Gotham season 5 spoilers: EP talks Jeremiah – Joker connection

We’ve long felt like Gotham has faced a bit of a struggle when it comes to how to present the Joker. This is one of the Batman’s most-notorious foes, if not the most notorious foe. Yet, a big part of what makes the character interesting, at least in most iterations of the story, is how little you actually know about him. So much of his identity and mythology is shrouded in questions, so the idea of giving him a full-on origin is a little bit of a challenge.

Add to this the limitations put on Gotham by the folks over at DC Comics, and it’s clear that it’s even harder to replicate this character fully.

We’ve heard Cameron Monaghan say in a recent interview that he does eventually play someone who, effectively, can be thought as a third character for him. With that, the prevailing theory is that this character is more or less the actual Joker. Yet, that may not be entirely the case.

Speaking via TV Guide, executive producer John Stephens stops short of saying that Monaghan is going to play the Joker on the show, though he does make it clear that there are some similarities between his work and that of the Clown Prince of Crime:

“You never see a full transformation into the Joker, but you do see another transformation … Jeremiah undergoes another evolution in his character to become another amalgam of Jeremiah and Jerome that I think audiences are gonna look at and say, ‘If it’s not the Joker then it’s definitely an antecedent or a proto-Joker that lives there.”

In some ways, everything that Stephen says here harkens back to when Jerome was killed for the first time back in season 2 — at the conclusion of that episode, the idea was that his essence would live on with a number of demented people for many years. It’s very well possible, therefore, that the eventual Joker within the show’s Batman world is simply someone inspired by Jerome or Jeremiah, and that Monaghan’s characters are meant to be a precursor to them. We don’t think that this thought process takes anything away from what Cameron brings to the table or the threat that Jeremiah brings — he can be his own notorious criminal and icon within this show without having the name “Joker” attached to him.

Be prepared to start seeing Jeremiah in a semi-regular fashion on Thursday’s new episode; he’ll be around for much of the remainder of this season.

Related News – Be sure to get some other information on Gotham, including a further preview for some of what lies ahead

What do you think is going to be the legacy of Jeremiah on Gotham, when the dust does finally settle? Be sure to share right now in the comments. (Photo: Fox.)