[Featured Image: Fox]
After witnessing Selina get shot in episode 21, it’s no surprise that this episode showed Selina being rushed to the hospital. I adored that Bruce stayed with her the whole time and that she wanted him there. Even later when he’s pulled away to talk to Jeremiah, all Bruce wants is to go back to the hospital to be with Selina. By the end of the episode we find out she’s paralysed and it seems like they’re going down a Barbara Gordon/Killing Joke route with her.
Another little moment that I love is that Alfred went with Selina in the ambulance at the end. The relationship between him and Selina has always been strained. They have Bruce in common, but Alfred has clearly always been concerned that Selina will hurt him. Now he seems to genuinely care about her.
While talking to Jeremiah in the GCPD, it’s revealed that Ra’s is also involved. We see the three of them taking refuge outside of Gotham city to watch its destruction. The entire time Bruce looks completely disgusted and unimpressed. During this time, Barbara shows up with some back-up but it’s too late to stop Jeremiah’s bombs from destroying the bridges. Even so, everyone fights. Tabitha goes after Jeremiah as revenge for Selina and although she doesn’t succeed in killing him, she does get in a good shot. We also see Barbara go after Ra’s, and at the last moment, she forces Bruce to hold onto the knife and then stabs Ra’s, killing him (seemingly) for good.
I’m going to be honest and say that Ra’s feels very pointless after this finale. I think it’s mostly the fact that there was such a big gap between him dying the first time and coming back. It was obvious he was going to return, we didn’t need to go through such a huge gap. Considering he was a main character this season it doesn’t feel like he was being used to his full potential.
While all of this is going on the Jim, Harvey, and the GCPD are all working towards finding out where Jeremiah and Bruce have disappeared to. Jim comes to the conclusion that the bombs are being moved to destroy the bridges and he orders for them to be evacuated. It’s not entirely clear how many of them did manage to evacuate before the bombs went off, but we know for sure that all of the bombs did detonate.
I really loved that moment where they try to arrest Jim again but Harvey, Harper, and the rest of the GCPD pull out their weapons to protect him. It really shows how far they’ve all come. At the beginning of this season the GCPD was very broken but now they’ve seemingly all united again.
Although it’s a little unclear how much Jim knows about Bruce’s vigilante ways, it was so exciting to see the bat signal at the end! Well, it’s just a plain light right now, but it’s a start. Seeing the two of them standing on the rooftop together was such a delight and it makes me really hyped for all the Batman stuff we’re going to get next season, especially now that we know it’s the last.
Backtracking slightly to Tabitha, she does go off to get revenge for Selina, but she also spends a lot of this episode with Butch. They’ve managed to convince Strange to help and we see Butch undergo the treatment until he’s no longer got any elements of Grundy left. Although I wanted a bit more of Grundy, I was, of course, happy to see Butch again! However, his journey of being turned back/cured was tainted for me by the fact that he was killed as soon as it happened. Being shot in the head at the end of season 3 was a way better death.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to see that Oswald got revenge for Gertrud. There are so many things that have just been dropped over the years and it seemed like we were never going to see any sort of justice for what happened to Gertrud, however, I hate that Butch had to be the one to suffer for Oswald’s revenge.
The only other thing to happen was Lee and Ed’s side of the story. I loved the Ed and Jim content mostly because I love them and I love them together, but their interactions post 4×12 have been kind of out of character, especially from Jim’s side. He’s very hostile and unnecessarily angry towards Ed. It’s almost as if the talk they had in the car in 3×17 never happened. They seemed to move past a lot of things in that episode and in 4×12 they weren’t exactly best friends, and there were a couple of digs here and there, but there was no burning hate like there seems to be in their interactions (from Jim’s side) since then. Sure, it could be that Jim is dealing with everything going on and/or to do with the way he feels about Ed and Lee’s relationship, but it’s not clear. Considering Ed and Jim have a lot of potentials to have a really fantastic arc and relationship, it’s strange to me that it seemed so out of character towards the end of season 4.
Regardless, Ed and Lee’s time comes to an end with them killing each other. It kind of is fitting. Although you can argue that Ed doesn’t necessarily deliberately kill those he loves (it’s easy to argue that Kristen was somewhat of an accident), Lee isn’t to know that. For all she knows, Ed is smart and deliberate with all his actions, so why wouldn’t every murder he’s committed be 100% purposeful? Plus, she knows the softer side of himself has been suppressed, so it only makes sense that she would think a few steps ahead and try to kill him first.
I loved seeing these two together throughout season 4 and I honestly expected it to completely end, and for them to go their separate ways, by the time the season was over. With season 5 being so short, that could still happen right at the start of season 5, but we’ll have to see. Oswald instructed Strange to fix them and so now we can assume that Ed and Lee are going to be intertwined with Oswald during season 5, even if only very briefly. We also don’t know how or if they’re going to change, whatever happens to them could force them back together for another season or at least some of it.
It’s really hard to tell though because of course, they wrote this season with the hopes of getting a fifth season with 22 episodes. However, season 5 is the last and it’s much shorter meaning some of their ideas will most likely be dropped or changed. We’ll have to wait to see what continues on, is changed, or completely dropped when Gotham returns next year. Something that is exciting, regardless of what happens next season, is seeing the Rogues claim different parts of Gotham. If it’s done right we could still see a decent amount of all of them during season 5.
wonderoes 