Fox's Gotham series has reimagined the origins of Bruce Wayne and the city that made him. While many fans have fallen in love with the new take on Wayne's history, others are torn by how far from canon the series falls. Gotham is approaching the final episodes of its fifth season, which debuts next year. As with most shows on their final run, the cast and production team have embarked on a farewell tour of sorts. They blessed audiences at New York Comic Con last weekend with a trailer, and showrunner John Stephens recently spoke with Comicbook.com about the final season.
Stephens revealed that the current narrative, which is influenced by the Batman comic No Man's Land, is missing a main villain. "We were never able, at the end of the day, unfortunately, to get in the Ventriloquist, which especially for No Man's Land feels like something we should have done," admitted Stephens. "But every time we wrote him in, he just kept getting squeezed out by the story, so we have Easter Eggs with him in the story, obviously. And we have smaller gangs that feature in throughout no-man's-land that we've put into the story as well. But I would say Ventriloquist is probably the big one that we didn't do. But otherwise not so much."
Another villain Stephens wanted to include with was the Condiment King. The character was created for pure comic relief, and isn't even a challenge for Batman and his allies. "I've been trying to get Condiment King in for five years, but every time I pitch Condiment King, people are like, 'we're not going to be doing Condiment King,'" Stephens said.
