By Jarrod Jones. It’s been scarcely a single week since Gotham sent us off to gaze into the nothingness that lies before us, and here I am, still writing about it like a schmuck.
News came from Fox’s Upfront presentation — a pandering, anthemic pageant of narcissism made to woo potential advertisers and the thoroughly jaded/likely drunk press — on Monday afternoon, where Fox co-chairman and co-CEO Gary Newman announced that Mr. Freeze and the Joker would make their full debuts on Gotham, your one-stop source for pain and misery, in its second season.
#Gotham will feature “Exciting new villains like The Joker and Mr. Freeze” in Season 2 we were just told. #Upfronts2015
— Eric Goldman (@EricIGN) May 11, 2015
If that tweet wasn’t already a solid indicator of how little this news actually means (though those little quotation marks are utterly priceless), let me make it clear: a co-CEO of the Fox network, presumably half-drunk on Prosecco, told a room full of people (who were there to watch the cast of Empire tear the roof off that mother) that a supervillain named Mr. Freeze was going to be on a Batman show without Batman. Where he will likely be portrayed as — if the show continues to break from canon — a refrigerator repairman named “Vick” who grumbles through his two dollar stogie about some dame named “Nora” who keeps hassling him for rent money. Or some such.
Also, the Joker. But you won’t care because you won’t be watching it, right? Right.