Gotham City's heroes and villains faced one of their toughest challenges yet recently, as the gloriously bizarre Gotham remained on the renewal-or-cancellation bubble longer than everything else in Fox's lineup. Alas, justice prevailed, and Gotham has been renewed for Season 5. Unfortunately for fans who relish in 20+ episodes a year from the battiest comic book show on TV, Gotham is actually ending its run with Season 5. What's more, viewers might only be getting 13 more episodes, and we may have to wait a while for them.
The 13-episode order isn't fully confirmed just yet, but it would put Gotham at the all-important hallmark of reaching 100 episodes, putting it in the sweet spot for syndication pickups, which would further the success that Warner Bros. TV has had outside of Fox, mainly with Netflix. As well, it's rumored that the shortened season wouldn't be aired until after the midseason break, according to Deadline. Meaning after the finale, new Gotham episodes may not arrive until 2019. Hopefully that's just a worst case scenario, though the drama's move to Thursday nights for this past season indicates the network might not have reservations against such delays.
Without getting too into spoilers, Gotham made the second half of Season 4 all about the passage of madness-inducing villainy from Cameron Monaghan's Jerome to Cameron Monaghan's Jeremiah, with both serving as inspirations for the future rise of The For-Really-Real Joker at some point in the future. The insanely dark arc, which also featured a Killing Joke episode, is wrapping with Gotham's version of the cataclysmic "No Man's Land" comic storyline, which could set the stage for an even more unpredictable narrative in Season 5, and now that the creative team knows this will be the last batch of episodes, they will almost definitely craft something fans will be rave about, with Bruce Wayne possibly becoming Batman before the season's end.
Here's the early word on where the producers are saying Season 5 will go:
The fifth and final season will wrap up this unique origin story of the great DC Comics Super-villains and vigilantes, which revealed an entirely new chapter that has never been told.
It was a huge week for Fox, which made some big and shocking decisions with many of its shows. Fan-favorite comedies like Brooklyn Nine-Nine and The Mick were cancelled, while the headline-grabbing Lethal Weapon was renewed for a third season with a completely new star replacing former star Clayne Crawford. Now that we know Gotham will be back for at least one more year, we can begin our petitions to get the upcoming DC Universe streaming service to get involved for Season 6.
Gotham still has one gigantic episode left to wow fans with before potentially wrapping things up with Season 5. Catch the explosive finale on Fox on Thursday, May 17, at 8:00 p.m. Head to our season finale rundown to see when the remaining big endings are airing, and then hop to our summer premiere schedule to see what shows will be premiering when "No Man's Land" is but a distant memory.
