‘Gotham’ Showrunner Says Cameron Monaghan’s Third Character Has Even More “Joker Elements”

The end of Gotham is in sight, and with just a handful of episodes left in the Batman prequel series, many of the characters we’ve come to love over the past few years are finally evolving into their older, more realized counterparts from the pages of DC Comics. When Jerome Valeska paved the way for his twin brother Jeremiah last season, it seemed as though Gotham finally had it’s final version of the iconic Joker character, but that’s not exactly the case.

As it turns out, actor Cameron Monaghan will be playing one more character before the show is through, evolving past Jeremiah into yet another psychotic villain. Third time must be a charm, because this new character will have even more recognizable Joker elements that neither Jerome nor Jeremiah possessed.

After Monaghan revealed that he’d be taking on a third Joker-esque role, ComicBook.com spoke with Gotham showrunner John Stephens about what this means for Monaghan’s pantheon of characters going forward.

“One of the themes of the show has always been about the evolution of identity and how fluid it is,” Stephens explained. “And how people can always change themselves from one identity to another. Those obvious examples are obviously like Bruce Wayne, Batman, that view of the world. One of the things we like to do on the show is take that theme and see how it plays out in different fashions with different characters. So, especially with Cameron Monaghan’s character, first with Jerome and then to Jeremiah, then from Jeremiah to this new character. Obviously, we were always saying that this character is not the Joker but we were always saying what are different elements of the Joker that we can actually use and bring out and develop? Weighing the way you can look at and say, hey, this character may not be the Joker but we can imagine how this character could have lead to a character like the Joker, down the road somewhere.

“So, to that I want to say, there are some elements, I’d say, of the character of the Joker himself that we see down the road that have not been present so far, either in Jerome or in Jeremiah. But those elements and characters are present in the new iteration of Jeremiah that comes out.”

Monaghan may never get the official “Joker” title on Gotham but, by the time the credits role on the series finale, it sounds like he will have brought just about every part of the real Joker to life. That’s certainly close enough in our book.

New episodes of Gotham air on Thursday nights at 8 pm ET on FOX.