Gotham: Is SPOILER Really Dead?

SPOILERS ahead for tonight's episode of Gotham, "The Last Laugh!" Major spoilers! You've been warned!

Well, that was quite a shocker, huh?

After three weeks of terror, laughter, and maniacal moments, Jerome had his titular "last laugh" after being turned on by his benefactor, Theo Galavan. With a stab to the neck, he choked out a few last words about what he was "supposed to be," virtually giving the fans a voice to the moment - but he was supposed to be The Joker, right?

So is Jerome really dead and gone? Well, yes, it looks that way. We'll have more details for you later tonight and tomorrow morning with some extensive interviews with cast and crew, but let's just look at the facts:

Jerome was stabbed in the neck, and deeply. A stab in that position and that depth would likely have cut the back of the carotid artery, as well as severing important nerves and puncturing the trachea and thyroid. We saw Jerome coughing up blood, as well, which further proves that his esophagus was cut along with an artery or vein. If blood is going up, then it's also going down, meaning that if Jerome somehow didn't bleed out, he would've suffocated on his own blood. All this I say from my expertise as a medic in the Army for six years.

So yeah, that's a very dead Jerome lying there on the table at the end of the episode.

How the heck could he come back? Well, that depends on how "comic book" Gotham wants to get. The world of the show has so far been very grounded, with no superpowers or monstrosities outside of your serial killer with a quirk. That means that a clone or an alternate timeline version of Jerome is on the far outside of the spectrum of possibility, despite things like that showing up on other DC shows like The Flash. There's always the twin brother idea, and Jerome's parents are certainly the type to just "throw one away," but that might be a bit too cliché, even for a show that likes to revel in puns and nods at the genre as Gotham does.

So is Jerome really dead? We're afraid so, for now. But never say never on a return. This is a comic book TV show, after all.

Click here to see what might be next for The Joker on Gotham.