Distributor: Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
Episodes: 22
Duration: 42 min (per episode)
Gotham: Season 3 (Blu-ray) – Series Review
With the second season ending with the escape of all of Hugo Strange’s monsters from Indian Hill, it promised to become a very interesting third season of Gotham, where more and more familiar faces would be exposed, more villains shown and perhaps even more heroes join the fray. Well for the most part we were right, but this third season of Gotham didn’t really turn out to be what we expected, which is both a good and a bad thing, as to some extent the series went in an ‘interesting’ direction. Nonetheless, again we enjoyed seeing the many young faces of well-known characters of the Dark Knight’s stories.
In the wake of the monsters escaping from Indian Hill, GCPD is having its hands full trying to arrest them all, or at least subdue them, making them harmless. James Gordon (Ben McKenzie), who left at the end of the second season to go after Leslie ‘’Lee’’ Thompkins (Morena Baccarin), to be with her, has returned but as a bounty hunter rather than a police officer. It’s clear things didn’t go well when he went to see Lee, as she was already with another man. Now, the clearly hurt Gordon, is doing the best he can to bust all the freaks from Indian Hill, albeit in a somewhat rougher way than the GCPD.
Meanwhile Oswald (Robin Lord Taylor) is climbing up in the world once again, as he riled up the entire city to drive the monsters out of Gotham. Even his run in with Fish (Jada Pinkett Smith) was more pleasant than he expected, making it so that the city of Gotham saw him as a hero. This gives Oswald the idea to run for mayor, which proves to be a success, especially with Edward Nygma (Cory Michael Smith) by his side. The latter he had to forcefully free from Arkham Asylum by using his well versed skills of persuasion, a.k.a. using threats.
Again on the other side of town, Bruce (David Mazouz) and Alfred (Sean Pertwee) learn about the society that is controlling Gotham from the shadows, namely the Council of Owls. While they tried to get rid of Bruce earlier, Bruce tries to negotiate with them, which also proves to be a success, if he promises to mind his own business and also call off the investigation surrounding his parents’ death. The latter proves to be a hard promise, but in order to keep himself and his loved ones safe, it’s a necessary evil in his otherwise righteous crusade.
Even more is happening, as a new villain is introduced, a virus that strengthens people but also turns them into raging maniacs and several other items making this season one that has a lot of things going on.
While the flow still follows the same format as it did last season, where every episode revolved around a certain issue, bad guy or predicament, it also feels that the overall story of the third season is somewhat all over the place. In many ways it looks as if there are multiple story arcs running amiss, where on the one hand there is a virus plaguing the city, while the relation between Oswald and Edward also becomes a key part of this season, but also Gordon’s love life, and Barbara’s ambitions. Even later on some of these stories get fragmented, involving even more characters, but we don’t wish to spoil the entire third season for you. All we can say is, that there’s a lot of information to process, and a lot of things going on at the same time, which can be very pleasant for some, but a bit too much for those who already have a hard time keeping up with one or two main plot points. Nonetheless, things remain interesting from start to finish.
Not that many new characters are introduced this season, or at least those that last for a numerous amount of episodes. This means that the acting performances remain the same as during the previous season, which makes sure you get a proper bang for your buck. An interesting new character is the Jervic Tetch, who is played by Benedict Samuel, who does a superb job in playing this Gotham version of the Mad Hatter. Other new appearances include those who have ties with the Council of Owls and a grown up version of Ivy, the latter which we won’t spoil in what way she suddenly grew up. Overall an interesting cast, that puts down a triple A performance.
Outside of the reasonable amount of deleted scenes you can find on the Blu-ray release, you can also find a fair amount of features revolving around the topics of this season, such as a featurette about the new villains or the Court of Owls. Other fun snippets revolve around Ben McKenzie’s debut as a director, or the 2016 Comic-Con panel. Not overly impressive, but a fun way to extend your fix of Gotham.
Conclusion
Even though the third season of Gotham felt a bit more chaotic than the two previous seasons, we loved pretty much every minute of it but we have to admit that the season could have been shortened a bit, or that some story portions could have been split up a bit more, allowing the viewers to enjoy everything that is going on properly. While this may be an argument you can’t find yourself in, we have to say that this season is at least very interesting and opens up a lot of story possibilities for the future, although we don’t hope that this series will get dragged out too much as it would lose its edge this way. If you enjoyed the previous two seasons, you’ll certainly have a blast watching this one. Gotham is, and remains probably the best live action DC series out there at the moment.
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