Is Gotham Season 3 Adding Bane Into The Mix? Here's What We Know

Spoilers below for the Season 2 finale of Gotham.

In Season 2, Gotham balanced its wacky storytelling with dark and mysterious drama, and those elements all came together beautifully in the finale’s final minutes, as Hugo Strange’s Bus O’ Monsters crashed and its groaning and grunting contents emptied out onto the streets of Gotham City, ready to cause some major hell in Season 3. One of those future-villains had more than a passing resemblance to famed Batman rogue Bane, and a new web promo seems to strengthen our assumption that the agile brute may indeed head to the small screen in the fall. Check it out.

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It’s pretty obvious who I’m talking about, right? It’s not the guy in the jacket on the right, and it’s not the upside down sack of Santa’s toys on the left. The looming villain standing closest to us – who is in fact looking back at us, as if to scare us into not following him – almost has to be Bane, right? I mean, he definitely looks like Tom Hardy’s version from The Dark Knight Rises, with the bald head and what looks like a breathing apparatus over his mouth. This guy doesn’t seem to be quite as hulking and muscular, but then maybe his odd choice of clothing is just hiding how ripped he is.

Here’s a closer look at the pic, which comes from a faux news story written for the finale over at Gotham Chronicle, a site officially tied to the show.

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I suppose Gotham could offer up any version of Bane that it wants, whether it’s the more modified version from later years or the costumed criminal that he was introduced as. In the comics, Bane went through some mad doctor experiments for his Venom drug, and though it wasn’t Hugo Strange working with him on the page, that’s an easy transition to make for TV.

That’s all assuming that it even is Bane, of course. There might be problems getting the character’s rights for Gotham, and so showrunner Bruno Heller might have needed to create a brand new big badass to take the place of Bane, possibly called Bame or Bwane. I don’t know why that need would exist, but I don’t know Mr. Heller personally. Or maybe that is Bane in the picture, but he won’t actually be in the show. There is no Occam’s Razor when it comes to this show.

Season 3 of Gotham is going to remain as wild and crazy in the villain department as both of the previous seasons have. It’s been hinted at that the Mad Hatter is coming, and other rogues like the Tweedle brothers and Solomon Grundy have also been teased. And with the Court of Owls’ presence expanding in the future, we’ll almost certainly get to see the Talon show up. And we all know that loud cackling in the finale was teasing a Joker appearance down the line.

Gotham Season 3 won’t get here until this fall, though we’ll probably hear one way or another about Bane’s chances before then. In the meantime, check out everything coming to TV this summer with our premiere schedule.

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Nick Venable
Assistant Managing Editor

Nick is a Cajun Country native and an Assistant Managing Editor with a focus on TV and features. His humble origin story with CinemaBlend began all the way back in the pre-streaming era, circa 2009, as a freelancing DVD reviewer and TV recapper.  Nick leapfrogged over to the small screen to cover more and more television news and interviews, eventually taking over the section for the current era and covering topics like Yellowstone, The Walking Dead and horror. Born in Louisiana and currently living in Texas — Who Dat Nation over America’s Team all day, all night — Nick spent several years in the hospitality industry, and also worked as a 911 operator. If you ever happened to hear his music or read his comics/short stories, you have his sympathy.