Gotham spoilers are all over the place here.
Villains are everywhere on Gotham in Season 2, and as tonight’s episode “Azrael” showed us, sometimes those villains end up being different versions of previously existing ones, with the formerly deceased Theo Galavan wrecking shop as the deadly Azrael. And one scene in the second half of the episode clued viewers in to the Batman villain that Gotham is likely to give us next: The Mad Hatter.
Through moves that were far from clandestine, we watched mad scientist Hugo Strange talk to Ms. Peabody about his resurrection process, where they talk about implanting personalities on the Indian Hill subjects. He’s holding onto a copy of Through the Looking Glass and he then stops and spouts off this quote (that's actually from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
“But I don’t want to go among mad people," Alice remarked."Oh, you can’t help that," said the Cat: "we’re all mad here.”
Considering Batman never had any villains that went by the name Queen of Hearts or Cheshire Cat, I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that Mad Hatter will be one of the dastardly doctor’s next one or two dead-raising experiments. The show is doing a good job of letting the bad guys completely dismantle the Gotham City Police Department at every turn, making it a place that Batman will indeed need to save in the future. The Mad Hatter is only going to make things much worse, with mind-control devices that will certainly make for interesting interactions between manipulated characters later on.
Since Hugo Strange is applying personalities to those that are already inside his labs, this could mean that we’ve already met the person playing the Mad Hatter, and his name just might be Jerome. Think about it. What better person to put into the role of a mentally ill Lewis Carroll fanatic than the guy we all thought was the Joker when he was still alive? Actor Cameron Monaghan would destroy as Mad Hatter. I mean, technically Fish Mooney could also take that personality, but it wouldn’t be nearly as pleasing. My vote is for Jerome, and no one is making me say that, especially not that pile of hats behind me.
Mad Hatter has appeared in different Batman media over the years, from the original live-action series to Batman: The Animated Series (and other cartoons) to video games and more. It was announced over a year ago that the character would be joining Season 2 along with Clayface. The latter character was cast recently, but no word on Mad Hatter ever came out. Now we know that’s because it’ll be someone that Hugo Strange has already put his hands on.
There’s still no telling when Mad Hatter will come to Gotham, but we’re pretty sure it’ll happen before Johnny Depp plays the part again. Gotham airs Monday nights on Fox.
