David Mazouz may have played Bruce Wayne for the entirety of Gotham’s five-season run, but he was never once called Batman. However, we did get to see this universe’s Bruce suited up as Gotham City’s Dark Knight in the final moments of the series finale, which jumped forward 10 years after the events of Gotham’s penultimate episode. Looking back, Mazouz admitted that the DC TV show’s final episode felt “rushed,” and I agree with his idea with what would have been better, albeit a big ask.
While appearing on Love It Film to plug the short film he co-wrote, starred in and produced called Money Talks, David Mazouz recalled his involvement in the Gotham series finale, titled “The Beginning.” After mentioning that while he did voice the older Bruce in the episode, his face was CGI’d onto the “Russian stunt guy” who was wearing the Batsuit, he said this about how the show wrapped things up:
It felt rushed to me because of that. It just inherently was because the final episode takes place 10 years later after the second to last episode. So everybody’s aged up. They put white in Ben’s hair and they gave him a mustache. I remember Erin had like a wig on. She had cherry hair instead of her usual blonde hair. Everybody looks different in the show. To me, it was a little bit of fan service. The other option is just having the show stay on for another 10 years and just seeing everybody actually age. Which would have been better, but if you only have one episode to do it…
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Rushed is a fair assessment considering we only got to spend one episode in this 10-years-later setting. Like David Mazouz pointed out, this was done to bring many of Gotham’s characters closer to their comic book counterparts. Bruce debuting as Batman was obviously the biggest example, but we did indeed also briefly get to see James Gordon in a mustache before shaving it off, and Riddler and Penguin also wore their more comic-accurate costumes. Jeremiah Valeska also emerged in his final “J” form, although it was left ambiguous whether he would actually become the Gotham universe’s Joker.
This was a lot to cram into a series finale, and I remember at the time hoping that Gotham’s last episode would be extended to two episodes. The preferable option, however, would be, like David Mazouz suggested, if Gotham had ran for another 10 seasons and we’d gotten to “The Beginning…” at a natural pace. But that unfortunately wasn’t in the cards, so Mazouz understood why the show’s writers went all in on the “fan service,” adding:
I think what the writers wanted to do was just show the fans that had been with the show for five years, ‘Here’s some resolution. Here is all these characters being the characters that they’re going to become in their fully-fledged forms.’ It only was one episode. There wasn’t much to explore. I wasn’t in it that much, so maybe I’m biased. Because again, I wasn’t really ever on set for that episode. I was in it, but it was really just a weird CGI thing with my face.
As interested as it is to imagine a 15-season Gotham run, the chances of that happening in real life would have been extremely slim. However, considering that Smallville ran for 10 seasons, perhaps there’s a world where Gotham might have lasted that same amount of time and come to a more organic conclusion. In our world, though, Fox decided to wrap up this take on the Batman mythos with a 10-episode fifth and final season, although the network later approved two additional episodes.
Though Gotham’s time has long since concluded, Batman’s onscreen future is looking as bright as ever. The Batman: Part II is still slated for an October 1, 2027 release, and it’s been reported that The Flash’s Christina Hodson has been tapped to write The Brave and the Bold, i.e. the upcoming DC movie that will introduce Batman to the DC Universe continuity.
