Gotham has always had a lot going on at any given time. Between Jim Gordon and the GCPD, the villain du jour, and Bruce Wayne, there are usually three plots going at once. The plots didn’t exactly converge into one by the Season 1 finale, but it looks like everything will be coming together by the end of Season 2. According to star Ben McKenzie, Gotham is building toward something epic:
I think the discerning audience member can realize that we’re heading in a direction where something’s going to have to give. Strange has been able to conduct his experiments pretty much in the dark – no one is really aware of it outside of himself and Ms. Peabody, and the monsters he’s creating are quite vicious, and you’ll see more of that as the season wears on. So eventually our hero is going to have to be aware of it, and I can’t give it away, but it will all make sense…I think the writers have a wonderful way of bringing it all together at the end of the season, not just Strange and Gordon, but Strange, Gordon, and Bruce Wayne.
Considering all of the action within each of the individual plots during the most recent episode, Ben McKenzie’s reveal to Variety is especially exciting. At the very least, it means that Jim and the other good guys at the GCPD may be able to go on the offensive for once. They spend most of their time trying to break even against the bad guys, and they’re so often the losers that it’s hard to believe that there are any cops aside from Jim and Harvey still alive. They deserve the chance for a win.
Of course, the good guys winning could mean the end of Huge Strange and his entire operation under Indian Hill. Strange has been so delightfully dastardly that it would be a shame to lose him after a half season. Still, if Jim discovers that Strange has been hoarding all of his defeated villains and making them even more terrifying, he couldn’t be blamed if he just blew up the entire facility.
The biggest question has to regard where Bruce Wayne will fit into everything. The second half of Season 2 has shown that Bruce isn’t really on Strange’s radar, and Jim has pretty much given up on actively trying to solve the Wayne murders. Bruce’s current path has him on the hunt for a man named Matches Malone. His attempts to enact vengeance on Malone will certainly bring Bruce into contact with some dubious characters, and David Mazouz has hinted at a journey that will take Bruce far from his normal adventures, so we can probably look forward to him crossing paths with Strange and Gordon somewhere in the near future.
A climax to Season 2 that connects all of the plots is a thrilling prospect, and Ben McKenzie’s clue about what the show is building toward will make the wait between episodes even more suspenseful. To see how Gotham works to bring the stories together, tune into Fox on Monday nights at 8 p.m. ET.
