Over the course of its previous four seasons, Gotham sure did put its stamp on a wealth of villains taken from the Batman mythos. In addition to favorites such as the Penguin, Riddler, Mr. Freeze and Ra’s al Ghul, more obscure baddies like Professor Pyg and Flamingo were brought to the mainstream, not to mention Hugo Strange finally getting his first appearance in live action.
Naturally, the fifth and final season will pile a few others on top of that, as Shane West’s debut as Bane is no doubt the biggest addition. Plus, we have the return of Cameron Monaghan as the Joker-like Jeremiah Valeska on the horizon, so it’s safe to say he’s going to steal more scenes.
As for the new blood in town, we learned months ago to expect the likes of Scarface and Ventriloquist, but that, unfortunately, will no longer be happening. Confirming this was executive producer John Stephens in a recent interview with ComicBook.com, where he said the following:
“We do have a couple things like that coming. We have … because we were never able, at the end of the day, unfortunately, to get in the Ventriloquist, which especially for No Man’s Land feels like something we should have done, you know? But every time we wrote him in, he just kept getting squeezed out by the story, so we have Easter Eggs with him in the story, obviously. And we have smaller gangs that feature in throughout no-man’s-land that we’ve put into the story as well. But I would say Ventriloquist is probably the big one that we didn’t do. But otherwise not so much.”
When Stephens lays it out like that, it becomes highly understandable why he and his colleagues just weren’t able to find the right spot for the Ventriloquist. On the plus side, though, his use of the word “him” pretty much tells us that Arnold Wesker would’ve been the version they’d gone with, as there was some speculation the nod would’ve gone to Shauna Belzer.
As for the other omission touched on, Stephens shared his lamentation with the following reveal:
“I’ve been trying to get Condiment King in for five years, but every time I pitch Condiment King, people are like, ‘we’re not going to be doing Condiment King.'”
Gotham returns for a fifth season free of ketchup and mustard sometime in early 2019 on Fox.