
Gotham airs on Thursday nights on Fox.
