Gotham Recap with Spoilers: Mr. Freeze

02/29/2016 09:00 pm EST

The episode kicked off with a recap of the first half of the season, subtitled "Rise of the Villains," with narration by Jim Gordon saying, "The villains in this city are changing." We've seen the fruit of that in the Galavans, Riddler's evolution, and the appearance of characters like Firefly and Mr. Freeze.

Oh, and Jim Gordon shooting Theo Galavan in the head, too, of course.

A deposition saw Gordon testifying about the raid on the Order of St. Dumas' ceremony, where they planned to kill young Bruce Wayne. He told the story of the raid to Dent, with Captain Barnes there as well. That's where it swings into lies, when Gordon told the deposition that he never located Galavan after he was taken by Penguin. "Were you present at the time of Theo Galavan's murder?" "No I was not."

Bold-faced lying looks bad on you, Jim Gordon. This is going to come back to bite you.

Gordon left the deposition to find his pregnant fiancée Lee waiting for him, and told her that the charges had been lifted and he'd been cleared of wrongdoing. Barnes looked down on them from a balcony above – he clearly doesn't believe Gordon. "Captivating story," Dent says to him.

Cobblepot is all alone, his men have deserted him. Some Joker-esque tags are on the walls – looks like we'll see more of that story this season still. So who's running the Gotham underworld?

Butch! He now has a drill attachment for his hand, which he gruesomely used on someone's head by way of introduction. Tabby Galavan stopped by for a chat with the new King of Gotham. She told him that she's actually fond of him and wants to be his partner. "Lonely, huh?" he said to her. She seals their new partnership with a kiss while Selina watches from a vent like a creeper.

A cop pulls up to a man standing behind a van, and starts questioning him. When he stutters on an answer, he pulls out a strange gun from the van – and freezes her in her tracks with it. Welcome, Mr. Freeze.

Gordon returns to Gotham PD – Bullock reveals it's been at least a month since the events of the mid-season finale: "You finagled yourself a month-long paid vacation, you bastard."

The pair go to see Edward Nygma, who is doing tests with Liquid Nitrogen, finding that the suspect must be using super-cooled liquid helium, because the nitrogen doesn't go quite fast enough. Ed crushes the frozen rose in his hand when Bullock calls him stupid – a little flash of the darker Riddler there. Nygma and Gordon have a quick chat about Cobblepot, and as if on cue (TV magic!) Barnes walks in with Penguin in tow. This… isn't good for Jim.

Barnes questions Cobblepot about what happened at Galavan's apartment that night. "I took Galavan to the river and I killed him. Slowly." He confessed, and said, "I'm not a criminal, you know, just insane." Barnes asked Cobblepot what Gordon did, and he was catty in his reply.

Barnes confronted Gordon and told him "Cobblepot backed your story. Jim, I'm trusting you. Don't make a fool out of me." The lies just keep piling up.

Victor Fries enters a house, and his wife, Nora, lies in a bed with copious medicines next to her. He tells her about his work with cryogenics. "I can freeze you, like we planned, I can stop this disease from killing you, but I can't bring you back, not yet," he says. She's sad thinking about the "poor mice you're experimenting on." THE MICE ARE PEOPLE, YOU GUYS.

Wayne Enterprises is the place that manufactures liquid helium, and there are three abductions related to this blue van, Bullock tells Gordon. "What's this guy doing with all those people?"

Fries goes into his basement at his house, and we see frozen people in storage there. Yeah, this guy's not nuts at all.

Back at Gotham PD, Nygma goes to have a chat with Cobblepot on the sly. Oswald asks him to leave some lilies at his mother's grave. Cobblepot's being transferred to Arkham.

Fries is doing tests on one of his abductees, attempting to reanimate him.

Gordon and Bullocks chat with Lucius Fox about the Wayne Enterprises cryogenics program, which was shut down by Thomas Wayne "two or three years ago, he killed it along with a few other odd programs. It was all kept very quiet." Why do we feel like he's talking about Indian Hill here?

Oswald's first moment in Arkham sees one of the other inmates fling some food at him. Penguin steps on a table and addresses them all. "I am not a man to be trifled with. I am powerful, I am vicious, I am King of Gotham." Other inmates start standing up saying they're the King of Gotham. That… didn't go the way he hoped.

Fries' un-freezing experiment is going fairly well, with the person slowly thawing, all the way up to 41 degrees Celsius… but the guy still isn't moving. Aaaaaaand now he's melting. Oh good lord, this is gross. So much for solution A14.

Nora is getting sicker. She's coughing up blood and gasping for breath. Her attacks are getting worse. She's starting to give up, but Victor won't. He goes to a pharmacy to get a refill on one of her medications, but there's no refill on it, and the pharmacist won't do it. I BET HE'S GON' GET FROZEN.

At Arkham, DR. HUGO STRANGE meets Penguin. Oh boy.

Hey, look, Fries is at the Pharmacy, this time as Mr. Freeze. He freezes the security guard and the A-hole pharmacist (told you), gets his medicines, and even gets the other customers to help him load the frozen pharmacist in his van. He leaves the security guard outside, though, and the cops crash into the frozen guard when in pursuit. He's… not going to make it.

Back at Arkham, Strange and Cobblepot have a conversation in his office. Hugo Strange is very creepy and deliberate in how he talks to Oswald. Penguin's not having it; both seem to think they're in a position of strength. "The only thing I regret is that I couldn't kill Theo Galavan more than once." Strange talks about intensive treatment programs and rehabilitation. I don't know about Cobblepot, but I'm terrified of Strange.

Fries brings his latest victim to his basement laboratory. Nora wakes up and calls for him. The basement door is unlocked, but he's not down there. She goes downstairs, and sees his work in progress for the first time. The shock looks like it's bringing on an attack.

At the pharmacy, they find the bottle for Nora Fries. The GCPD comes to the house, and find Nora sitting, crying at the frozen bodies. "He told me they were mice," she says to Gordon and Bullock. Gordon picks up one of the freeze guns, perplexed. Victor watches from the shadows as Nora is put into a police car, and driven away.

At Arkham, Penguin is shown back to his cell, and the person across from him, Nigel, who was Hugo Strange's prior patient, has pried out his own eyes. "See no evil, do no evil" he chants with laughter; that happens to be the last thing Strange said to him at the end of their session…

Nora is in interrogation. "I'm dying, he wants to save me. I can't tell you how sorry I am, but I can't betray him." Um, she also has a constitutional right not to. Incidentally, she settles an argument between Bullock and Gordon, saying her last name is pronounced "Frice." Weird gag thrown in there.

The frozen pharmacist lies on Nygma's ME table. Bet he's gonna thaw and wake up! Nygma lazily leaves the room.

Victor Fries walks into GCPD asking for Detective Gordon. "I'd like to make a confession. I'm the man who's been freezing people." The other cop says that's the fifth confession he's heard tonight. Victor has a bottle of Nora's meds with him, but is still sat with the "other confessors."

Nygma walks back into the room – and there's no one on the table! He's walking out into GCPD, chilled, but no longer frozen. A16 WORKED! I'm thinking Fries isn't going to confess anymore, and in fact, he walks out, saying "I'm coming for you, Nora, I'm coming to save you."

At Arkham, Hugo Strange opens a secret locked elevator. He goes down, below, taking audio notes of Cobblepot's "narcissism and megalomania, and unhealthy relationship with his mother." Yup, he's going down to Indian Hill! He gets a status update from Ms. Peabody. Formaldehyde pump needs replacing, "Our young lady arsonist is refusing to cooperate," and she had to reschedule an appointment. Oh, and someone has solved the problem of post-cryonic reanimation. "His name is Victor Fries, but the newspapers have already given him a nickname." "Hello, Mr. Freeze," Strange says.

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