Gotham just recently wrapped up its second season and this time around, while it was still interesting for some moments, it falls horribly flat in several aspects. Even with the addition with several new characters appearing on both sides of the law, this time around Gotham was a lot more of a mediocre mess compared to its first season. In the first part of the season before the winter break, we saw the rise of Theo Galavan, who tried to take over Gotham by using several criminals that he helped escape from Blackgate prison, including Jim Gordon’s ex, Barbara Keen, and the Joker like character from season one, Jerome Valeska . After agreeing to work with him, Galavan allowed them to run wild across the city. Galavan had the potential to be a great antagonist for the whole season, but once his true motive was finally revealed, it felt like a huge let down. To top it off he doesn’t even remain the villain for the rest of the season. Galavan’s story arc just wasn’t very impressive.
The introduction of Mr. Freeze into Gotham was greatly hyped and was, pardon the pun, kind of cool, but he was only in two episodes. It did get the wheel spinning for the addition of future Batman villains, which this season begins to pour out like crazy. Hugo Strange becomes the main focus this time around, but unfortunately its not only a continuation of the Wayne murder case, but is also revealed that not even Strange is the main one pulling the strings behind everything. We get another glimpse of another mysterious figure that we don’t see for the first time until the second to last episode.
Hugo Strange is in charge of trying to successfully bring someone back from the dead and uses Arkham Asylum to do it. While he succeeds in bringing several people back to life, none of them have their memories intact but instead have some kind of weird deformity or power that basically gives the show a reason to include more Batman villains such as Clayface and Firefly. Also, characters who had a satisfying end to their story back in season one keep coming back for one reason or another. While some characters’ comebacks were stronger than others, there are a couple that are just unnecessary. The Riddler still makes me happy when I see him on screen, but overall the Penguin had a really bad season except for one or two interesting moments. The initial part where Firefly is first introduced was another good example of introducing the villains in the show in an interesting way, but ultimately it ended with pushing the character in with the other future Batman villains. Even the build up for the next season seemed really weak compared to last season where Penguin screamed that he was now ‘The King of Gotham’ or when Bruce found the hidden area that’s totally going to become the Batcave when he grows up.
Overall, it’s really hard to recommend this show anymore. If you saw season one and you still enjoyed it then you could probably give season two a chance to see if enough of it holds your attention. But if you’re coming into it expecting it to be great, unfortunately you’re going to be disappointed. Maybe by not making a season as long as it was and instead of doubling down on the amount of Bruce content would have improved it overall. In the end, it actually overstays it’s welcome and handled its finales, both mid season and the season, rather poorly.
