Source: Geekyapar.com
Sadly the season finale of Gotham lays already behind us, but I’m here to bring you back to the beginning and relive it all again in this Gotham season recap. It was a bloody good season, that’s for sure. I even liked this one better than the first season, because these episodes had more of a storyline than the first season, with Gordon and bullock doing one GCPD case per episode. The only negative point I could think off is that they discarded villains a little too soon for my liking. The Maniaxs were there for two episodes, the GCPD knew Victor Fries was Freeze in the first one he appeared in and Azrael also only lasted two episodes. Furthermore, this season had everything, from unexpected surprises until all human possible emotions.
Jim Gordon
We start with a fired Gordon from the GCPD. He then survives two assaults on his life, one from Flamingo (ordered by Tabitha) and one from Barbara. Gets captured by Theo, then saves Bruce’s life, only to take Theo’s life by the docks. Eventually, he gets arrested for that and ends up in Blackgate Penitentiary. He escapes with the help of Bullock and Falcone in order to clear his name, what he does by arresting Nygma who framed him. He then gets his job back, what he declines as he wants to find who killed the Waynes. He then has another assault on his life, this time by Azrael. Eventually, he makes sure to arrest Hugo Strange for what he has done and leaves to find Lee.
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Harvey Bullock
Bullock resigns from the police somewhere between the first and second season, he came back only to stop the Maniax. But he never left. At the end of the season, he even becomes the captain (since no one else wants to do it). But hey he is still captain!
Nathaniel Barnes
Barnes is the new captain of the GCPD since Essen didn’t survive the attack of the Maniax. He arrives to clean up the department and end corruption. And it took a long time before he could agree with anything Gordon did. When Azrael breaks into the GCPD Barnes fights with him and ends up in the hospital.
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Bruce Wayne
Bruce finds the hidden cave underneath the Wayne manor. And with the help of Fox, they get his father’s computer back to working. He nearly gets killed by Jerome, meets the lovely (ahem) Silver St. Cloud. Helps to kidnap her and then gets kidnapped himself by Theo and nearly killed. In the second half of the season, he finds Matches Malone, the man that killed his parents. He asks Bruce to kill him, but Bruce holds back at the last moment and leaves the gun behind, leading to Malone committing suicide. After this encounter, Bruce decides to head to the streets with Selina to learn how to fight crime. They commit a crime themselves when they steal money from Butch his nephew. Bruce and Alfred track down Karen Jennings to identify the Philosopher (the man that ordered Matches to kill the Waynes), but the Philosopher sends Victor Fries to kill her. Bruce decides to go after the Philosopher/Hugo Strange, but nearly gets killed by a crazy Nygma. We then see a Bruce doppelganger escape the Indian Hill bus.
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Alfred Pennyworth
This season Alfred was still bruce’s concerned guardian. But we also saw the 007 side of Alfred on the charity ball, the fight with Tabitha and the fight in an underground fight club.
Selena Kyle
Selena helped bruce a lot this season, by showing him around when he starts living on the streets.But she also helped Bridgit twice and helps stop the Order of Dumas and Gordon with arresting Nygma.
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Theo Galavan
Galavan is someone we meet for the first time in this season. He was the driving source behind the outbreak of the Maniaxs. He kidnaps the current mayor and with killing Jerome he becomes the number one candidate for being the new mayor. A position he gets by among other things kidnapping (and killing) Penguin’s mother. While running for mayor he also kidnaps Sid Bunderslaw and retrieves an old knife that belonged to the Wayne family. His endgame is trying to kill Bruce, as punishment for the Waynes for erasing the Dumas name from history. He does not survive this, being murdered by Penguin and Gordon. Only to return in the second half of the season by Hugo Strange. With his new identity as Azrael he tries to kill Gordon, and then when a part of his old life’s memory comes back he goes after Bruce. Eventually, he is killed by Butch and Penguin as revenge for killing his beloved mother.
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Tabitha Galavan
In the first half of the season, Tabitha is forced to live in her brother’s shadow. Cleaning the mess that he leaves behind and helping Barbara with her crazy mind games. When the gang arrives to retrieve Bruce from the Order of Dumas, she and Silver St. Cloud escape and leave Theo behind. After being free from Theo she seeks comfort by Butch.
Jerome Valeska
It is hard to not mention the surprise of the first half of the season in this overview. After being sent to Arkham after killing his mother in season 1, we see Jerome back when he is freed by Galavan and is leading the Maniax. Attacking the GCPD and killing Captain Essen. he also kills his father and gives many Gotham citizens mental breakdowns from his videos. Sadly he doesn’t last very long, being killed by Galavan at a charity event. We briefly see Jerome’s body in Indian hill, and some say it was his laugh that we heard when the monsters escaped the bus…. I’ll leave that one in the middle, I only believe that he is back when I see him walking around Gotham.
Source: moviepilot.com
Barbara Kean
Gordon’s ex-love also spends her days in Arkham after killing her parents but is ‘rescued’ with the Maniaxs. While being free she goes after Gordon twice , still requiring his love, but still messes around with both Theo and Tabitha. In Gotham Cathedral, she kidnaps Gordon and Leslie but with the help of the Strike Force, they get rescued. Gordon briefly fights Barbara, leading to Barbara hanging outside the church and falling, resulting in severe injuries and being in a coma. In the second half, she wakes up, claiming to be entirely sane and Hugo Strange releases her from Arkham. She ones more tries to reconcile with Gordon, but after a rejection, she seeks comfort by Tabitha and Butch. Eventually, she gets back to her old habits when she helps Penguin to get to Hugo Strange.
Leslie Tompkins
Leslie has a lot to endure in the first half of this season, first being at the charity event where Jerome gets killed, and then being kidnapped by Tabitha and Barbara to the Gotham Cathedral. But she is the one to discover that Kristen Kringle is missing, unaware making Nygma obsessed and paranoid about Gordon . Her relationship with Gordon is not going well until she discovers she is pregnant and Gordon proposes to her. Sadly she loses the baby when Gordon is in Blackgate and she moves away, unable to deal with it.
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Butch Gilzean
In the first half we see Butch mostly helping Penguin with tracking down his mother, but as soon as Penguin is in Arkham he takes over Cobblepot’s criminal empire in Hugh Hefner style in his mansion with Tabitha. After penguin comes back he (voluntarily?) helps him by killing Azrael and tracking down Hugo Strange.
Edward Nygma
Now we come to one of the most extreme character changes this season in Gotham. At the beginning, we still have sweet Ed, but that changes after a few romantic evenings with Kristen Kringle where on one of them she discovers that he killed her previous boyfriend. Without noticing Nygma strangles her that night and buries her in the woods. His mental state worsens as his split personality attempts to convince him that he enjoys getting away with murder. Both of Nygma’s personalities then merge and the bad side dominates.
In the woods where he buried Kringle, he discovers an injured and exhausted Penguin, who he helps getting over the death of his mother.
After Gordon knows about the missing Kringle, he makes it his mission to outsmart Gordon. With the help of a few bombs, a crowbar, a false statement and a killed Strikeforce member he gets Gordon behind bars for the murder of the Strikeforce member and Galavan. Unfortunately, he then gets outsmarted by Gordon and ends up in Arkham. His nosy personality gets him to the discovery of Indian Hill under Arkham (and an attempted escape) and he gets to help Hugo with interrogating Bruce and Fox in Arkham. The last thing we see off Nygma is when he is locked up in his cell in Arkham.
Source: PureBreak.com
Bridgit Pike
The first time we meet Bridgit Pike she is forced to help her not so kind stepbrothers into stealing the old knife out of Wayne Enterprise for Galavan. When she is shortly after abandoned by the Pike brothers, Selena is the one who helps her escape. During her escape, she accidentally kills a strikeforce member, and that triggers her to murder the remaining Pike brothers as she is abducted and further abused by them. Eventually, she is incapacitated in a struggle with the GCPD strike force, publicly announced to be dead. But she wasn’t when she was brought to Indian Hill, her body armor melted onto her skin making her fireproof. When Selena discovers that Bridgit is still alive in Indian Hill, she tries to find her only to discover that Bridgit’s alter-ego Firefly has taken over.
Penguin
Penguin is now the self-claimed King of Gotham but gets blackmailed by Galavan who kidnapped his mother. When Penguin wants to blackmail Galavan himself in order to get his mother back, she sadly gets killed. He then vows to kill Galavan in revenge. All this time he is hunted by the GCPD for being the number one bad guy in town. He helps the gang in retrieving Bruce from Galavan and after Gordon shoots Galavan, he stuffs his umbrella down his throat.
Eventually, he gets arrested for killing Galavan and falsely justifies his actions as the result of mental illness, so he gets send to Arkham. With intensive treatments from Hugo Strange, he eventually gets declared sane and can leave Arkham. While visiting his mother’s grave, he meets a man who turns out to be his father. Elijah Van Dahl welcomes Penguin into his family, to disgrace from his wife and stepchildren. When a drink meant for Penguin gets drunk by Dahl and in the process killing him, he is heartbroken. However, when he discovers evidence that his step-family killed his father, his former self returns and he murders them all horrifically. He takes with the help of Butch revenge on Azrael and while tracking down Hugo Strange he comes face to face with Fish.
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Mr Freeze
When a kidnapping and murder spree washes over Gotham nobody would be expecting that it would be the work of scientist Victor Fries. Fries has been experimenting on freezing and re-animating humans so that he can freeze his terminally ill wife Nora until he can find a cure for her disease. Eventually, the GCPD discovers his laboratory and arrests his wife. When Fries wants to turn himself in, he discovers that one of his serums works.
After building an armored suit he gets Nora of her place in Arkham and brings her back to his lab. In the laboratory, Nora blames herself for the deaths that Fries has caused. Fries attempts to cryogenically freeze her, only to learn that Nora switched the formulas when he wasn’t looking. Nora dies as a result. Distraught by Nora’s death, Fries attempts to commit suicide by freezing himself and being declared dead. But he wakes up in Indian Hill, unable to survive outside of subzero temperatures. He then helps Hugo Strange by killing Karin Jennings.
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Hugo Strange
Strange is the ‘main’ villain for the second half of this season, just like Galavan was that for the first half. He runs Arkham Asylum, with the secret labs of Indian Hill underneath it. With his weird ways of curing patients, he declares both Penguin and Barbara sane. And with the help of Victor Fries, he resurrects at least three people from the dead, Galavan, Fish and Clayface. When he gets in sight of the GCPD for releasing Azrael he tries everything to not make himself a suspect. At the same time also Bruce is after Hugo, thinking that him being ‘the philosopher’ has something to do with the murder of the Waynes. But we then find out that Strange isn’t the one in charge of the resurrection process when a mystery woman with a mask tells him to move all subjects upstate and destroy Indian Hill. In the end, Strange is arrested by the GCPD for everything he has done.
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Fish Mooney
For most of the second season, Fish Mooney was nowhere to be seen. And I have to admit, I kind of liked it. It’s not that I hate Fish, or found her a terrible character or actress. I just didn’t miss her, so it was a surprise when Fish was the first subject to retain full memory after being resurrected by Hugo Strange. After her resurrection, she seems to have some kind of special powers, with a single touch she can control people’s behavior. The last thing we see from Fish is when the bus she controls gets out of Indian Hill and crashes. Releasing the prisoners in the process. Oh and she nearly gives poor Penguin a heart attack when he sees her.
Source: buddytv.com
I hope you enjoyed my recap of the second season of Gotham, although I’m probably not giving it enough justice. I’ll to see you again for the third season on The Game Of Nerds!
