The season finale for the Fox series Gotham saw some of the characters take dark turns when coming into their own, while others took far less defined paths. With Season 2 already being plotted, to go into production on June 22nd, you can rest assured that you will start to get answers and deeper character explorations when the show returns.
With awards season in full swing, a recent event was held to screen the finale for voting purposes, and Collider was invited, along with a handful of other outlets, to speak to the talent in front of and behind the cameras about what to expect from the aftermath of this season’s events. Actors Ben McKenzie, David Mazouz and Camren Bicondova, along with executive producers Bruno Heller, Danny Cannon and John Stephens talked about what secrets Bruce Wayne (Mazouz) might uncover about his family, just how dangerous Penguin (Robin Lord Taylor) will be now, the profound affect that Barbara Kean’s (Erin Richards) mental fragility will have on Jim Gordon (McKenzie), the status of Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle’s (Bicondova) friendship, the fate of Fish Mooney (Jada Pinkett Smith), Edward Nygma’s (Cory Michael Smith) agenda, and possible new villains. From those interviews, we’ve compiled 11 things you should know about the future of Gotham.
- Since the murder of his parents, Bruce Wayne has been searching for answers and has been driven by the desire to uncover his father’s secrets. Now that he’s found a secret passageway in Wayne Manor, David Mazouz is excited to find out what’s in there. “I don’t really know much. If you’ve seen the finale, I probably know as much as you do, but I’m so excited. There are just endless possibilities that can happen. Will the Batcave just be a massive Batcave? Of course, that was his father’s work place, but what exactly will be in there? Is it just a room with a desk and some papers that will actually not have any more clues, or will it be a massive treasury of clues to his father’s whole life’s work? I don’t know, but I’m very excited to find out.”
- As far as what Bruce Wayne could find down in that secret passageway, executive producer/showrunner Bruno Heller said, “I think what he’s discovered is a conduit or a pathway to finding out about his parents. It’s an analogy for everyone growing up, at that age, and discovering that their parents have flaws and have made mistakes, and that they have dark secrets. Sometimes they’re not the good people you thought they were, and sometimes they’re better people than you thought they were. That’s what down those stairs. That’s what we’re going to explore next season.”
- In regard to whether Penguin is the next best alternative to lead the Gotham underworld, Ben McKenzie said, “It’s the devil you know, at least in terms of Jim. He has the deepest relationship, in a way, to Penguin. He’s obviously the most volatile and the most cunning, as evidenced by his meteoric rise through the criminal syndicate. I think what it does, hopefully, is just raise the stakes for Season 2. If before, you had a bit of a detente between the two major powers, that’s completely destroyed, at this point, and other anarchy is right around the corner. That puts an enormous pressure on a guy like Jim Gordon to maintain some semblance of order, and that will possibly be his struggle in the second season.”
- Jim Gordon thinks that he saved Barbara Kean from The Ogre, but she’s clearly far more disturbed than he realized. When it comes to how who she’s become will impact him, McKenzie said, “It’s not going to impact him well. Obviously, there will be feelings of guilt associated with his role in her entire undoing. She would not have suffered what he suffered, if he was not who he is, and if he had not gone after The Ogre and courted disaster. This is the clearest indication we’ve had, thus far, that there’s a price to be paid for doing your job, for being honorable, and for doing the right thing. In the pilot, it was saving Penguin’s fight life, only to have him come back as the criminal mastermind that he’s become. Now, the love of his life is mentally unhinged. That’s going to have a really profound affect on his psyche and on his relationships, I would imagine.”
- The relationship between Jim and Barbara was always supposed to be ill-fated. Barbara is from the wealthiest possible family, completely disconnected from the reality of Gotham, while Jim is on the ground, trying to get things done. But the end result, according to McKenzie, was “an adjustment on the fly. We needed to figure out how best to use Erin [Richards], who is a wonderful actress, and how best to take advantage of what people were connecting to in their relationship, or not connecting to, and we needed to infuse a different relationship into it, as well.”
- Selina Kyle has certainly veered more to the dark side, in the last episodes of the season, but Bicondova said that doesn’t mean all is lost. “I do believe you’ll definitely see her going down the darker path, but I don’t see her as an evil character. She does bad things, but out of the goodness of her heart. She has good reasons. She had a good reason to kill Reggie. He was going to tell on them to a guy that’s not so nice. So, I don’t think you’ll ever lose her to the dark side. I think she’ll stay in the shadows, and then she’ll come out in the sunlight to get some food.”
- When asked whether the relationship between Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle is totally wrecked, or if there is still some hope for them, Bicondova said, “I think there will always be a little spark, but I do think that what she did to Reggie does not sit well with Bruce. I think it will have a toll on their relationship. But, it’s young love.” And Mazouz added, “If Bruce knew what Selina did in the finale, teaming up with the bad side, I don’t know how he would feel. We all know that, in the future, when he’s Batman and she’s Catwoman, they are friends, or frenemies, but their relationship is still unknown.”
- In regard to Jada Pinkett Smith saying that she would only be doing one season of the show, and Fish Mooney’s fate still being undetermined, Heller said, “I would definitely not assume anything in a town like Gotham, but Jada wanted to do one season. She had a hell of a good time, and we had a hell of a good time with her. I never rule anything out. It’s a very unpredictable world, the comic book world, and that’s what’s great about it.”
- When it comes to how Edward Nygma’s villainous agenda might be different from the others, and what that might look like next season, executive producer/director Danny Cannon said, “Dual life is very interesting. He is a split personality. There are two people inside of him. There’s a great, intelligent, smart, nice guy, and then, there’s this darkness inside of him that wants to come out. That battle between them is something that is going to be very much explored in Season 2. When you love a character as much as him, the terrible things that happen affect you more emotionally than they would with a normal villain, so that’s a lot of fun to do.”
- In talking about what viewers can expect from the already announced appearances of Clayface and Mad Hatter in Season 2, executive producer/writer John Stephens said, “We think about, who are the iconic characters that the audience really wants to see? Who are the ones that we feel like we can put a spin on because they’re going to fit into the realistic version of that world? We like the science villains, especially. For some reason, when we thought about Clayface, we immediately had a bunch of ideas about how we wanted to bring that character on, and it seems like they’re going to fit into the fabric of the world, as well. With the Hatter, that’s just a challenge. He’s always portrayed so Alice in Wonderland, all top-hatted out. I was like, ‘What is a version of the Hatter that is not that guy?’ You want to change things. I think Robin [Lord Taylor] changed everyone’s conception of The Penguin.”
- As far as which other characters we might see, Cannon said, “There are a couple of characters that we’ve always liked, in the canon of DC, and one of them is Mr. Freeze. His origin story has never been told, so that will be fun. We have to find the characters that really tell the stories we need to tell, in the age range that we need to tell it in.”
