Warning: This post contains some spoilers for season two of Gotham.
Oh, Gotham. The first season of Fox’s Batman prequel tried to keep its stories at least semi-grounded, but the second season has fully embraced comic-book kookiness, with a mess of supervillains like Penguin, Hugo Strange and Mr. Freeze, and a story that completely diverges from any source material. If you like trainwreck television, Gotham is delivering in spades this season.
In case you haven’t been keeping up with the craziness, Fox has just released a trailer for episode 19 of its second season, entitled “Azrael.” The trailer, which runs a whopping three-and-a-half minutes, provides a recap of all the major storylines from this season, as well as a first glimpse of Gotham‘s version of Azrael. You can check it out above.
In the comics Azrael is Jean-Paul Valley, a brainwashed assassin for The Order of Saint Dumas, an offshoot of the Knights Templar. Eventually Bruce Wayne breaks him of his mental conditioning and, surprisingly, passes the Mantle of the Bat onto him when he’s crippled by Bane. That doesn’t go so well. The Gotham version of Azrael is Theo Galavan, a member of the Dumas family exiled from Gotham by the Waynes. Eventually, he’s killed in cold blood by Jim Gordon, then brought back to life by the sinister Hugo Strange in his secret mad scientist’s lab. Or something? It’s been a bit hard to follow.
The best part of all this is that Azrael, who played the pretender to Batman’s throne in the comics, is now the original shadowy, caped guy in the Gotham Universe. In Gotham, Batman is the pretender. This show.
Azrael will make his Gotham debut this coming Monday on FOX.
