Yesterday, Batman fans reacted in all sorts of ways to our first look at Shane West as iconic villain Bane on the set of Gotham season 5. Generally speaking, the character’s costume and overall aesthetic didn’t go down too well due its extreme differences from the typical image of the man who breaks the Bat’s back. The first official photo featuring Gotham‘s Bane has now arrived though and maybe it’ll change a few people’s opinions.
The promo pic sees the villain surrounded by fire, which reminds us that Gotham season 5 will follow on from the devastation inflicted on the city in the season 4 finale and loosely adapt the “No Man’s Land” comics storyline, in which Gotham becomes a chaotic hellhole quarantined from the rest of the country. Apparently, West’s character will be introduced as an old army buddy of Jim Gordon’s who’s come to help keep the peace, though obviously we know that’s not his true intention.
So, let’s address the venom-powered elephant in the room. Obviously, this character is nothing like the Bane that we know and love to hate. However, it’s worth remembering that West is playing Eduardo Torrance, who appears to be based on Edmund Dorrance, the father of Bane in the comics. As such, this is likely just a proto-version of the villain and not Gotham‘s adaptation of the actual juggernaut destined to be Batman’s nemesis.
Or, maybe it is. Honestly, it’s hard to second-guess Gotham when it’s thrown us left-field twists like “The Joker’s actually Jerome’s twin brother” (we think). Either way, the prequel series always puts its own spin of the Dark Knight’s rogues gallery. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. We just need to sit back and wait to see which it’ll be when Gotham returns for its fifth season in January 2019.
