Each season of Gotham presents fans with a smorgasbord of villainous lunacy, and most of the most famous comic-sourced baddies have some pizzaz going for them, from The Sirens' fashion to Penguin's form of bloviating. But when Gotham brings The Scarecrow back for Season 4 -- something that was frighteningly teased in that awesome new footage -- his style will be far less polished than others. Producer and writer John Stephens spoke with CinemaBlend and other outlets during this year's Comic-Con, and when I asked about the frightful foe, he told me they're going full-blown horror with Scarecrow's return.
At the very beginning of the season, Penguin has solidified his control upon Gotham like never before. Where he's kind of unionized crime. And Scarecrow comes in to basically reintroduce fear into Gotham and to remind people that the dark is still scary out there. And we're really going to fashion, especially Episode 2, almost a horror movie episode where we really get to see Scarecrow. I think he's like purely terrifying. Imagine, rather than the other versions of Scarecrow out there -- because there are a lot of different versions -- what if you just really tell Scarecrow as a horror movie? Because he could be scary as hell.
Some of the Batman mythos' freakiest live-action moments came in Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins, with its nightmarish use of Scarecrow's fear toxin, and if John Stephens in teasing Jonathan Crane's larger re-emergence as seen through a horror movie prism, I'm fully ready to breath up all of that fear gas. Metaphorically speaking, of course.
During Gotham's star-studded Comic-Con panel in San Diego, the crowd got to witness the very first look at Season 4, which is pretty incredible, considering Season 3 just wrapped a little over a month ago. The burlap-faced villain made a most bone-chilling appearance, giving Gotham City's citizens the feeling like they took all the bad acid from all the music festivals from the past 30 years.
Scarecrow was obviously discussed during the panel itself, and Ben McKenzie had the most to say at that time, confirming that Gerald Crane is passing the torch to his son, the more-than-willing Jonathan.
So we met his father Dr Crane in Season 1. So we've taken our time; we're gonna come back now to his son. You know, in circumstances probably not best described now, his son takes on his father's mantle and becomes the fully-realized Scarecrow. It's great. We're able to use this sort of fear toxin that Scarecrow is able to summon. We're completely unafraid---or perhaps afraid but we still persist--in expanding the universe and our capabilities.
If that first look is anything to go by, Scarecrow will definitely add a terrifying layer to Gotham that it doesn't get to show off as often as its other oddities. Let's not forget that Scarecrow's first appearance was in the episode that immediately preceded the episode that introduced the Graysons and Jerome "Proto-Joker" Valeska, a character that has overshadowed quite a few Gotham villains over the years. But check out the end of the sizzle reel below if you haven't yet seen the spooky dread that's on the way.
CinemaBlend will be dropping tons more Gotham coverage in the coming days -- about such things as Jerome and Barbara's potential for a comic-leaning future -- as the glory of Comic-Con fades into the cosplay-filled past. Gotham returns to Fox for its new night on Thursday, September 2While you're waiting to hear about it, check out our summer TV schedule
