‘Gotham’ Showrunner Teases the Arrival of Major Batman Villain

There may only be a few episodes left of Gotham before the series comes to a close in 2019, but there’s still time for one more major villain to plague the city and go toe-to-toe with Bruce Wayne.

During a recent visit to the Gotham set in New York, ComicBook.com spoke with showrunner and executive producer John Stephens about what’s to come this season. Of course, we had to ask about the season’s new villain, who will be played by series newcomer Shane West.

According to Stephens, the new character is going to be a recognizable villain from Batman lore, and he’s going to be making quite an entrance when he arrives.

“I don’t think we were ever really aesthetic about putting in new characters,” Stephens said. “If we kind of wanted to do one, we would throw it in anyway, a canon character. Certainly the character that Shane [West] is coming into to play is the character that we had been waiting to use, because we know we wanted one more big, canon character who was going to come in and make a splash, and he does, entirely. But there’s other characters, too, you mentioned Man Bat of it all, or you just sit and have random episodes and say, ‘Hey, we’re going to put Magpie in this episode.’ So Magpie comes in and she does a great job. So there’s more of that sort of throughout.”

West is set to portray a character named Eduardo Dorrance. On Gotham, Eduardo will be a former Army friend of Jim Gordon’s who returns to the city after the events of No Man’s Land. While he seems helpful at first, Jim realizes that Eduardo has some truly dark intentions.

There is a widespread belief that Eduardo is Gotham‘s version of a comic character named Edmund Dorrance, also known as King Snake. In the comics, Edmund has ties to the British Army, and is actually the father of one of Batman’s most iconic rivals, Bane.

As fans already know, Bane is going to be arriving at some point in Season 5, and it’s likely that he will be tied directly to Eduardo. The ex-soldier might be Bane’s father, but there’s also a chance the show could flip the script and have the character become Bane himself.

Do you think Shane West will be playing Bane on Gotham this season? What other villains are you hoping to see before show ends? Let us know in the comments!

Gotham‘s fifth and final season is set to air in 2019.