New ‘Gotham’ Photo Teases Penguin’s Murder of a Long-Running Character

As every Gotham fan already knows, giving Penguin any amount of power can be a dangerous thing, and that’s exactly what’s happening as the show returns for its fifth season. When No Man’s Land was created in the Season 4 finale, Penguin took over an entire sector of the city, and he’s already letting the power get to his head.

In a first look photo from the new season, released by TVLine, Penguin is back to his smug, arrogant best, taunting a rival group at what appears to be a shootout. However, there may be more to the image than meets the eye.

Not only did TVLine release the photo online, but the site reports that the image is taken after “having just slain a long-running character.” The body of said character is out of frame, so there’s no telling who it could be. But there are plenty of options to consider, given the fact that the majority of the characters remaining on the show could be considered “long-running.”

During a visit to the Gotham set earlier this year, ComicBook.com spoke with Robin Lord Taylor about the evolution of Oswald Cobblepot in Season 5.

“I can’t spoil anything specific but definitely there are parts of the traditional iconography of the Penguin that are coming into play this year,” he told us. “We’ve done everything else with this character it has its own unique twists and it’s also everything is earned and everything makes sense this character is turning into the traditional Penguin that we all know and so we see it visually as well as emotionally.”

Just a few days after the interview, at New York Comic Con, Taylor confirmed that Penguin would be putting on some weight in the final season. He joked during one of the panels, “Yeah, I get chunky.”

On his way towards becoming the classic Penguin that we all know and love from the comics, Gotham‘s version of Oswald will have quite the story in Season 5 as he begins the final installment thriving in No Man’s Land.

“He’s in the best place he’s ever been, the second Jeremiah blows the bridges Gotham is shut off from the rest of the world,” Taylor said. “There’s a huge power vacuum, someone needs to step in and control, and as messed up as it is Penguin is one of the most qualified people to do that having been Mayor of Gotham as successfully, unsuccessfully- I’ll leave it up to the viewers to decide but that’s an amazing opportunity for him to rebuild the power structure in Gotham city in his own image the way he wants it to be done.

“Unfortunately that puts him right up against Jim Gordon, classically, as we’ve always sort of had going since the beginning is that dynamic between Penguin and Jim and so both of them trying to rest control- and also not just from each other but from the rest of these rogues galleries of everyone controlling their territories. It’s forcing all of these characters to have to deal each other and come to the table regardless of past grievances.”

Gotham‘s fifth and final season premieres on Thursday, January 3, 2019 on FOX.