On January 3rd, Gotham will ring in the New Year with its final 12 episodes. It’s been a long and weird road to this point, with the show giving us a very strange version of Bruce Wayne’s childhood in which pretty much all of his rogues gallery has been established and defeated before he’s even looked at a Batsuit. But there’s one villain we haven’t seen in the show: The Joker. What we have seen though is Cameron Monaghan’s Jeremiah, who occupies a kind of IP quantum superposition, both being and not-being the Joker simultaneously.
This strange situation stems from an order by the Warner Bros. film division not to step on the big screen Joker’s toes. In regards to that, Monaghan previously explained:
“Pure green [hair] was off-limits to us (as well as the name “Joker”), a decision from high-up as they wanted to reserve these for films. A decision which ultimately I respect. They did not want to dilute the very lucrative brand. It allowed for creativity on our end.”
But whether he is or isn’t the Joker, it sounds like he’s going to out with a bang in these final episodes. Taking to Twitter, Monaghan said:
“J’s final appearance on Gotham is vile, vicious, nightmare-fuel horror and is everything I love about this character. Stoked.”
Based on this and previous statements, it certainly sounds like there’s going to be some serious drama around Jeremiah. Don’t believe us? Here’s some more of the actor on where we find his character going into the season:
“His plan succeeded. He destroyed Gotham. He marooned it. He created his maze and his image and all this stuff, which is rare for any villain to succeed. So I think that he’s enjoying that he’s king of the roost and he’s sort of working within the shadows with a lot of respect and he’s sort of the big boogeyman in the city right now. I think he’s enjoying that and it’s giving him a sense of ego and hubris. He has got a girlfriend now and he’s more successful than he’s ever been.
“I think that what’s driving him right now and what his plan and what he’s building is, he’s always working or building something, is Bruce. Bruce is his special project. It’s the one thing that’s bothering him and nagging him because it’s the one thing he didn’t succeed at. That’s what we see with him now is he’s happyish but he’s still unsatisfied because he needs to show Bruce how much he loves him, or his twisted version of love.”
Sounds pretty damn ominous, and also that Bruce Wayne is probably going to find himself in mortal danger. Were this any other show, I’d think it was to be taken for granted that he’ll survive. After all, he can’t be Batman if he’s dead.
However, Gotham has repeatedly shown its willingness to take some very strange liberties with the source material, so who knows what the hell’s going to happen. All we can say for sure is that this final batch of episodes is going to be where the creative team goes all out. And why wouldn’t they? It’s not like they have anything to lose at this point.
