‘Gotham’ Releases First Official Look at Bane

Gotham is introducing Bane in the upcoming final season and, after a set photo of Shane West’s new take on the character surfaced online Monday morning, it looks like Fox and Warner Bros. decided to make things officially official.

A few hours after the image made its rounds online, EW unveiled the actual photo of West in costume, revealing every nook and cranny of his mysterious new costume.

Take a look at the official photo below!

The first hints at Bane‘s costume came last week, as West was seen suited up behind his co-stars at a table read. A couple of days later, the actor posted a photo of his character’s glove online. This new image is the first time we’ve seen the complete costume.

Fans speculated that West would be playing Bane when he was cast as Eduardo Dorrance, a former Army friend of Jim Gordon’s. At New York Comic Con, showrunner John Stephens confirmed that West’s character would indeed become Bane over the course of this season, giving him a slightly different origin than fans are accustomed to.

“Finally, we found that if you beg and you plead enough, and then they find out that your show is not going on anymore, they’ll give it to you,” Stephens said during the Gotham panel. “We always wanted to do it and we wanted to do it in a way that has not been told as much on screen or in the comic books, which was to really tell the story of how he was before he became Bane. And we tied it to Jim’s back story, in a way that I think is clearly different than canon, but I feel like it is like a tributary that then goes into the canon.”

Bane’s storyline will also feature a broken back, but it won’t be Batman’s. During an altercation, West’s take on the iconic villain will snap the spine of Sean Pertwee’s Alfred, Bruce Wayne’s best friend and caretaker.

What do you think about Bane’s new look on Gotham? Let us know in the comments!

Gotham will return for its fifth and final season on FOX in 2019.