Gotham has been toying with the introduction of the Joker since almost the very beginning. As a show that has found a way to introduce pretty much every major villain of Batman lore before Bruce Wayne ever takes up the cape and the cowl, surely the Joker was bound to make an appearance! Well, Gotham has gone quite far in building Jeremiah Valeska as THE Joker, but the question has been whether or not the show would really go all the way. The latest trailer proves that the show will at least turn the Joker vibes up to 11, and it already looks epic. Take a look!
If any fans wondered how Jeremiah could possibly make a better Joker-esque villain than Jerome, I'd say this trailer probably delivers an answer. Where Jerome was more or less an agent of chaos that could be pointed in one direction or the other, Jeremiah is controlled in how he spreads his mayhem. Unlike Jerome, Jeremiah doesn't want to destroy. Jeremiah wants to build.
Of course, he can't build anything without having somewhere build, and it just so happens that he's looking to build in Gotham. Or at least where Gotham used to be. The trailer proves that Jeremiah wants to destroy the city so he can rebuild it, and we learned in the previous episode that he has the explosives to do it. Blowing up the clocktower (as seen in a previous trailer) was just a demonstration to Harvey and the GCPD to motivate them to evacuate Gotham within six hours!
The trailer also proves that the other villains of Gotham City aren't going to take Jeremiah's plan to level the city lightly. It's really no surprise that Penguin and Co. won't stand with Jeremiah on this one; the bad guys can't squabble over who controls the underworld if the underworld has become a no man's land. Unfortunately for the non-Jeremiah bad guys, he's not going to let anything stand in his way.
For all those Killing Joke fans who tune in to Gotham, the last two episodes of Season 4 look like they should be satisfying. Gotham appears to be substituting Bruce Wayne and Alfred in for Jim Gordon and his daughter Barbara from The Killing Joke, and the trailer already has Bruce admitting that he and Jeremiah share a dark side. Bruce just believes he's better at controlling his dark side than Jeremiah. For his part, Jeremiah believes that Bruce is the brother Jerome never was. Oh, boys.
Between what we see of Jeremiah's actions and how the show has costumed him, we have to hope that Gotham will go all the way and call Jeremiah the actual Joker. There's no guarantee of how long Gotham will last (although we're hoping for at least one more season) and it's difficult to imagine Gotham ever finding a better Joker than Jeremiah. If Bruce is coming closer to becoming Batman, the time is right for the Joker.
We'll have to wait and see. New episodes of Gotham air on Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET on Fox. For more of what you can watch on the small screen, take a look at our rundown of important superhero TV dates and our summer TV premiere schedule.
