Spoilers for Gotham’s Season 2 finale are below.
The unpredictably loony second season of Fox’s Gotham ended on a bafflingly strange note, as a bus full of Hugo Strange’s abominations were let loose into Gotham City. It included our first look and first double take at a long-haired Bruce Wayne doppelgänger, and Gotham executive producer John Stephens shared how this arrival in particular will inform the show heading into Season 3.
[He’s] a development that is in line with all the other story we’ve been telling [in Season 2], but one piece that we’ve kept hidden.
Maybe it’s silly to get giddy over the fact that there’s a legit plan for 2-uce Wayne – that’s the only time I’ll use that terrible nickname, I promise – but it wouldn’t have been THAT surprising had this bonkers reveal been a random stab at shock value. Knowing that this new character’s existence is tied to the overall narrative arc of Gotham inspires a hopeful feeling that the young billionaire’s story will continue moving in more interesting directions as he develops his future Dark Knight persona. And while comic fans aren't quite used to that development involving another teen version of himself running around, Gotham will apparently use Season 3 to continue carving its own path in this well-established mythos.
I’m assuming that the “other story” Stephens refers to is Bruce’s quest to get revenge for his parents’ murders, and not Strange’s plans or Jim’s troubles with the GCPD. I’d speculated after the finale aired that this Other-Bruce could be a clone created from Bruce’s DNA, or that he might be a brother taken away at birth for whatever reason. Thomas Wayne’s past with Hugo Strange at Pinewood is a primo slice of untapped story in which any number of things could have happened to the Wayne family’s bodily fluids in the name of weird science. I just wonder if Thomas or Martha knew about it. Or him. Whatever. We'll probably have some answers when Season 3 goes full steam.
John Stephens also had a nice and vague secondary teaser for how the crashed Monster Bus will affect the show in general when it returns. Here’s what he told TVLine.
The nature of the city of Gotham will change.
Kind of an obvious statement, as it would be nearly impossible to return to a normal way of life after a city has been ransacked by the resurrected corpses of villains who’d previously ransacked the city in other forms. But wait, the normal way of life in Gotham City is mostly villains causing havoc anyway, so wouldn’t an influx of new baddies really just be another day in the life for Gothamites? If we get more of the Joker and possibly even Bane in Season 3, though, the show could change its nature to a Brady Bunch-style variety hour for all I care. I can’t imagine that would be odder than what we saw in Season 2, and I feel like a life without Donal Logue belting out tunes is no life at all.
Gotham will return to Fox on Mondays this fall for Season 3. In the meantime, check out our summer TV schedule to see what’s coming to your TVs in the next few months.
