So much happened in this week’s Gotham I’m going to get straight into it: The episode opens in the GCPD exactly where we left off with Gordon, Bullock and the slave boy who escaped the Soothsayers in last week’s episode. Gordon is set on rescuing the rest of the slave kids and starts pulling together a team. Bullock is against it, saying “the second you step outside you’re gonna get shot or the guy next to you is gonna get shot and that’s going to be me!”

Gordon gets a call from the government who again refuse to send in supplies or aid of any kind. They tell him that he needs to stay in the safe zone as it’s him keeping the place together and safe. He calls them out on letting people die but they’re having none of it.

We skip over now to Bruce going to see the witch in a creepy mausoleum. It’s overgrown with plants, which seems like it happened quickly what with Gotham only having been No Man’s Land for a short time. Then one of the plants moves and it immediately becomes obvious who the witch is and why the plants are moving.

The witch is Ivy Pepper, known to Uma Thurman fans and comic nerds as Poison Ivy. Apparently she’s been killing people with plants, and some locals have brought the pitchforks out and captured her, trapping her in a cupboard with no plants, no sunlight and no water. Bruce convinces them to let him in by lying and saying she took his brother and he needs to find out what happened to him.

Sidebar – who the heck doesn’t recognize Bruce Wayne? Isn’t he like Gotham’s most famous person? And his family history is pretty much tied to his fame, so surely they’d know he doesn’t have a brother?

Flip back to Gordon who is at Barbara’s club, he needs more cars to pick up the slave kids and he seems to think that Barbara will give them to him for some reason. In this scene I truly realized that Gotham is dedicated to it’s aesthetic, as Gordon is wearing a full pressed suit, wrinkle-free shirt and an impeccably tied tie. A sharp contrast to the fact that everyone else in the No-Man’s Land Gotham dresses like a low budget Mad Max extra.

Gordon and Bullock drive Barbara’s trucks in to the Dark Zone, as people are hanging around in neon skeleton paint watching them drive in. We jump over to the slaver gang, the Soothsayers, led by newcomer, Sykes and learn that they all wear gas masks that are pumping what they call “smoke” into them, which apparently makes them high and shows them the future. For some reason their slaves are all young kids apart from one teen boy, Gabriel, who Sykes is determined to get hooked on the smoke.

All the Soothsayers go outside as soon as Gordon and his crew pull up. They surround the Soothsayers and force them to let them free the kids and Gordon goes inside while Bullock has a conversation with Sykes, who asks him why he would be a cop in No Man’s Land.

Bullock replies with “the costume shop was all out of gas masks, so it was either this or sexy nurse,” yet another brilliant Bullock one-liner. One Soothsayer has crept around the outside and is behind Bullock with a shotgun getting ready to take him out. I then said out loud “if they kill Harvey I’m giving up on this show”.

Luckily Jim heard me, as he shoots the Soothsayer dead. No due process in the No Man’s Lan eh Jim? A gunfight ensues and most of the kids and cops get away, but Gordon and Bullock are still stuck there with Gabriel and two unnamed slave kids.

We’re back with Bruce and Ivy now, when she insists that she didn’t kill anyone and that her captors are lying. She says that the park is alive and that it’s been killing people not her. She also says there is a magic seed in the middle of the park that can cure Selina’s paralysis, and she’ll give it to Bruce if he saves her.

Next up in this insane storyline carousel that is Gotham is the Riddler, who’s been having trouble stopping his original personality Edward Nygma from taking over while he sleeps. This week he’s chained himself to his bed, assuming that he’s fixed it until he finds a bloody biker in his bathtub.

Back to Gordon, Bullock and the kids as they are now on foot running from the multiple people who want to kill them and they sneak into what looks like an abandoned hotel. There’s a whole subplot that starts here about a psychotic killer called “Mother” and the child that she’s indoctrinated into catching unsuspecting victims for her but honestly that’s all you need to know. It doesn’t seem to matter apart from showing how messed up Gotham is post-society. There’s a bowl full of human teeth on a banquet table at some point. Needless to say Gordon and Bullock survive this too.

Bruce lets Ivy out and she promptly kills her captives. Bruce seems angry but doesn’t really do anything about it, obviously he’s less against killing than his comic counterpart. Probably because Gordon and Alfred have killed like 2,000 people in this show. Turns out that the park is alive, but it’s because Ivy has been feeding it people. The park also might be magic and evil? This whole section isn’t super clear. Bruce convinces Ivy to give him the magic seed still.

Riddler tortures his new biker friend to find out what Ed has been up to. They go to his hideout and find that Ed has killed everyone there, but left evidence to make people think Penguin did it. I’m guessing Ed still isn’t over Penguin killing his girlfriend even though that happened more than a week ago, which seems to be the average length of memory in Gotham.

Ivy gives Bruce the magic seed, warning him that it might fix Selina’s damaged spine but if it does it’s going to alter her personality and bring her dark side out. David Mazouz shines in this scene and is just fantastic as Bruce in this episode, it’s a real shame that they have finally gotten this character down pat in the final season of this show.

He takes the seed to the hospital to give to Selina, but Alfred is against it. He says we can’t trust Ivy, which is extremely sensible thinking, and that the seed could kill Selina. However, Selina interrupts the two and asks them to give her the seed, reasoning that she just tried to kill herself last week so no matter what she’ll get what she wants one way or another. She eats the seed and after a few seconds says “still here” in a disappointed tone, which made me smile. She tells a little story about how she met and took care of Ivy, then has a seizure.

Back to Gordon, Bullock and the kids, now surrounded by Soothsayers and neon skeleton people. Things looks like they’re about to escalate when Gordon just shoots the lead neon woman in the head. A huge fight is about to break out when Barbara turns up in what looks like a dune buggy with a gatling gun and kills all the baddies, full Mad Max.

Barbara says she is joining Gordon’s side, with the condition that he help her kill Penguin for killing Tabitha. She doesn’t have enough soldiers, but as Jim Gordon has proven himself to be a John Wick-esque invincible killing machine over the past four seasons I assume she thinks he’ll be enough. He proves this instantly when Sykes gets up to try and kill Barbara and Gordon shoots him in the head too. So that’s three people murdered in a single episode by Jim Gordon.

The final scenes of the episode of course involve Bruce and Selina. He’s worried that the seed has killed her, but then he notices her bed is empty and the window is open. He rushes in, assuming she’s jumped but there she is actually behind him, standing up in perfect condition. They hug, even though she’s being super creepy, then as the light hit her face and you see she has…. Green cat eyes!

I really tried to make this concise, but SO much happens in every episode of Gotham. I assumed the episode was almost over maybe 20 minutes in, because there was just so much happening. That’s not a negative though, after the glacial pace of some superhero TV *cough* Marvel Netflix *cough* it’s a refreshing breath of fresh air.

This was another really fun episode and another raising of the stakes. I honestly don’t know how Gotham manages to consistently get more and more dramatic without just completely wearing you out. But it does it, and it works.

8/10 Alfreds

Gotham airs on FOX – Years before the first appearance of the Batman, GCPD lieutenant Jim Gordon takes up an impossible task: cleaning up the most morally bankrupt city on earth. As Gordon fights against corruption, criminals and lunatics, Bruce Wayne prepares for his journey to become the most feared vigilante this city has ever seen.