The end of an era is upon us, now that Gotham is saying goodbye after five gloriously one-of-a-kind seasons of comic book television. From its earliest Wayne-murdering moments to the flash-forward finale, Gotham has always provided fans with a plethora of wild introductions, shocking twists, radical deaths and more Batman-adjacent madness.
While I may not miss each and every single moment that went down on Gotham during its reign, there are oh so many unforgettable elements that few other TV shows will likely be able to match up with, if any dare try. Here, we're running down a selection of the many, many things about Gotham that our lives will be sorely lacking in the future. (Outside of reruns, anyway.)
I will miss... being able to make weekly comparisons between the near-adult David Mazouz's Bruce Wayne and 13-year-old David Mazouz's Bruce Wayne. Both for his overall height, and also for how amusingly tall his hair got.
I will miss... how placidly Gotham characters roll with the punches after, say, learning about a man who uses a supernatural pool to maintain semi-immortality, or after witnessing half of the criminal underworld dying and then getting resurrected as wildly different entities. Gotham City could use someone like Iris West to spread news about all of its reality-defying incidents.
I will miss... all those dark and moody building exteriors shots used to set the various scenes up. If there were somehow a way for me to get this version of Gotham City's skyline printed up to put across a giant wall of windows, it would be amazing. Though I would also need that giant wall of windows.
I will miss... how, just when you think none of the characters are going to seemingly come back from the dead in order to temporarily take on the persona of an evil ventriloquist doing the bidding of his malicious puppet, one of the characters seemingly comes back from the dead and does just that.
I will miss... the way that Gotham can sometimes become a conspiratorial paranoiac's nightmare, in that everyone really IS in on it sometimes.
I will miss... the speculation-centered innocence experienced back when Cameron Monaghan first appeared as Jerome Valeska in Season 1's "The Blind Fortune Teller," before it became an adventure unto itself trying to determine when he might officially become The Joker. Speaking of...
I will miss... trying to figure out what the hell was going on with Jerome, Jeremiah and the Joker's maniacal influence. Gotham crafted one of the Clown Prince's most fucked-up origin stories to date, with each arc more dementedly engrossing than the last.
I will miss... watching Erin Richards' rise from the dreck of Barbara Kean's life with Jim to her long and masterful evolution to become one of Gotham City's most feared and respected villains and/or business owners.
I will miss... the eternally intriguing relationship between Oswald and Ed, both as their supervillain selves and as their slightly more humanistic iterations. It's tough to beat out Bruce and Alfred as a "dynamic duo," but for what it's worth, I'd probably rather watch this Penguin and Riddler get a spinoff than an official Batman TV show get ordered up.
I will miss... the frequent thought of wanting to stitch Alfred's sage wisdom onto pillows, and then acknowledging that I would only learn how to sew in the first place if Alfred taught me.
I will miss... thinking of James Gordon as the white-bread square one anchor of Gotham's wild and luxurious hair game. While just about everyone in Gotham City got startling hair modifications throughout the five seasons, Jim doesn't like to stray from what's comfortable, so he just sorta went from "short" to "not quite as short" to "slightly more short."
I will miss... the rather non-dramatic reveals for each new subtitled section of a season. There was never the rabid fervor that accompanies the thematic reveal of an American Horror Story season, but each arc's title still managed to instantly pump me up all the same.
I will miss... Shane West's Bane, plain and simple. Gotham nailed both the comic icon's look and his voice, and West himself delivered a surprisingly intimidating performance as the villainized military vet. It's a shame he arrived in Gotham City so late in the game. I mean, not for any innocent citizens or anything.
I will miss... all of Barbara's frequent hairstyle and hair color changes. This entry would also go on the list of Things I'm Most Jealous Of Gotham Characters For.
I will miss... theorizing about Dr. Hugo Strange's medical past, and how many other monstrosities he created when Gotham viewers weren't looking.
I will miss... watching the GCPD's main hall getting completely demolished every ten episodes or so, only for it to be back in full working order the next week.
I will miss... meeting all the random and interesting people within Oswald Cobblepot's life, from his spooky father to his various henchmen (such as Zsasz and Butch) to his hired help to his pets to his angelic choirs. Someone as dynamic as Oswald should only be surrounded by similarly striking people, which is why he and Ed get along so well.
I will miss... Gotham's flair for going off the deep end with character hallucinations and dream sequences, which led to some of the most memorable shots of the show's history. Season 4 in particular delivered a bevy of eyeball-grabbing moments, such as Jim Gordon's faux-stache, the clown-heavy visuals caused by Scarecrow's fear toxin, and Bruce imagining Alfred going psycho and cutting Joker-like scars into his own face. But I will miss them all!
I will miss... Jeremiah's Zorro, which I still don't understand, but want to be reincarnated as all the same.
I will miss... the unexplained mysteries that Gotham has delivered over the years that may stay unexplained. I'm still not sure I understand why Isabella was Kristin Kringle's doppelgänger, or what happened to Bruce's "514A" clone, or where all the Talons went, or how Mr. Freeze keeps existing without drawing weekly attention to himself, among other things. But I never stopped having fun thinking about what it all meant.
I will miss... the anticipation of waiting for Baby Future-Batgirl to arrive. That one really took a while.
I will miss... Ed's riddles, which he seemed to use far less as the seasons went on, even after becoming The Riddler proper. Those were always some of my favorite bits from the comics (as well as the more recent Arkham video games), and when Gotham brought them out, it was fun to watch the characters try to solve Ed's potentially deadly challenges.
I will miss... scenes set inside Arkham Asylum, where no one is allowed to be boring or unwatchable. From Jerome's numerous stints to Oswald's Ice Cream Therapy to Nathaniel Barnes' final Gotham moments, Arkham Asylum thankfully got its due justice on the Fox series.
Technically, that's not everything that I'll miss about the wonder that is Gotham, but it's a nice prologue for the full list. Let us know what you'll miss the most about Gotham in the comments.
Gotham airs its series finale, "The Beginning," on Fox on Thursday, April 25, at 8:00 p.m. ET. Thanks for the memories!
