Gotham EP Says We’ll See More Of Batman Than Smallville Showed Superman

One of the biggest reasons I was glad for Gotham being renewed for its fifth and final season was that we’d likely see the series end in proper fashion. After all, I’m sure countless others would’ve felt cheated after devoting so much of their time watching the prequel show, only never to see Batman in the last episode.

Most fortunate for us all, we’ll be seeing just that sometime this spring. What makes this certainty exponentially more exciting is that it won’t be for a brief flash forward as I’d long assumed. Rather, nearly the entirety of the series finale will be spent in the future, effectively allowing us to see just whom these characters ultimately become.

Suffice it to say, this knowledge should put the kibosh on any lingering fears of a repeat of Smallville‘s conclusion. Though that particular finale did a fine job of capping off Superman’s origins, it was met with criticism because Tom Welling never suited up as the Man of Steel. Instead, his heroics were shown in the form of a CGI stand-in.

Reassuring us was executive producer John Stephens at yesterday’s TCA presentation. While there, he laid out how Gotham‘s finale is structured, even if he was a little cryptic:

“He’s in the episode. He’s not just in a last scene. The last episode is one scene in the timeline of the rest of the season, and then the rest of the episode is in the future. It almost feels in a weird way like another pilot.”

That statement somewhat echoes what frequent guest star Cameron Monaghan said not long ago:

“I will say we’ve been given certain liberties in this final season that we haven’t been given before that’s going to make itself pretty apparent as you watch it. All I’ll say is when you have an episode that’s a full-on Batman episode running around in the future, you’re going to have characters that you’ll expect to see. I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say at this point that it’s 10 years in the future — that’s been talked about openly by the producers and showrunners – I don’t want to say exactly what my role in that is, but it was kick ass. It’s one of the coolest opportunities I’ve ever had.”

I don’t know about you, but I’m geeked to see what those “certain liberties” might be. If Monaghan is in the finale, then maybe he’ll finally get to play a full-on Joker who refers to himself as such. Granted, Jeremiah is supposed to undergo a big change of some sort before long, but no definitive Batman tale is complete without the Clown Prince of Crime.

Gotham airs on Thursday nights on Fox.