At the Gotham season three panel at San Diego Comic-Con, the cast and crew came to the Indigo Ballroom with plenty of new information about the series. As the world of Gotham City grows, with new characters, monsters running amok and more, there are a lot of changes – but that doesn’t mean the character relationships will all disappear, either.
The season starts six months after the end of season two, and that means everyone is in a significantly different place. Barbara and Tabitha are running a club called Sirens, Selina is clashing with the new grown-up Ivy, and Nygma is still locked up (but getting “gifts” from Penguin in there). Jim Gordon meanwhile is back in Gotham City – as a Bounty Hunter!
“We get to play these iconic characters but infuses them with new life and approach them in a new way,” Ben McKenzie said at the start of fan Q&A after a short guided presentation of the changes in the show.
For Bruce Wayne, a lot of season three is discovering what way he wants to deal with things in the future – his mind, trained by Lucius Fox, or his fists, as trained by Alfred, star David Mazouz revealed. “And in the end that’s all leading to how he will act as Batman.”
“I want to see Harley Quinn,” Camren Bicondova said when asked what other Batman characters they’d like to see on the show. “Bane, Bane, Bane, Bane, Bane, Bane, Bane,” added Drew Powell.
The cast doesn’t really prank each other much, as they said they have much more of a loving environment, with lots of singing and dancing on set.
A fan asked about how far they go, having Gordon murdering a prisoner as he did with Galavan, and the criticism that comes from that.
“Going too far sometimes is the right direction,” producer Danny Cannon said. “We’re building to a place that needs Batman as a masked vigilante. Gotham continues to spiral out of what Jim Gordon can control. It’s going into the ooze, going into the dirt, into a place where that chaos creates the need for the best superhero in the known universe.”
“In other words, things will get worse before they get better,” added producer John Stephens.
The producers have talked about Ra’s al Ghul, but they don’t have any plans for him just yet, only conversations.
When a fan (dressed as Batman) asked if Bruce would get to put on the suit and kick a lot of ask, Mazouz looked at the producers and asked, “Yeah, are we?” Cannon and Stephens teased that he’ll get to “kick a lot of ass this year,” but “there’s a long way to go to see why he makes these decisions, how he makes these decisions, before we get to that moment. Sorry!”
Cannon also said this is the “best job I’ve ever had,” and that he wants the show to keep going for several years.
Fish’s return won’t pull Butch away from Tabitha and Barbara, Powell thinks. “Butch has fallen pretty hard for whippy-Tabs.”
They gave away a trip to New York and the set of Gotham to a fan that asked a question at the panel. While the fan is on the trip, they’ll also have a chance to win a million dollars through some sort of drawing.
Gotham season 3 premieres Monday September 19 on Fox.
