As Gotham‘s end began this Thursday, the Fox drama efficiently gave us the lay of the No Man’s Land, before delving into decidedly deadly dealings between Penguin and those who dare challenge him.
Picking up 87 days after the Season 4 finale, which ended with Jeremiah Valeska blowing up Gotham’s connections to the outside world, the premiere explained that Penguin lords over the manufacture of munitions, while Barbara and the Sirens hold the keys to the city’s proverbial kitchen. The GCPD has turned into a refugee camp of sorts, doing what it can to feed and protect those left to fend for themselves by the fighting factions — though provisions are now running low, with barely two weeks of quarter-rations left.
Penguin sends a manservant to broker a deal with Barbara — offering 1,000 rounds of 9mm bullets for 1,000 lbs. of steak. Tabitha, still stinging from Butch’s true and sincere death, sneers at the notion of trading with her sometime-boyfriend’s killer, but Babs makes clear that he is a devil they must dance with (though she raises her ask to 2,000, and eventually 3,000 rounds).
Jim Gordon meanwhile has apparently been repeatedly and fruitlessly leaning on the government to lend a hand, but they have made their stance clear: Gotham is on its own. Worse, Scarecrow and his posse storm the GCPD itself to steal food as well as medicine. In the wake of that attack, which he himself was only able to cut short, Bruce informed Jim that a Wayne Enterprises helicopter was en route from the mainland to deliver supplies. Alas, Jim and Harvey later barely laid eyes on the arriving chopper before it got shot down by someone’s should-mount rocket. First to arrive at the site of the wreckage, Penguin is readying to grab all the goods when Jim and the GCPD pull up. The good guys are clearly outgunned, until arrows thwip! through the air and take out some of Penguin’s goons.
It’s Tabitha, and she soon enough has her gun pointed at Butch’s killer. Alas, the hastily made munition of his that is inside her gun misfires, quite ironically. Penguin then grabs a blade and plunges it into Tabitha’s chest, killing her. Barbara arrives not long after, screaming in horror at seeing her No. 1 gal slain. After Penguin non-fatally shoots Babs, he is ready to resume his plundering of the Wayne Enterprises booty when the GCPD comes out reloaded guns a-blazing, thanks to bullets that Bruce pinched from Penguin’s stash outside. After putting a bullet into his frenemy’s newly repaired leg, Jim strikes a deal with Penguin: they split the supplies 50/50, and Barbara lives. Penguin agrees, but later puts a massive bounty on Jim’s head, as he angrily nurses his re-wounded leg.
Elsewhere during the opening hour:
* Bruce, whenever he was able, sat at Selina’s bedside as she continued to kinda sorta recuperate from her paralysis. Doctors removed the bullet from her spinal area, yet there was no promise at all that she would ever walk again. This tragic fact led Selina to try to end her life, by lunging for a nearby scalpel, but the hospital staff and Bruce found her in time. That scare, though, prompted Bruce to more carefully consider the strange counsel of one nurse — that the only way to save Selina was by going to “the witch.”
* Nygma is suffering from “lost time,” mapping the odd locations he wakes up after a blackout.
* At the cop shop, a pretty blonde eyeballed Jim’s map of the gang territories, before vanishing upon his return from the face-off with Penguin. Jim noticed that onto the map had been scrawled a pair of maniacal eyes and the words, “HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”
What did you think of the season opener, the big death and the witchy tease?
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