GOTHAM
Season 5 | US Fox, 3 Jan | UK E4, TBC
With its fifth season, Gotham finally gets to close a chapter on the dark underbelly of the city, and open the door for Bruce Wayne’s (David Mazouz) transformation into Batman. Showrunner John Stephens says the series will end as creator Bruno Heller intended. “He had an idea that he pitched me of the ending, and I would say it’s a little different but very similar to that. The core elements he had in mind are the ones we are using.” Primarily, it’s seeing where all the characters end up, which will be the focus of the last episode. “The whole 10th episode takes place 10 years in the future so it’s all of our characters as we would see them when Batman would arrive,” Stephens reveals. And before that epilogue, he says they manage to bring closure to the large ensemble fans have come to love from Cobblepot (Robin Lord Taylor) to James Gordon (Ben McKenzie). “We had to be efficient and know the beats we wanted to land, so we looked at all of our core characters and asked what do we want to hit with every one of them by the end of the series. I’m both excited and sad because I hope it’s satisfying and we get to end the show on our own terms.”