Gotham showrunner and creator Bruno Heller may be blah about costumed superheroes flying around TV screens, but he excels at bringing out the comic book flourishes of the worlds those heroes live in. And the Fox crime drama is especially intriguing when it comes to how it's handling Batman's iconic nemesis The Joker, which is mostly set around Cameron Monaghan's Jerome Veleska. But a comic villain (or team of them) will soon return to Gotham City, and it could be our first taste of a Joker-infused storyline in Season 3.
The episode synopsis has been released for Episode 5, which is titled "Anything For You," and it will feature the return of the Red Hood Gang, who haven't been around since Season 1. Here's the rundown.
Crime in Gotham is at an all-time high, as Penguin struggles to uphold his promises to the city. Meanwhile, Butch goes down a dark path with the infamous Red Hood Gang and Bruce begins to investigate Ivy's whereabouts in the all-new 'Mad City: Anything for You' episode of Gotham airing Monday, Oct. 17 (8:00-9:01 PM ET/PT) on FOX.
Comic book fans know that in some iterations of The Joker's pre-Clown Prince days, he took on the persona of the master criminal Red Hood. Though the Red Hood Gang's story later involved Jason Todd and then got retconned, part of Red Hood's lore is in the mistaken identity aspect, whether it's Joker not realizing he's been set up as a hood-wearing patsy or if it's a gang that changes up the "leader" position to throw authorities off or, in Gotham's case, because they keep shooting each other. Perhaps not incidentally, the Joker has been described as a possible ideal or state of mind that will affect several characters, which is kind of like the passing of the Red Hood mantle.
Interestingly, the cast listing touts Blossom's Michael Stoyonov as "Red Hood Leader." That's worth an eyebrow-raise not only because of the concept of leader that we just discussed, but because Stoyonov was also one of the actors that portrayed The Joker's bank-robbing gang in The Dark Knight's stellar opening. (He was Dopey.) And in that opening scene, Heath Ledger's Joker used the same kind of identity swap to fool both the cops and his co-robbers. It's all connected!
The Red Hood Gang last appeared in Season 1 in the episode immediately after Jerome was first introduced, though the two situations weren't directly linked up. It is, of course, entirely possible that Red Hood and The Joker have mutually exclusive arcs happening on Gotham, but Bruno Heller seems like the kind of guy who wants everything to be connected in some way. (Stoyonov's casting cements that, right?) And you can't have this kind of mysterious origin story going on with a big bad like Two-Face.
We are almost certain that Jerome will head back to the land of Gotham's living fairly soon, with Hugo Strange's experiments likely the source of his resurrection, and Cameron Monaghan was teasing his return recently. It can't happen soon enough, though, regardless of if the Red Hood Gang is involved.
With sexy Poison Ivy and Bruce 2.0 on the loose, Gotham airs Monday nights on Fox at 8:00 p.m. ET. To see when other masked villains and others will make their way into your homes via the small screen, check out our fall premiere schedule.
