The Gotham Two-Part Season Finale: A Recap!

The finale has finale arrived and with it came a whole hoard of feelings, emotions, and thoughts that I didn’t ask for. (Lookin’ at you, Gotham Writers.) There’s not much I can really say about this episode, other than the fact that I dropped the f-bomb every 5 minutes. So without further ado, let’s dive in!

Season 03  Ep 21: Destiny Calling:

Gotham’s streets are under siege. The Tetch Virus has spread to thousands of victims, who are killing thousands more and wreaking havoc across the city. Harvey is constantly giving Jim pep talks in an attempt to help him ward off the virus eating away inside of him. But with every whispered killer, killer, inside of Jim’s head, it only seems to get harder. Alfred asks for time alone with Bruce, who he believes just needs to be reminded of who he is, and after Harvey gives him permission to do so, The Captain and Jim are pulled away by Lucius. Mr. Fox tells the duo that Professor Strange had been working adamantly on a parallel project that could produce an antidote to the cure, and so Gordon and Bullock set off to retrieve Strange before he can escape the city. Though Fish gets to him first. After a bit of fun torture, she, Hugo, her new partner Penguin, Firefly, and Mr. Freeze all saddle up to go get the cure. The Professor hands Fish a handful of vials, and as they all make to leave, they’re stopped by a group of Assassins.

Harvey and Jim had gotten a call that a battle was going down in that warehouse, and when they arrive Jim lets go of his control of the virus. He slaughters the Assassins one by one, and as he gets caught up in the death fest, he turns and accidentally stabs Fish. As she dies in Penguin’s arms, Jim looks on in confusion and horror. Fish had dropped the vials, and from the look of it, only one survived. Harvey is forced to knock Jim unconscious, though he’s assured by Hugo that more can be made.  Alfred tries to convince Bruce of his humanity and emotions, of who he is, but ends up failing in that regard when he realizes Bruce has escaped custody. In an attempt to track him through the city, he learns that Bruce was following the final orders of his Sensei. Bruce located Raj Al Ghul, The Demons Head and leader of The League of Assassins, who gives the young Wayne boy a mission to finally complete. Kill Alfred. As the butler kneels, hands bound in front of his boy, he tells Bruce that he would very much do anything for him, and if dying is something that has to happen, then he should do it. To the surprise of everyone who watched, Bruce gives a thrust of the sword and ends up stabbing Alfred through the chest.

At the Sirens Club, Lee Tompkins reveals that if she sees Barbara Kean again, she’s going to “Rip her head from her body.” As Barbara and Ed team up to take over the city and take down Penguin, Edward learns of Fish Mooney’s death and the GCPD’s frantic search for a missing component of their cure. It turns out the component missing is Jervis Tetch himself, and so they’re given the upper-hand when they break Jervis out of a transport vehicle and take him along with them. So to recap in the short, sad, blunt sort of way: Jim may have lost himself to the virus, Fish and Penguin tortured Hugo, Fish died by Jim’s hand (Much to the sorrow of Oswald), and the only person capable of helping to manufacture more of a cure is currently in the clutches of Barbara Kean, a woman Lee Tompkins is ready to murder.

Season 03 Ep 22: HeavyDirtySoul:

As a continuation, and the ultimate finale to Season 3 of Gotham, HeavyDirtySoul opens up with Bruce breaking through his conditioning, and he watches on in horror as Alfred dies. Angered by what Raj made him do, he attempts to kill him as Raj Al Ghul tells him that he is the boy in their prophecies; Bruce Wayne is the heir to the Demons Head. Before vanishing into the night, Raj offers Bruce one final piece of advice: Use The Water. In a bout of pure luck, Alfred managed to die right next to the Lazarus Pit, which allows its user to not only defy age, but death itself. Bruce pours some of it on Alfred’s wound, to which the butler wakes up coughing. Bruce promptly gets Alfred to the hospital for medical care, and in his anger, lashes out at Selina when she shows up to offer her support.

Jim receives a call from Lee, who is still attempting to get him to give in to his darkness, and she tells him that she will be waiting for him at the downtown train station, and that if he truly loves her, he’ll be there. He agrees to be there, and promptly hangs up when Harvey approaches with a list of demands from Barbara and her crew – in exchange for Jervis Tetch, they want a number of things that will ultimately bankrupt the city. Jim decides to exchange their newest prisoner, Oswald Cobblepot, for Jervis. He gives Edward a call, and they arrange a meet. The exchange goes south when Barbara, Tabitha, and Butch find them and start a gun-fight. Oswald manages to escape, though he’s followed closely by Edward. He gets the upperhand when he smashes a pipe over The Riddler’s head, and once Jim, Harvey, and Tetch manage to escape, they see Oswald pull away in their car.

 

 

 

Ed wakes up handcuffed in the back of a cop car with The Penguin as his driver; At first he believes himself to have the upperhand, when he finds a needle in the seat cushions. He picks the lock, and when he manages to goad Oswald into stopping the car, pulling out a gun, and opening the back door, Edward knocks him to the ground and snatches the gun away.  He tells the former Mayor that he’s going to rectify his mistake – by taking Oswald to the pier where he originally tried to murder him. Penguin reveals his predictability however; When Ed tried to shoot the gun, he quickly learned that Oswald took his bullets. What’s more is the fact that Oswald had planned everything up to this point – from the moment he’d stolen the cop car to now. He even managed to call backup while The Riddler was unconscious, and thankfully for Oswald, Ivy and Mr. Freeze both managed an appearance. In a fit of rage, Ed tries to lunge at Oswald, only to be frozen solid by the cold of Mr. Freeze’s gun. In his home a while later, Oswald and Ivy look over the plans for his new club, the Iceberg Lounge, where Oswald proudly states that his new display of Edward will be the main attraction.

Butch and Tabitha make their final decision about Barbara Kean. When the trio decide to retreat to a safe house until their attempt to ransom the city blows over, the two conspire to take Barbara down permanently. Having gone their separate ways – for now – Barbara finds Butch alone, where she tells him that she knows what they’ve been planning. Butch tells her that Tabitha wasn’t part of it, but that Babs didn’t deserve her regardless. Barbara shoots him in the head and leaves him there, determined to see if her former lover really had been against her. A while later, Tabitha enters the safe house and calls out for both of them, though neither answers. She finds a case with Butch’s fake metal hand in it, and Barbara steps out of the shadows behind her. The two discuss whether they can move past this, but when Barbara admits to killing Butch, Tabitha attacks her. The two duke it out until finally, Tabitha manages to electrocute Barbara with a high-voltage construction lamp and the convenient puddle Babs was standing in. At the hospital, two doctors confer over the unconscious body of Butch Gilzean, who is very much alive…sort of. As they discuss his records, we come to learn his real name: Cyrus Gold.

Back at the Sirens club, Tabby is going through the register when Selina Kyle enters. BabyCat is looking for Barbara, though she confesses to Tabitha that she’s sick of just surviving. She wants to move up in the world, and she thought maybe Barbara could help her. Tabitha admits that she, too, is at a cross roads in her life, and when Tabs sees Selina has an aptitude for fighting with a whip, the duo bond. Jim enters his own crossroads when they learn that the cure has been properly produced, (Thanks to the blood he took directly from Jervis Tetch’s throat – Yeah, you read that right. Jim cut Jervis’ throat and filled a jar with his blood for this cure) but there’s only one quickshot injection available at the moment. Close to losing himself in his killer instincts, he takes the shot of antidote to Lee’s. Just as she gets close, he attempts to jam the needle in her neck, but she knew better than to trust him just yet. She forces him to drop the needle, and as she kisses him, she steps on it and shatters it.

Having come to terms with his virus, as well as his love for Lee, the duo attempt to casually get on the train to a new city. Harvey tries to stop them, and Jim throws him against a couple of trains. The Captain tells Jim that he’s the best cop he’d ever seen, and that’s something he needs to remember. He hands him his badge and tells him to go save his girl, and save his girl he does. As they sit down on the train, Jim mulls over what Bullock told him. As he looks at his badge, he finds two quickshot vials of the antidote strapped to the back; he tells Lee he loves her, injects her with the needle, and when she passes out from the injection, he gives himself the cure. As things slowly start to return to normal in Gotham, Jim finds a letter from Lee. While she’s sorry she had to, she DID have to go. She explains that only the strongest can stay in Gotham, and that she simply isn’t strong enough to remain.

At the hospital, Bruce waits by Alfred’s side, pleading for his Butler to wake up. When he does, he asks Alfred what keeps him going in this life, how he manages not to lose his way. Alfred tells his ward that he has to find something he cares about, something that means more to him than anything in this world, and when he does, he’ll never be lost again. As Bruce thinks over this, the t.v. talks about Gotham’s cure for the Tetch Virus, and how the city is slowly returning to a state of calm. That night, a family walks joyfully through an alley after seeing a movie. While the daughter and Father joke about what a bad film it was, the mother tries to get them to see how much she enjoyed it. They’re approached by a gunman who tries to rob them – that is until a person in all black swoops from the skies and takes the gunman down. Before the family can truly register that they’d been saved, the figure is gone. On the rooftops over-looking Gotham, the savior pulls his mask away. Bruce Wayne looks out over his city, ready to defend it.