Season 2 of Gotham has been a total bloodbath for good guys and bad guys alike. In fact, the aspect of the show that requires the most suspension of disbelief has to be that there are still any cops and/or goons left alive. Now that Dr. Hugo Strange is on the scene with his mad science, however, some of those dead might not stay dead for too long. After the season has built toward Dr. Strange’s experiments on the bodies that he has contained under Arkham, it’s looking like a person known only at this point as Patient 44 may be returning to life.
We’ve already seen Strange achieving the impossible in his secret laboratory beneath Arkham. Firefly survived her horrible burns thanks to Strange’s ministrations, and the bespectacled madman constructed a special cell for Victor Fries to allow him to survive in subzero temperatures. He even managed to condition Penguin into sincerely – if temporarily – reforming his ways. Multiple episodes have shown a growing collection of corpses in the secret lab, and Strange doesn’t seem to be dissecting or harvesting them. Surely, the time has finally come for him to find a way to resurrect somebody.
The mysterious Patient 44 is going to reveal much of what Strange has been up to, according to TVInsider. Assuming that Strange has indeed been figuring out how to bring back the dead, one of the many characters sent off to that great dark and gritty city in the sky will return to Gotham.
There’s no shortage of candidates for resurrection from Seasons 1 and 2. Given the mad scientist skills that Strange has shown so far, we can’t even necessarily rule out the characters who were really, truly, 100% super dead. Theo Galavan was shot in the head, Jerome was shown grinning in rigor mortis, and even the Ogre took a bullet to the brain, but Strange has proven himself capable of incredibly terrible things.
Fish Mooney has been preserved under Arkham for a while now, and a triumphant comeback by the end of Season 2 could make a lot of sense, especially considering that Penguin is back to his old tricks again. Jerome’s death was a tragedy, based in part on taking away his epically demonic Joker-esque laugh, so it wouldn’t be too difficult to handwave whatever methods are used to bring him back. Galavan’s death has played such a big role in the second half of the season that Strange bringing him back as Patient 44 could be the perfect way to set up a cliffhanger.
It should be exciting to see how resurrection of very definitively dead characters would work on Gotham. The show could go the Pet Sematary route of ensuring that all reanimated corpses are murderous and crazy, or it could veer more toward Young Frankenstein abnormality. Anything can happen, and perhaps anybody can come back. We're definitely interested in finding out more about the "Karen Jennings" referred to in the episode clip below.
To see who Hugo Strange might pick to bring resurrect in some form or other as Patient 44, tune in to Gotham on Mondays at 8 p.m. ET on Fox. To see when your favorite shows will return in the near future, check out our summer TV premiere schedule.
