When SYFY WIRE spoke to “Gotham” co-executive producer Bryan Wynbrandt after last week’s shocking transformation for Poison Ivy, he promised that it was far from over, and more transformations were coming for characters all over the show.
And on Wednesday, at a ceremony honoring David Mazouz (who plays Bruce Wayne) on the New York “Ride of Fame” tour bus, the young star teased that Bruce will be one of the characters undergoing multiple transformations.
That starts with a shocking event instigated by Ra’s al Ghul and his return to Gotham City, which Mazouz teased for us earlier. It will cause Bruce to temporarily step away from the vigilante persona he’s been adopting so far on Gotham Season 4. But he will return, and it will be a very different Bruce Wayne stepping into a suit.
“Right now, he’s having fun dressing up. He’s doing it because it makes him feel alive, because he loves it. When he comes back, he’s doing it because he needs to, and because Gotham needs him to,” he explained. “It’s a much more serious version of the character. It’s much closer to the Batman version of the vigilante character.”
The idea of constant transformation is something Mazouz relates to, laughing while he said, “As a teenager, every day I’m a different person!” Still, he thinks the Bruce Wayne we’ll see throughout Season 4 — or rather, the multiple takes on Bruce that will emerge — all come from the natural development over the first three seasons.
“He started as just a rich kid who had this tragedy. Over the course of the three years and change, he has become a vigilante, and a person the boy we saw three years ago couldn’t have imagined. It’s not that he’s changed out of nowhere in the last five episodes of Season 3, it was very gradual, very slow; it was a natural progression. I really appreciate [the writers and producers] doing that, because it’s very real, and we’ve seen him learn different values and skills along the road.”
That road has led to Mazouz donning a cowl, though it was “missing some ears,” and he unfortunately found the big moment “uncomfortable” — he was stuck in a harness on a green-screen stage for a long time before getting to add the mask to his costume.
One effect of those changes is that Bruce is now interacting with the adult characters on the show much more, including Penguin (Robin Lord Taylor) this season… and a character who will surprisingly become a villain of sorts to Bruce.
“Working with Robin is so great,” he said. “We have a scene together in this week’s episode [403], and we both went in to do ADR” — the process during which actors re-record lines to patch up any audio glitches from the initial shoot. “The ADR guys see every scene like 600 times, I’m sure it’s very boring to them. They told both Robin and I, ‘We love seeing you guys together!’ When they say something like that, it’s really great, because they’re watching this on repeat.”
The theme of transformation — and evolution — will continue, but a motif of “power” will also emerge, as Penguin, Jim Gordon (Ben McKenzie), and Bruce all seek out their own methods of controlling and protecting Gotham City.
“Everyone’s trying to sit on the Iron Throne, so to speak. And as things continue, we’ll see Bruce, Penguin, and Gordon all challenging each other. It’s not going to be an easy road,” he said. In fact, it means Bruce and Gordon are going to find each other on opposite sides of the war for Gotham.
“Even though you think, well, Bruce and Jim are both ‘good guys’ and they’re going to work together right away, they’re not. They’ll actually be going after each other quite a bit. The vigilante will really start to be Gordon’s main enemy in the back half of this season, and Gordon will be Bruce’s main enemy in the back half of this season.”
When will some of these moments and transformations come to a head?
“There’s a scene in Episode 7 — shooting that, I had the most fun shooting ever,” he explained. “It was probably my most fun day of work ever in my career. I cannot wait to see how it turns out! I can’t wait to talk about that. You’ll know what it is, the second you see it.”
“Gotham” airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET on Fox, and it sounds like fans have some big Batman-inspired events on the way.
