Here’s The First Footage Of ‘Gotham’s New Joker At Play

Gotham is ramping up to their final three episodes of season 4 with a deluge of Joker-style chaos. Jerome Valeska’s twin brother Jeremiah (Cameron Monaghan) has gone nuts himself after “one bad day,” and the last trailer hinted that Jerome’s body has gone missing (again), and the trailer also introduced a harlequin-suit wearing woman (Jeremiah’s bodyguard, Ecco, played by Francesca Root-Dodson).

All of this subterfuge is leading up to the season finale this month, based loosely on the No Man’s Land story line in which an earthquake knocked out all bridges leading to Gotham. This was also foreshadowed in the previous episode when Ra’s al Ghul (who was “dead” but not anymore because this is Gotham) told Bruce Wayne, “I saw a vision of a cataclysmic event soon to befall this city, a cleansing fire that will destroy, purify, create — create you, Bruce. Because I will use it as a mighty forge, molding you into a Dark Knight of Gotham. If it doesn’t kill you, that is.”

Rather than an earthquake, it appears (based on two clips from this Thursday’s episode) structural engineer Jeremiah will be doing the damage. What we’ve gathered from the two new clips is that Jeremiah has detonated a bomb in his own labyrinthine subterranean house while Gordon was in it, leading everyone to believe Gordon is dead. (More likely, it’ll just take him a while — maybe a whole episode — to find his way out of the maze.)

Then Jeremiah — who has recruited the followers of his dead (“dead”) brother Jerome — heads to the Gotham Police Department headquarters and informs them of his plan and sets himself apart from his brother. “Don’t compare me to that short-sighted psychopath. He just wanted to destroy things. Me? I’m a builder. I’m going to create a new Gotham in my image, but every artist needs a blank canvas, so all of this has to go.” He warns they have 6 hours to evacuate the city before he makes it into his blank canvas. Then he blows up a nearby Gotham landmark just to let the police know he’s serious. (Why so seri– nevermind.)

Although they aren’t going to call him “Joker,” the actor is playing two distinct but Joker-esque characters, with this new deadpan version being less reckless and impulsively violent than his brother but seemingly smarter and more conniving. Monaghan recently described this second character as “subtle” and possibly “the darkest, most frightening thing this show has ever done.”

More frightening than what Penguin did to get the guy in this second clip to talk?

Gotham season 4 episode 20 “That Old Corpse” airs on FOX at 8pm EST this Thursday.

(Via Bleeding Cool and Gotham)

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