Here’s Why ‘Gotham’s Jim Gordon is Basically Murdering People Now

There’s no grappling away from the fact FOX Bat-prequel Gotham isn’t every DC fan’s cup of tea, though we can at least credit them with a unique spin on Batman’s history. That spin … may have become a tailspin with Monday’s fall 2015 finale “Worse Than a Crime,” as Ben McKenzie’s Gordon seemingly broke the comic character’s morality for good, but we’ll let the showrunner and McKenzie himself explain.

You’re warned of Gotham spoilers through last night’s fall finale (Season 2 will return in February), though Mr. Freeze wasn’t the only villain with an heart of ice to put in an appearance. All season long, Gotham has sought to test the limits of Gordon’s darkness, and his willingness to abuse the law, though the boundary may finally have snapped after the GCPD detective willingly shot the dastardly Theo Galavan (James Frain) to death, following Penguin’s insistence he’d slip prosecution again.

Granted, this isn’t the first life Gotham’s Gordon has taken under dubious circumstances, it’s certainly the most cold-blooded killing on record, and potentially a final straw for those bemoaning the FOX drama’s divergence from the morally upright Gordon of Batman comics. Speaking with TVGuide, McKenzie acknowledged the break from continuity, defending it as one of Gotham’s many adjustments:

I do think it alters the mythology a little, although I would argue that every new incarnation of Batman has altered the mythology in some way. We’re exploring the origins of Gotham, and the way that we’re exploring the city paints it as such a violent and corrupt and chaotic place that it’s hard to imagine a law man like Jim Gordon surviving and much less rising to the top of our hierarchy without getting blood on his hands.

He quite literally, has blood on his hands right now, so to that extent, we are changing it a little bit, what he is. But he’s not Vic Mackey. He’s a far cry removed from that. He’s a burdened hero, out there in a lawless town trying to maintain order. If it means he has to walk into a saloon and kill all the bad guys point blank without the other guy even pulling his gun, then that’s what he has to do.

Meanwhile, showrunner Bruno Heller acknowledged to TVLine that the decision to steer Gordon so darkly wasn’t an easy one:

Yeah, there was a lot of debate, right up and down the ladder. But that’s kind of what Gotham is all about, those kind of moral quandaries that someone like Gordon is put into — no bad deed goes unpunished any more than any good deed goes unpunished. The important thing about what he just did there is that there will be consequences. Serious consequences.

Gotham will be moving into more comic supervillains in 2016 with the arrival of Mr. Freeze and B.D. Wong’s Hugo Strange, but did “Worse Than a Crime” take Gordon too far? Has Gotham irrevocably broken itself away from the Bat-mythos, or should we hold out hope the series one day veers back toward its comic roots?

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