Fans are excited to see the debut of Batman during the final season of Gotham, but there’s also another major villain getting their own rebirth next week in the episode “Ace Chemicals.”
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After years of teases, it seems like The Joker is finally going to make his debut. Supposed leaks from the time-skipping season finale might give us our first look at the final evolution of Jeremiah Valeska. Take a look:
Other photos were surfacing on social media earlier, but they’ve since been removed. We have reached out to verify the validity of these photos, but have yet to hear back.
If this is the final appearance of the Joker on Gotham, it seems like a bold risk. The character is known for his iconic green hair, and though variations of that look have appeared previously on the series, the straggly bald strands isn’t something fans are familiar with.
There have been comic book versions of the Joker where he appears with a similar look, but nothing that’s stuck around for longer than a few issues in Elseworlds or parallel Earth storylines.
This version of the Joker will likely come with controversy. Fans of the series, seeing the events unfold in real time, might be more likely to appreciate this canon. But don’t be surprised if die-hard followers of the DC Comics characters reject this version of the Clown Prince of Crime.
Of course, these might not pan out, and we could be expecting a more comic-accurate version of the Joker when the episode finally premieres.
After the events of “Ace Chemicals,” we know that Jeremiah will undergo a transformation, becoming the third iteration of the character that we’ve yet to see on the series. Showrunner John Stephens teased what we should expect in the future from Bruce Wayne’s sworn enemy.
“One of the themes of the show has always been about the evolution of identity and how fluid it is,” Stephens told ComicBook.com. “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.”
Gotham‘s episode “Ace Chemicals” airs this Thursday on FOX.
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