Gotham season 5 already has its sights set on a new crop of villains from the comics - and at least one more hero as well. Fans of Gotham have spent every season wondering if it would be the last for the show, making the recent news somewhat bittersweet. Gotham was renewed for season 5, but it will in fact be the final one for the series. What’s more, the episode count will be reduced to 13. That could, however, provide for some tighter storytelling and allow Bruce to become Batman faster.
We’ll have to wait and see just how much the young Bruce Wayne resembles the Dark Knight by the end of series, but we know Gotham season 5 will be like a reboot. That means we could see even more focus put on the story of Bruce and Alfred and a pullback on the ongoing struggles of Gordon and the criminals of the series. Either way, we can certainly expect more characters from the comics to show up before everything is said and done, and for once it looks like they won’t all be villains.
CBR spoke with Gotham executive producer John Stephens about what fans can expect in season 5, and the creative didn’t shy away from teasing new characters.
The double-act of Scarface and Ventriloquist will be well-known to fans of Batman: The Animated Series, as the eccentric duo regularly popped up on the show. Gotham, meanwhile, is just campy enough to bring aboard a meek ventriloquist and his mobster dummy with a mind of his own. As for characters like Mother, Orphan, and Lady Shiva, they seem to indicate a particular arc for the show.
“There are a whole bunch of characters I want to see that I feel the viewers at large aren’t fully aware of, like Scarface or Ventriloquist,” Stephens told CBR. “There’s a great dark version of that character somewhere out there who I would like to see come out. Some characters we know we want to see are Mother and Orphan. We want to see Lady Shiva. We are going to see all those characters in Season 5.”
During the New 52, former Batgirl Cassandra Cain was reimagined as Orphan, another eventual member of the Bat-Family with an impressive pedigree. Lady Shiva just happens to be her mother, and the villain provides a nice contrast to the young hero. Mother herself is another foe Orphan and the others faced, so it looks as if Gotham will be merging all of these stories. And aside from providing more villains for the show, Orphan will be one of the few other heroes in the city.
The season finale of Gotham will be big, with teases indicating the events that will ‘reboot’ the series ahead of season 5. With a new threat looming, Bruce (and others like Cassandra) may finally step out to operate outside the law and protect their city. And though it will be a shame to not see where the series could have gone with time, the final season of Gotham looks like it will offer fans a lot to go out on.
MORE: Why Gotham Can’t Call Jerome or Jeremiah ‘The Joker’
Gotham airs Thursdays on FOX.
Source: CBR
