By next Tuesday, Gotham Season 1 will be a memory, rather than something to half-heartedly look forward to every Monday. It’s been a season of ups and downs, and we’re curious what characters are going down for good. Because actress Jada Pinkett Smith only signed on for one season, rumors have swirled that her character Fish Mooney is going to take the eternal fall in the finale. But that might not be the case at all.
Showrunner Bruno Heller was interviewed by ComicBook recently, and when asked if he’d be replacing Fish Mooney with newly created characters or other existing DC villains, he seemed optimistic about seeing Fish again in the future.
Personally I'm still hoping that Jada will be back. One of the problems of making a show like this is that you need actors who can really be big characters. You either have bigness or you don't, and Jada is big in spades. She's done a wonderful job for us and nobody dies forever in the DC Universe, necessarily, so I'm hoping whatever happens at the end of this season that Fish can and will be back.
This statement could almost be damaging to the series, depending on what happens in the finale. Her death isn’t necessarily a sure thing, as she might just get written out of the show by saying she’s off to take over the underworld of some other city. But if she does die, Heller seems to have made it clear that it might not even matter, should Smith decide she wants to rejoin the cast at some point, as she’ll presumably be welcomed with open arms.
Of course, the world of TV has always been prone to bringing back dead characters for things like flashbacks and dream sequences, so it’s almost impossible to predict how or why Fish would show up in Season 2 without knowing how things play out in the finale. Considering she already took her own eye and got shot in the stomach, one has to wonder if the third injury will be the charm that finally takes her down for good.
Season 2 is already set to have a smorgasbord of villains coming, and hopefully no one as goofy as The Balloonman. We already know Clayface and the Mad Hatter are on the way, and that we’ll be getting the Joker’s origin story as soon as the season begins. Edward Nygma’s transformation into The Riddler will also presumably be realized. And that’s all on top of The Penguin’s rise to infamy alongside Gotham City’s less flashy crime bosses.
Is there even any room for the larger-than-life Fish Mooney in Season 2?
