That sound you hear is laughter, coming back to Fox’s Gotham.
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The promo for Gotham’s midseason finale, “Queen Takes Knight” was just released, and it offered us a glimpse at much of the storylines that have been unfolding in the past ten episodes of the series’ fourth season coming to a veritable head, from Penguin’s forces and the Gotham City Police Department facing off for control of the city to Alfred confronting Bruce Wayne about his emotional downward spiral. But the real surprise came in the last second of the promo, which showed a brief glimpse of the long-awaited return of Cameron Monaghan’s Jerome Valeska to the streets of Gotham.
Although he was introduced as a proto-version of the Joker all the way back in the first season of the series, Monaghan’s turn as Jerome was such a highlight that fans began to embrace him as this universe’s actual Joker. Subsequent appearances of the character only helped cement this idea, as he unleashed his appetite for chaos upon Gotham City and its residents. Last we saw of Jerome, he had the skin of his face cut off and reattached (in a bit of a nod to the comics), and he had taken his personal brand of mania inside a theme park to torment Bruce Wayne. Thanks to the efforts of Jim Gordon however, Jerome was knocked out. His face was properly reattached, and he was off to be incarcerated back in Arkham Asylum in the Season 3 episode “The Gentle Art of Making Enemies.”
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It might have been a long wait, but Jerome is finally set to be unleashed once again. The promo only shows us a quick glimpse of the character, but we do see that he has now the permanent scars of a smile on his face, something that is quite reminiscent of Heath Ledger’s Joker in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. The heroes of Gotham are torn apart at the seems and, with nothing but a smile and the sound of his laughter, Jerome looks set to surface madder than ever, at the worst possible time.
Airing Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Fox, Gotham stars Ben McKenzie as James Gordon, Donal Logue as Harvey Bullock, David Mazouz as Bruce Wayne, Robin Lord Taylor as Penguin, Cameron Bicondova as Selina Kyle, Erin Richards as Barbara Kean and Sean Pertwee as Alfred Pennyworth.