Having been there since the beginning, one could say Edward Nigma ranks among the characters making up Gotham who’ve gone through the most over the course of the show’s history. In a nutshell, the guy went from being a socially awkward medical examiner working at the GCPD to one of the town’s most notorious criminals, the Riddler.
Of course, those of you who are current on the series know there’s much, much more to his story than that, but I’m not exactly here to write a Wiki bio. But what I can tell you is where the journey will pick up for him when the show returns with new episodes.
As you may recall, we left off with Nigma and Lee Thompkins brutally stabbing each other in some kind of weirdly romantic violent incident, with their bodies eventually winding up in the custody of one Hugo Strange. Naturally, this caused the imaginations of viewers everywhere to run wild, but we fortunately have some kind of idea of what lies ahead.
While speaking with TV Guide for their latest Comic-Con Special, executive producer John Stephens said that the Prince of Puzzles will begin season 5 “living in the public library, surrounded by books, mumbling to himself, totally naked and covered in tattooed riddles.” Lee, meanwhile, will “again” undergo a drastic change.
Knowing that the show’s final season will be heavily influenced by Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s Zero Year, one would expect for the Riddler to play a crucial role as an antagonist. Though I suspect Strange did a number on his mind, let’s just hope that one tattoo Nigma sports doesn’t adorn his forehead, or read “damaged.”
Gotham returns for its fifth season sometime in early 2019 on Fox.