‘Gotham’: New High-Def Look at Cameron Monaghan as Joker

Gotham fans seemed to get a pretty major surprise today with a leaked look at the show’s “final” version of Joker, and now we have another look at that massive transformation.

A new photo has made its way online, which appears to show a rather high-definition look at Cameron Monaghan‘s prosthetic makeup from the show’s final episodes. You can check it out below.

Considering the various twists and turns that Gotham has taken to bring their version of the Joker to the screen, it’s safe to say that this look is a pretty long time coming. The show originally saw Monaghan portray Jerome Valeska, before the character was killed off and succeeded by his brother, Jeremiah.

“You never see a full transformation into the Joker, but you do see another transformation,” showrunner John Stephens explained in a recent interview. “Jeremiah undergoes another evolution in his character to become another amalgam of Jeremiah and Jerome that I think audiences are gonna look at and say, ‘If it’s not the Joker then it’s definitely an antecedent or a proto-Joker that lives there.’”

“It’s a weird challenge,” Monaghan echoed. “It’s definitely not what I expected going into it, to develop one character for as long as I did and be like, all right, time for a new thing that’s also distinct. And then I’ve had to do that again recently in the final season as well — I won’t say how or why but there’s another huge transition for the character too.”

And while it’s unclear exactly what’s in store for Jeremiah, especially in Gotham‘s flash-forward series finale, the character’s transformation is just one example of the show delivering a lot of promises in its final episodes.

“We’ve run out of time, so we might as well throw it in at the end there. In a reasonably well-constructed way.” Ben McKenzie, who stars in the series as Jim Gordon, told reporters last year. “I don’t think we’re just throwing things at the wall we’ve created- I think John Stevens and the writers have created a pretty great- not just template in No Man’s Land for sort of all hell to literally and figuratively break loose. But also a plan throughout those 10 episodes to sprinkle in all those things the fans want to see in a way that pays off. A way that doesn’t just seem like lip service that actually feels like it’s part of the 98 episodes we would’ve done in the course of five years.”

Gotham airs Thursdays at 8/7c on FOX.