Well, it looks at though Gotham is finally catching up to its advertising as evidenced by the first trailer promoting its winter finale, “Mad City: The Gentle Art of Making Enemies.” I mean, it’s no detriment to the show itself as the three-episode arc exploring the return of Jerome has played out at an organic pace, but the network keeps releasing material that spoils where the story will go next just as they did with this round of photos that debuted yesterday.
If indeed Jerome turns out to be this universe’s version of the Joker, it’ll be interesting to see the mythology play out differently than what we’re used to. From what we can tell, the recently resurrected madman will have a showdown for the ages with a young Bruce Wayne in an amusement park that’s highly reminiscent of imagery from Batman: The Killing Joke. And given all the talk surrounding the recent animated adaptation, the callback is probably by design.
Despite not being a series regular, many have argued, myself included, that Jerome is among the best characters to have been featured in this series. Although this take on the iconic villain is charting new territory, Cameron Monaghan’s performance is spot on. In fact, he recently had this to say to IGN concerning the show’s reinterpretation of the Joker:
“It’s very cool to touch the character at all. What’s kind of unique about Gotham, and what plays to the strength of this story, is that Gotham is its own canon. Within the comics, anyone who’s familiar with reading comics knows that many different canons exist. There’s no specific one story for pretty much every character. Gotham has its own canon which then allows for volatility. Volatility for the story. Because we don’t know for sure what’s going to happen. We don’t know who’s going to live or die necessarily.”
On that note, he continued with the following:
“Jerome killed Sarah Essen on the show and that character was around a long, long time in the comics only to be killed by the Joker way, way later, further down the line. So we know already that certain things aren’t safe. That’s what’s exciting about telling a story like Jerome’s. He’s familiar but not so familiar that he feels like old hat. I see that as a positive. And the fact that people are enjoying the story is really freakin’ cool. I’m a fan of the stuff myself so everything I’m doing is in service of my inner fan and so I’m trying to satisfy that guy. Obviously I’m not going to be able to satisfy everyone, but that goes with art, and especially with adapting comic book material. But the fact that people do like it and are excited about it makes my job great.”
Gotham airs Monday nights on Fox.