Fox's Gotham has brought in some of the most dastardly villains of DC Comics fame to the small screen and put its own wild twist on them. The show shocked fans everywhere by bringing in a precursor to the Joker in the very first season, and Jerome has come back time and time again. Even being killing and then literally de-faced wasn't enough to keep Jerome down. As of the end of Season 3, Jerome is once again captured and locked away in Arkham, so there's always the possibility that he'll get back in the game. According to one Gotham actor, however, Jerome probably will never be on the show as a regular. Drew Powell had this to say about Jerome full-time:
I feel like Jerome is a solo artist. He's not one to team up with anyone. Early on he had his Maniax, but I think the evolution of that character is he's a unique psychopath/sociopath, both. So I don't see any teaming up with Jerome. And that's part of the deal with him which was interesting; how they kind of had a Jerome section in the middle of our season. And part of that is the actor has another job, and the other part is that character is intense. 22 episodes is a lot of TV... So those characters that are super intense... you can't use them all the time or it stresses people out. So yeah, I think when Jerome comes, it's all about Jerome.
There have been many villains with many different vendettas over the years on Gotham, but they've usually made alliances with each other to form at least a couple major factions. In Season 3 alone, the criminal underworld was mostly split between Penguin and the Riddler. From what we've seen of Jerome, he's not a bad guy who could really play well with others for an extended period of time. He hasn't even been able to hold onto the same group of underlings for very long. Drew Powell's comments at the recent Heroes and Villains Fan Fest indicate that Jerome would simply bring too much intensity if he was around all the time.
Hopefully Jerome will still be a character who can drop in from time to time for a bit of murder and mayhem. Still, Gotham seems to have plenty of villainy in store even without him in the mix. The Season 3 finale revealed that Butch Gilzean's real name is actually Solomon Grundy, so Drew Powell will likely have plenty on his plate without Jerome on the scene causing chaos. All the deaths and twists of the finale mean that Season 4 will have a lot of action to pick up on, with at least one more big villain likely to return after a long absence. I'm still not 100% sure where Harley Quinn fit into the finale, but we'll undoubtedly get some answers on that front as well.
Besides, "less is more" might be the best policy with a villain like Jerome. He could lose the edge that makes him so unpredictable and so unsettling if we see him over and over and over again. Jerome wouldn't pack quite as crazy a punch if we could figure out his schemes ahead of time, and he wouldn't be as interesting as a stressor on the good guys if he was just another bad guy we see all the time.
Gotham will be switching from Monday nights to Thursday nights when it returns for Season 4 in the fall, so we'll have to wait a little longer in the week before we get our fix of the heroes and villains of Gotham City. If you need some shows to watch while you wait, our Netflix premiere guide and summer TV schedule can help you out.
