Can the Joker save ‘Gotham’?
Fox’s Gotham spent years circling its own origin story before the series finally landed on a pair of characters meant to carry the weight of its most famous villain. The bait-and-switch that began with Jerome Valeska and shifted to his twin brother Jeremiah became one of the show’s longest-running narrative threads, and the final season closed the loop in ways the early seasons could only gesture toward.
A new iteration
Jeremiah arrived dressed for a different kind of role. Where Jerome leaned into theatrical spectacle, Jeremiah presented as controlled, precise, and quietly menacing. Early episodes showed him reacting to Jerome’s laughing toxin with visible physical changes, the white skin and red lips arriving before any deliberate transformation. Later, during the confrontation with Bruce Wayne at Ace Chemicals, Jeremiah fell into the vat that would define his final appearance. The finale time jump presented him in white face paint, green hair, and a purple suit, an amalgam that showrunners described as pulling from both brothers and unused horror elements.
The Valeska Twins’ Legacy
Showrunners split classic Joker traits across the two characters rather than granting either one the full package. Jerome embodied nihilistic chaos and crowd-pleasing violence. Jeremiah shifted the focus to an obsessive fixation on Bruce Wayne, treating the future Batman as the only audience that mattered. The series finale version combined those impulses into a single figure that never received the Joker name, a restriction Cameron Monaghan later confirmed came from Warner Bros. until the final season granted more leniency.
Rebooting the series
In an interview with Comicbook.com, executive producer Danny Cannon (Judge Dredd) stated that, “The catastrophic event, the cataclysmic event that happens in the last three episodes not only will change Gotham. It not only combines so many characters that you don’t think will cooperate with each other, but it changes the face of Gotham forever, so that season five, it’s almost a reboot and a different show.” Season five delivered on that promise through the No Man’s Land arc and a ten-year time jump. The series concluded on April 25, 2019, after twelve episodes that positioned Bruce Wayne as Batman and left the city in a permanently altered state.
No Man’s Land and Cult Following
During the isolated season five arc, Jeremiah operated as a boogeyman figure with a devoted cult led by his henchwoman Ecco. He cultivated the infamy that came with controlling parts of the ruined city, yet the narrative repeatedly showed his dissatisfaction whenever Bruce remained out of reach. Ecco’s eventual death at Jeremiah’s hands underscored how disposable his followers became once the central fixation returned. The cult dynamic added a layer of organized terror that earlier seasons had only hinted at through Jerome’s more chaotic crowds.
Jeremiah’s world
Jeremiah’s early declaration about creating a new Gotham in his image and needing a blank canvas played out across the season five episodes. His attempt to recreate Bruce’s childhood trauma using duplicate parents collapsed during the confrontation at Ace Chemicals. The plan’s failure led directly to the chemical exposure and the decade-long coma presented as braindeath. The finale revealed the ruse and brought Jeremiah back in the classic styling, though the story left ambiguous whether the final version fully became the Joker or remained a composite figure shaped by production limits and narrative choices.
Chemical Transformation and Finale Reveal
The chemical vat sequence mirrored the origin most viewers associate with the character, yet the series framed it as the endpoint rather than the beginning. Jeremiah emerged from the ten-year narrative gap more unhinged, the physical changes now permanent and the psychological damage compounded. The time-jump appearance in the series finale gave viewers the closest visual match to the comic-book version the show had been allowed to produce, even as the name itself stayed off-limits.
Production Constraints on the Joker
Monaghan noted that Warner Bros. restrictions prevented full Joker styling and title usage until the final season. Earlier seasons worked around those limits by splitting traits and avoiding direct naming. The swansong received more latitude, allowing the purple suit, green hair, and white face paint to appear without the legal complications that had shaped the earlier episodes. Those constraints explain why the character’s evolution felt incremental rather than immediate.
The completed series now sits as a five-season experiment in how long a television show can tease a central villain before delivering a version shaped by both creative intent and external rules. The Valeska brothers and their final amalgam gave Gotham a throughline that reached its conclusion in the 2019 finale, even if the name most associated with the character remained just out of reach.
