Gotham may not have shown Batman until the final seconds of its series finale, but the Fox show certainly had no problem putting its own spin on the members of the Dark Knight’s rogues gallery, from Penguin and Riddler being two of the most important characters, to folks like Mr. Freeze and Mad Hatter causing trouble across multiple seasons. However, one villain who technically got the Gotham treatment was Batman’s arch-nemesis, The Joker. Instead, identical twins Jerome and Jeremiah Valeska, played by Cameron Monaghan, filled the void left by The Clown Prince of Crime, and Gotham producer John Stephens addressed the difficulties that came with this approach.
It’s not like the creative minds behind Gotham deliberately steered clear of using The Joker, it’s just that during the show’s five-season run, they were told by “higher ups,” as Monaghan once described them, that the name Joker and his trademark green hair could not be used. Jerome and Jeremiah were each labeled as a “Proto-Joker,” and here’s what Stephens had to say about this in a Gotham oral history put together by IGN:
There are a lot of different voices, and different elements involved, and they had different agendas. Different people wanted different things with different properties. And yeah, there were certain things that were off limits, like The Joker. And so we did a lot of work arounds with Jerome and his brother in order to make a kind of Joker predecessor, or Joker-ish type character. It wasn't always a coherent strategy. I would say.
Introduced in the Season 1 episode “The Blind Fortune Teller,” Jerome Valeska was initially only supposed to be a one-off character, but Cameron Monaghan impressed the Gotham team with his performance so much that he was brought back as a recurring player for three more seasons. Then in the final stretch of Gotham Season 4, Jeremiah was introduced, and he stuck around as a recurring adversary as well until the show came to an end. The brothers portrayed different characteristics of The Joker, with Jerome being more impulsive and chaotic, and Jeremiah being more level-headed and calculating. It was a unique way to adapt this classic comic book foe, but judging by Stephens’ comment, it was a hassle trying to make this work with the imposed restrictions.
Jerome was ultimately killed (for good this time) by James Gordon in “That’s Entertainment,” but Jeremiah soon took his place after he was dosed with a special blend of the laughing toxin Scarecrow created. Outside of turning his skin chalk white, Jeremiah claimed that the toxin had no effect on his sanity, although during Season 5, he started to become more unhinged. After falling into a vat of chemicals that disfigured him in “Ace Chemicals,” Jeremiah’s sanity further deteriorated, to the point that in the series finale, titled “The Beginning,” after a decade of pretending to be comatose, he essentially showed all of Joker’s traits. In fact, he didn’t even think of himself as Jeremiah anymore, saying that he felt something “new” and “beautiful” emerging from his past self.
Whether or not Jeremiah will become The Joker to David Mazouz’s Batman or if another individual will take on that mantle is up to fans’ imaginations. Still, I can’t help but wonder how Gotham might have turned out if it had been able to handle The Joker in a more traditional manner. The tradeoff, though, is that we wouldn’t have gotten to see Cameron Monaghan play these twin brothers who, although quite different from each others in certain ways, each effectively served as impressive stand-ins for the cackling villain. Break out your Max subscription if you’d like to revisit those performances.
