The curtain comes down on the third season of “Gotham” with this two-hour finale event. The first part – “Destiny Calling” – was the more entertaining of the two for me, though “Heavydirtysoul” did set up some interesting stuff for next year.
With the Tetch virus violently sweeping through the city (which we’re reminded of every time they cut to an establishing shot with buildings on CGI fire), the main plot thrust of “Destiny Calling,” once Lucius uncovers evidence that he was working on an antidote, is finding Dr. Strange. But Gordon (who – and I’ll have a whole rant about this later – is allowed to keep working as normal despite being infected) and Bullock aren’t the only ones looking for him and he ends up being grabbed out from under them by Fish Mooney. Partnered with the Penguin and his hot-and-cold henchmen, Fish’s aim is to ransom the cure for a chunk of the city the freaks can control. But when Strange finally hands it over, they’re ambushed by…let’s call them a league of assassins, shall we? A big brawl breaks out between all the parties, Gordon accidentally kills Fish (and it looks like it’s gonna stick this time. Bye, Jada Pinkett Smith, I’ll kinda miss your pop-ins!), and the antidote vials are destroyed.
There were a lot of fun touches in this part of the story. For one, B.D. Wong plays Strange’s every reaction to the escalating madness around him with this amazing sarcastic lilt in his voice, particularly the bone-dry “Ooooooh noooooo” when first confronted by Fish at the train station. The banter between Mr. Freeze and Firefly was also amusing, with them nearly using Strange’s feet for a contest over who’s more skilled with their weapon, and Freeze later admiring Strange’s meat locker lab. And the sprawling fight sequence between cops, freaks, and ninjas was pretty cool.
Attention in hour two turns to the Mad Hatter, as it’s revealed – reminding me of my comparing Jervis and Alice to the awful brother and sister from season two of “Heroes” when the casting news came out – that his blood is needed to create the antidote. This seems like a plot hole, though, as Strange and Jervis were never at Arkham at the same time and thus Strange would not have had access to Jervis’ blood. Anyhoo, the first one to get his hands on the Hatter is Nygma, who agreed to assist a power-thirsty Barbara in taking advantage of the chaos in exchange for help killing Penguin. But Gordon realizes they can barter with the arrested Penguin to get Nygma to betray Babs. Another big battle breaks out and, pinned down with no other options, Gordon slices into Tetch with a broken bottle to collect the sample they need. The cure is then rather quickly manufactured (by GCPD lab monkeys, weirdly; Dr. Strange is off-screen throughout this part) and the city is saved, with a news report later saying that 90% of the infected have been cured (I wonder if the other 10% will end up being new villains next year).
Okay, rant time – I hated the way Gordon’s being infected with the virus was written across these episodes. I said last week that I thought him not being negatively affected by it was a little Mary Sue-ish, and that’s even more true here. Everyone else in the city – including poor Alvarez, the cop Bullock is always barking orders at, who loses it at the precinct and has to be taken down by Lucius – immediately succumbs, but Gordon is able to fight it off for hours, overnight? Nope. And not only resist it, but basically call upon it when it benefits him, and then stuff it back down? Double nope. And it also somehow turns him into an expert swordsman, as we unbelievably saw during the fight with the ninjas? Triple nope. The gassy monologues from both Bullock and Leslie about how awesome he is – super cop, bestest friend, greatest lover, blah blah blah – didn’t help in that regard either. But I did like where things ended with him and Bullock, going for a beer and bantering about wanting to get back to beat cop-level stuff.
Oh, and what about Leslie? Well, amusingly, she kills time during the first episode by having drinks at Barbara and Tabitha’s club and telling Tabs that she wants to rip Babs’ head from her body (Barbara later notes to Gordon that this threat made her like Leslie more. I’m actually kinda sad these two ladies didn’t bump into each other!). She then almost seduces Gordon into leaving town with their infections intact, but Gordon is able to dose her and himself with the antidote before it’s too late. So at the end of the episode, we see her leaving town alone (and sidebar – why is she not under arrest? It’s not like she was infected when the bomb went off, she purposely infected herself so I would think everything she did under its influence would be a crime. But what do I know). Bye, Morena Baccarin, I feel like you’re not going to be a series regular next year!
The situation with the virus also results in a big shakeup with the villains. Edward and Oswald are still obsessed with killing the other and the tables are turned between them several times throughout the two hours. But Penguin is the one who eventually emerges the victor and he verbalizes a classic trait of the Riddler character – that his preoccupation with planting clues and following patterns will always trip him up. He decides not to kill Ed, wanting to keep him around as a reminder of when he let love weaken him, and so he instead has Mr. Freeze encase him in ice. We last see Oswald and Ivy planning to open a club called the Iceberg Lounge (!), with the Ed-cicle as its centerpiece.
And the tension in the Barbara/Tabitha/Butch triad finally explodes, as the latter two are disrespected by Babs and dismissed as her underlings one too many times. But Barbara gets the drop on Butch first, putting a bullet in his head. She then offers Tabitha the opportunity to move forward together, but, to my shipper heart’s delight, Tabitha refuses and the ensuing fight ends in Barbara being fatally electrocuted. Bye, Erin Richards, I wished for your character’s death many a time, but you really turned it around for me this season! At a crossroads, Tabitha ends up taking Selina under her wing (and we get a great proto-Catwoman moment where Selina shows an affinity with Tabs’ bullwhip). But it turns out that Butch is still alive and, just as I’m calling bullshit, we get exposition that Butch’s real name is Cyrus Gold, which Googling tells me is an alter ego of classic Batman villain Solomon Grundy. Cool, surprising twist; I’m excited to see what Drew Powell does with the character next season.
Finally, let’s talk about Bruce. Even with the shaman dead, he is still deeply under his spell, to Alfred’s dismay. Alfred tries to get through to him, insisting that even if the shaman took away the pain of his parents’ deaths, that their love and the loss of it is still within Bruce. It seems to be working, but still, when the opportunity presents itself, Bruce escapes. And it turns out the shaman’s last words were literal as well as figurative as Bruce follows them to a secret passageway shaped like a giant demon’s head. Within, he finds a series of underground tunnels, a glowing pool of water, and…Ra’s al Ghul (played by Alexander Siddig of “Game of Thrones”), who emerges from the shadows wearing a cloak with a weird, almost animal print on it.
It turns out Ra’s is after a “true heir” (I wonder if Lil’ Talia and Lil’ Nyssa exist in this continuity) and that Bruce is it. But because he hesitated in setting off the virus bomb, he wants Bruce to prove himself by killing Alfred. It’s a total “The Force Awakens” moment as Alfred expresses his love for Bruce and tells him to do what he has to do (great work from Sean Pertwee in this scene, and throughout these episodes, by the way). So Bruce stabs him through the chest with a sword. And the music swells super dramatically, but it fell a little flat for me because a) c’mon, they’re not killing Alfred, b) nobody really dies on this show, and c) there’s a Lazarus Pit, like, right there. And indeed, after Alfred’s sacrifice almost immediately enables Bruce to break free of his conditioning (to Ra’s surprise), Ghul advises Bruce to use the water to heal Alfred and then disappears, promising their business is not yet done. It’s kinda lame that, for all the build-up, Ra’s was in, like, two scenes. But I did like how Siddig played his detached, almost casual cruelty and I’m sure we’ll be seeing him again.
Bruce rushes Alfred to the hospital and, besides a vicious fight with Selina (so over their rinse, repeat arguments), is sidelined for most of “Heavydirtysoul.” But when Alfred wakes up, Bruce talks to him about his uncertainty about his future and Alfred advises him that he’ll have to find a “true north,” like he did with Bruce. Watching him watch news footage of the bomb’s aftermath, it’s clear that, for Bruce, that will be Gotham itself. And as the episode ends, a disguised Bruce foils a robbery that echoes the one that claimed his parents. The last shot of the season? Him standing on a Gotham rooftop, his black coat flapping in the wind like a cape. It seems like it’s time for Batman to truly begin.
So that’s a wrap on season three of “Gotham!” Which episode did you prefer, “Destiny Calling" or “Heavydirtysoul?” Which character’s storyline are you most looking forward to the show exploring in season four? And were you bummed that the rumors about Harley Quinn didn’t pan out? Please come share all your thoughts in the comments section.
