Precious baby Batman prequel Gotham won't kick off its fifth and final season until 2019, but that doesn't mean we can't factually report updates/wildly speculate with almost irresponsible abandon in the meantime. For example: Deadline reports that Shane West (Nikita, Salem) has been tapped to play a recurring villainous role in Fox's DC comic series. West is reportedly playing a character named Eduardo Dorrance, an old Army pal of Jim Gordon (Ben McKenzie) before the current GCPD detective moved to Gotham with big city dreams of shooting petty thieves in the face. "As the scales fall from Gordon’s eyes," Deadline says, "he realizes Dorrance’s true intentions in Gotham are much darker and more evil than he could have believed."

A pretty big clue to these evilest of intentions lies in the character's surname. Sir Edmund Dorrance is the real name of DC Comics villain King Snake—note the use of the word "scales" in Eduardo's character description—who also happens to be Bane's father. You know Bane. Introduced as the genius-level lucha wrestler who broke Bruce Wayne's spine, the character eventually morphed into a mute 1990's monster in Batman and Robin before being taken over in The Dark Knight Rises by Tom Hardy, whose interpretation was kind of like the Monopoly Man on anabolic steroids.

With that, it's more than likely that West is playing a close relative of Bane or—in beautifully nonsensical Gotham fashion—the masked bat-breaker himself.

Of course, because this is Gotham, it is equally likely that Shane West's character falls into a vat of bullet journals and is just like, "oh no I'm Calendar Man now." But either way, Bane is coming; last month, CBR reported that a few season 5 episode titles had been released, with episode 8 being the most newsworthy: "I Am Bane."

Anyone who has followed Collider's Gotham coverage knows that I have an undying love for this incredibly absurd show. It comes from a deep respect for pop culture willing to get this unapologetically silly melded with a deep lack of respect for the way I spend my own time. I, for one, care very much about who Gotham's Bane is before he put on the mask.

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Image via Fox
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Image via Fox
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Image via Fox