Ben McKenzie as Jim Gordon. (Jeff Neumann/FOX)
The season finale of Fox‘s Gotham aired tonight. So you might be wondering if the Batman prequel series has been renewed for a fourth season. The answer is yes, Gotham was picked up, despite low ratings for season three. The show will be back in Fall 2017.
Fox has decided to move Gotham out of the Monday 8 p.m. ET time slot for the first time since the show began. Season four will air on Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET, with Seth MacFarlane’s sci-fi comedy The Orville airing afterwards. Fox shifted Lucifer to the Monday 8 p.m. ET timeslot, with the X-Men universe series The Gifted airing on Mondays at 9 p.m. ET.
The network took its sweet time to finally renew the pricey Warner Bros. TV production for a fourth season. It wasn’t until May 10 that the show was renewed and it’s not hard to see why. As TVSeriesFinale notes, the show’s ratings have been noticeably off from season two. Through 20 episodes, season three has averaged just 3.348 million total viewers, an 18.17 percent drop. It has averaged a 1.09 rating in the 18-49 demographic, off 22.29 percent from the previous season.
Gotham is overseen by The Mentalist‘s Bruno Heller, whose team has shown a complete disregard for Batman mythology from the moment the show started. We’ve seen villains whose origins feature Batman prominently come into play without the Dark Knight, while the future commissioner, James Gordon, has killed plenty of people.
In season four, Bruce Wayne will finally start transitioning into Batman and that began in the season three finale. It seems appropriate, since the second half of season was subtitled “Heroes Rise.” David Mazouz, who plays Bruce, also teased Harley Quinn in an interview with MoviePilot.com. “She’s going to be in the finale. Stay tuned,” Mazouz said. Of course this would be another huge deviation from Batman lore. How can Harley Quinn exist without a Joker running around?
“Something major happens in the very last scene of Season 3 for Bruce,” Mazouz told MoviePilot.com. “He makes a decision, that decision will influence what he does. I don’t know what’s happening in Season 4 yet, I haven’t had a script or talked to the writers about what’s going to happen, but where I see it going is somewhere I’ve wanted to see it going for a very long time. You’ll see what I mean. Bruce is going to be very busy taking on this new role that he assumes at the end of Season 3 and I think it’ll be really cool.”
We can also expect Ra’s Al Ghul to play a big role in season four. After all, you don’t cast Alexander Siddig (Game of Thrones) in the role if you only plan on using him once.
The main roster of characters on Gotham includes Ben McKenzie as James Gordon; Donal Logue as Harvey Bullock; David Mazouz as Bruce Wayne; Sean Pertwee as Alfred Pennyworth; Robin Lord Taylor as Oswald Cobblepott; Erin Richards as Barbara Kean; Camren Bicondova as Selina Kyle; Cory Michael Smith as Edward Nygma; Morena Baccarin as Leslie Thompkins; Jessica Lucas as Tabitha Galavan; Chris Chalk as Lucius Fox; Drew Powell as Butch Gilzean; Maggie Geha as Ivy Pepper; and Benedict Samuel as Jervis Tetch. The show’s been nominated for seven Emmys, all in technical categories.
