Gotham is nearly seven episodes into its first season, and viewers are already well acquainted with a few members of Batman’s future rogues gallery, such as Oswald Cobblepot and Edward Nygma. More pre-villains are on the way (like Harvey Dent), but the audience should prepare themselves for one in particular, for this is a character that truly embraces the power of fear...well, he will anyway. At the 2014 Comikaze expo in Los Angeles this weekend, it was announced that Jonathan Crane, a.k.a. the future Scarecrow will be appearing soon.
According to Zap2it, executive producer Danny Cannon stated that the villain will be seen as a child, and will inherit the title of Scarecrow from his father. This sets up the villain as a multigenerational figure who will not just antagonize Batman in the coming years, but also be a possible enemy to James Gordon. In the comics, Crane is a former Arkham Asylum psychiatrist who is obsessed with fear. While he also briefly taught at Gotham University, he was fired after his lessons on fear were endangering his students. His sanity broken, he took the moniker Scarecrow and has been terrorizing Gotham City with his fear gas ever since. Scarecrow has previous been seen in shows like Batman: The Animated Series and The New Batman Adventures, and was played by Cillian Murphy in Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises.
It will be refreshing to see another member of Batman’s rogues gallery who is a child on Gotham. Other than Selina Kyle and Ivy Pepper (Poison Ivy), most of the established villains introduced so far have been aged to being in their mid-20s or older while Bruce Wayne is still a boy. From a narrative standpoint, it makes sense to make these characters older so that they can participate in the continuing story, but with a few exceptions, most of these villains have been written to being around Bruce’s age in the comics and other adaptations. If the show ever decides to fast-forward to Bruce’s college years at Gotham University, Crane might make an interesting nemesis for the future Dark Knight to clash with.
The other interesting aspect of Crane’s introduction is that his father had the name Scarecrow beforehand. Recently in the New 52, it was revealed that Crane’s father developed fear gas for the U.S. government and tested it on his son. It sounds like Gotham will be taking a similar approach, only instead of serving his country by traumatizing his son with a chemical weapon, he’ll be terrorizing Gotham City. Gordon and Harvey Bullock will likely defeat Crane’s father, but the damage will already have run its course on young Jonathan. He’ll become fascinated with fear, and many years later, he’ll take the name his father once held and unleash his own wave of terror across Gotham City, and it will take more than the police to stop him.
