As the official io9 reviewer of the first season of Gotham, I thought the show had an unfortunate tendency to merely trot out proto-Batman characters in lieu of decent storytelling and actual character development. Now that the show is adding an absurd amount of new characters for season 2, I don’t think this problem will be going away.


First of all, the newest characters announced will be the villains Hugo Strange and Calendar Man, alogn with eventual Batman-replacement Azrael. These three join new characters Captain Barnes (Michael Chiklis), eventual Bruce Wayne love interest Silver St. Cloud, the villainous Theo and Tabitha Galavan, a cannibal character played by The Goldbergs’ Dustin Yabarra, and someone will also be playing the super-strong baddie named Amygdala. This does not include season one characters turned into regulars, including Harvey Dent, Lucius Fox and Fish’s right-hand man Butch. This also doesn’t include the other villains showrunner Bruno Heller has already sworn would play major parts in season two, including the Joker and Mr. Freeze.

Add those to the season one cast and that’s WAAAAAAAY too many characters. For god’s sake, the only person that’s gone is Fish Mooney, and even she could theoretically come back if Gotham really wanted her too. But realistically, there’s no way Gotham can give all of these characters enough screentime to make them compelling, and that’s assuming the show somehow figures out how to make its characters interesting.


Second of all: Calendar Man? @#$%ing Calendar Man? I don’t know what lunatic working at the show decided American wanted to see the origin of Calendar Man, but they’re at least as insane as the Joker and should be locked up permanently.

[Via CinemaBlend]