Once Upon a Time might be airing on ABC, but FOX’s Gotham is taking fans to a very different kind of wonderland in the fall, and ComicBook.com has a first look behind the scenes of the Mad Hatter’s playroom.
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Last season, we saw a hint that the Mad Hatter would be coming along, when Hugo Strange was spotted holding a copy of Alice Through the Looking Glass while experimenting with thought control. Then last month during Comic Con, Warner Bros. Television announced that The Walking Dead alum Benedict Samuel had been cast as mind-controlling rogue, real name Jervis Tetch, in the show’s third season.
A fairly minor menace in the comic book source material, Mad Hatter had a role in the Batman Arkham video game series, but Executive Producer John Stevens has said that the Hatter on Gotham will be something else.
“I feel like the character’s an amalgam as much anything,” Stevens said last week. “There’s a little bit of the reality from the Brubaker books but also from the New 52 and the Snyder books. There’s some of that, too. From the Batman: Mad series in terms of the emotional drive that he has. Benedict [Samuel] is definitely taller than most versions of Jervis but he plays it with a level of naturalistic insanity that I think, he really fills out that pantheon really, really well. But, no, there’s no influence from the games.”
As for the lair itself, it’s full of Alice-friendly Easter eggs: plenty of clocks so you’ll never be late for a very important date, a shelf full of (creepy) dolls ready for a tea party, and more. Dollhouses, tea kettles, bicycles and pianos are also pretty easy to find — as well as plenty of snacks for that tea party, and even some (both standard and oversized) chess boards and pieces. It seems as though Tetch is going all-in on his Alice in Wonderland persona, which will likely make him an even more dangerous foe for the Gotham City Police Department, since he’ll be more or less completely detached from reality when it comes time to face him.
…Of course, it’s not as though Alice was a full-grown adult. Is it possible that we’ll see Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle (or maybe the newly-introduced Vicky Vale) in the clutches of the Mad Hatter?
Gotham will return to FOX for its third season on September 19, 2016.
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You can check out our set photos in the attached image gallery.
