Next week, Fox will unveil its fall schedule to its loyal fanbase, but in order to do that, the network first has to figure out how it's handling all the remaining straggling shows. Thankfully, Fox is sticking to its more bonkers storytelling guns by solidifying an official renewal for Season 4 for not only its pre-Batman crime drama Gotham, but also the unpredictably surreal The Last Man on Earth. If only Penguin and Tandy could come to blows one day.
Both Gotham and The Last Man on Earth are currently at story junctions where their settings are on the verge of being destroyed, but we're going to start with the show that still has a subsisting society. (Even if that society has birthed maniacs like Jerome and Nygma.) Gotham has been as wildly enjoyable as ever in Season 3, as almost all of the main characters have faced challenges that caused them to alter their initial moral stance, and the stage is being set to bow out with some most epic madness. It wasn't even worth considering that fans wouldn't get to see this increasingly more complex narrative play out for at least one more year, especially since Bruce Wayne still isn't old enough to vote yet, much less become a shadowy savior. (Expect some more villains.)
With The Riddler, Ra's al Ghul, Catwoman and more finding their footing in the latter episodes of Season 3, Gotham is poised to keep its twisty plots going for many more years. But Fox just needs viewers to keep tuning in, rather than the opposite. This third season has already faced a dip from Seasons 1 and 2, and it got even more apparent when the drama returned from its late winter break to a series low in viewership. Still, its demo rating, while not great, is pretty steady, as are the show's DVR stats. Most networks might have pulled the plug on Gotham, but Fox is definitely not most networks.
Almost all of the above things can also be said about The Last Man on Earth, minus Batman talk. Season 3 of the post-apocalyptic comedy has been its most interesting and experimental yet, with a handful of gamechanging twists and turns that completely changed up the relationships between most of the characters. (Except, of course, for the eyebrow-less Tandy and Carol, although there are some twists there.) The two-episode finale introduced an alarmingly intriguing obstacle, as well as a surprise callback to something that played out earlier in the season. It would have been a travesty to have the story dead end at that junction.
Of course, it would have been understandable, as The Last Man on Earth is one of Fox's lowest-rated series currently airing. (The finale reached just 1.8 million people on the night.) Considering it has a core ensemble of talented actors who are regularly destroying vehicles and buildings within cities that are absent of all other living creatures, I can't imagine the show is extremely cheap to produce, either. But I'm also not going to worry about it anymore, because Season 4 is coming, and as Deadline points out, Last Man was the most likely of Chris Miller and Phil Lord's trio of Fox comedies to come back, since Son of Zorn and Making History are expected to get axed soon.
Gotham airs Monday nights on Fox at 8:00 p.m. ET, and you're not going to want to miss what's coming. Meanwhile, The Last Man on Earth wrapped its third season last weekend, but we can thankfully look forward to it returning later this year. In the meantime, head to our summer TV schedule to see what's premiering and returning in the coming months.
