Don’t expect Gotham to go out with anything less than a bang. The Batman prequel series starts its fifth and final season on Thursday, Jan. 3 and it’s very much about the Dark Knight rising.
Season four ended with Gotham City becoming a No Man’s Land. The city is cut off from the outside world (thanks to nefarious happenings, obviously), and young Bruce Wayne (David Mazouz) is really feeling the effects of it. When we find the man who will become Batman, he’s trying to help out Jim Gordon (Benjamin McKenzie) and take care of Selina Kyle (Camren Bicondova).
“He’s stretched very thin,” Mazouz told E! News on set of the final season. “As is everybody in Gotham, all the good guys at least. But that’s also the thing, everybody’s a good guy at this point because—at least all of our central characters, even the bad ones are kind of good guys—because there’s so much unknown and so much evil out there in Gotham, kind of lurking, just waiting to show its face that everybody needs to band together if they have any kind of common ground at all. So, Bruce is, he’s tired, I think that’s the best way to put it.”
“He’s in for a treat when the season starts. It’s Gotham, so we know a lot’s going to go down…It’s absolute mayhem, which turns into a formative experience for him and only pushes him closer to being Batman,” he added.
And viewers know we’ll see Bruce become the caped crusader this year, so there will be much more traditional Batman elements, like new technology and gadgets for the war on crime. Plus, there will be bats. Physical bats. There’s also going to be some additional development between the young man who will become Batman and the young woman set to become Catwoman, with Selina becoming very much like her comic book counterpart, with a brutal twist. Click play on the video above to hear more on that pair.
As for Gordon, it’s desperate times for him, McKenzie said.
“Part of what Gordon’s doing at the beginning is just kind of trying to keep the wolves at bay…and take care of as many as the survivors/refugees that he can,” McKenzie said. He’s also looking for help from the outside, but viewers will learn why that isn’t happening. At the end of the day, will we ever see Jim Gordon happy?
“No, no, not really,” McKenzie said. “Look, there will be moments of happiness…however, Gotham is a bleak landscape, without kind of constant doom and gloom around every corner, it ceases to have any real conflict, any real depth. Some big victories, but a lot of turmoil along the way.”
Hear more above.
Gotham airs Thursdays, 9 p.m. on Fox.