The Final Season Of 'Gotham' Promises Villain Redemption And Batman Himself...But Not Killer Croc [TCA 2019]

Fox presented a panel for Gotham's final season, which is subtitled "Legend of the Dark Knight." The DC series began as a Batman-less Batman show centered on Jim Gordon (Ben McKenzie) and the rogues gallery of Batman's villains. Bruce Wayne (David Mazouz) finally dons the batsuit as the series comes to a close, and the cast and creators previewed the finale.

Gotham producer John Stevens confirmed Mazouz himself wears the batsuit when you see his face, but full body shots required a stuntman."Is David Mazouz in the suit at the end?" Stephens said. "This is going to sound evasive but I'm going to say yes and no because both happen to be true. David is a strapping young man but our Batman suit is for someone who is 6'4". The face you see under the cowl is 100% David's face. We'll hear David's voice in his Batman growl."Now can Mazouz growl deeper than Christian Bale? The actor credits co-star McKenzie for inspiring his own growl.Selina Kyle actor Camren Bicondova said she will see her in the Catwoman suit by the season finale as well. "Yes, you will," Bicondova said. "Period."

Cameron Monaghan has played Jerome and Jeremiah Valeska on Gotham. He's worn clown makeup and sliced his cheeks, but still hasn't confirmed he is officially the Joker."If he's not The Joker then he's someone who does provide the origins for the person you're going to see later," Stephens said.Monaghan teased further, "I think there's something really interesting about The Joker and reinvention," Monaghan said. "That's a character who's chameleon-like depending on the situation. We've seen this character reinvented so many times throughout the show. This final version of it is all crystalized into this final form I would say. It's not even so much a new person as I think just the distilled version of what we've been doing for five years."That's very similar to the Heath Ledger version of the character, who had several different origin stories in The Dark Knight, none of which may be true. 

Gotham has dealt with The Penguin, The Riddler, Catwoman, Mr. Freeze, maybe The Joker, Bane this season and more. Killer Croc has been a running joke that the producers said would go too far."It would have been jumping the shark to do a 7 foot crocodile," director and producer Danny Cannon said.And yet, Stephenson teased an outrageous possibility. "We're never going to do Killer Croc, yet there's a character we're doing you can go that really looks like Killer Croc," Stephens said.I mean, The Flash did Gorilla Grod so why not?

Barbara Kean (Erin Richards) began the show as Jim's girlfriend. She became a villain herself, and the actors suggested the season finale would bring her redemption."I think it was also an important part of Barbara's story to have that redemption," Richards said. "She had such a huge character change from the beginning. It was such a nice way to end that she got to tell that full scope of she went right down to the darkest depths of herself and was able to crawl back up and finish in a beautiful way to end her story."A lot of the Batman villains are tragic characters themselves, so redemption is not out of the question. Well, maybe not for The Joker."Barbara's character illustrates a great point," McKenzie said. "Unlike some other shows ostensibly in the same genre, the villains often are set up as fairly two dimensional characters. It's been wonderful to watch the villains have a fully developed life of their own and have one or two or five iterations. By the end of the season you'll see her in her full form. It's quite nice. It's quite human and quite brave of the writers to embrace that."Gotham airs Thursdays on Fox.