Strange days have found us...
Warning: Full spoilers for the episode below.
Exit Theo, Jerome, and Barbara (for now) and enter Victor Fries and Hugo Strange. For the second half of Gotham's second season - titled "Wrath of the Villains."
Oh, sure Tabitha's still around. And Butch. And they've been paired up. He's now the de facto leader of the underworld, drillin' folks with his drill hand just for kicks. And she's looking to partner up again. Using the days she spent torturing him as her psychological foot in the door. Well, that and planting that kiss on him. By the way, Butch has been irreparably tortured and brainwashed twice now, right?
But that's not the headline here. Gotham's all about Mr. Freeze and Hugo Strange now. With my excitement leaning way more into B.D. Wong's Strange than in Nathan Darrow's Freeze. Mostly because Strange has never been portrayed in person before. He's been a big part of animated shows and video games, but Wong's the first actor to play him. And yes, it's odd (almost used "strange") to see Strange on a show like Gotham because of how much we associate him with a boner-fied Batman obsession. Because of his role in the Prey storyline from the comics. But here he is without Batman. As head of Arkham. Ready to coldly inflict his "cures" on the mentally ill. Which, for Penguin surely means a lot of drugs and abuse.
At least Strange still connects to the Waynes somehow. His Indian Hill projects are basically all the Wayne Industries experiments that were "shut down." Really, in truth, moved underground and overseen by Strange. And by the end of this one, Strange seemed to develop an instant interest in Freeze due to his own inability to crack certain cryogenics problems. So while Freeze was mostly played off like the "case of the week" - as in, he was the murderer being tracked by Gordon and Bullock - he might get drawn into some more seasonal arc stuff. Because Strange connects to the larger picture. The dark side of Bruce's family business that has been teased since the very start. Hell, we may learn it was Strange who had Thomas and Martha murdered.
So I really liked Strange here. And Wong's performance. Which I like to think is just an extension of his long-running SVU role. He's played many cool-voiced scientists and psychologists before so this feels like a natural, crazy extension of that.
The Freeze stuff (pronounced "frIes") was less effective. Though none of it was bad, per se. It just felt like a normal Gotham villain origin arc. Like we just went through with Firefly. Freeze will be stopped. And probably in such a way that seriously injures him and confines him to his own cryogenic suit. The end result is the same. We leave these characters right at a point where they could lay dormant for a decade and then pop up to menace a future Batman.
So Victor was busy icing people, trying to develop a possible cryo-state for his dying wife, Nora (believe me, his failed attempts to reanimate are quite - messy). No mention of McGregor's Syndrome here (*crosses fingers* please please please), but she's still in a bad place. And he's such a crazy person that he's just freezing random strangers in an attempt to get his formula right. And she's nuts too, I suppose. A little. Not only did she think he was freezing mice (and that that would somehow be good enough for her), but then she also didn't betray him when she got taken in by the cops.
Meanwhile, Penguin got caught (offscreen - WTF?) and magically sent to Arkham after saying he was crazy. Because you don't have to be declared mentally deficient on any legal level. You can just book a stay at Arkham like it was an Airbnb. For the first ten minutes (and after a long recap/catch-up of the events midseason finale), the suspense sort of hinged on "Would Penguin give up Gordon?" Which we knew he wouldn't. But the question was emphasized all the same. I guess, since we didn't see it happen, we're just to assume that Penguin gave himself up? Because he was so despondent? Either that or he knew Arkham's open door policy and thought he could easily run the joint from within.
As for Gordon's corrupt, vengeful side - they've sort of put a pin in it for now. Barnes is onto him, but powerless to do anything. So I'm not sure how much the show will continue down this road. There's no one Gordon wants to currently kill. Penguin's locked up so there's no cop-criminal partnership to exploit. The show might slap on a rest hold here and wait to lean into it at a later date.
The Verdict
"Mr. Freeze" gave us sort of a run-of-the-mill Victor Fries origin story. Basically, it was this week's cop case and will probably wind up being a two-parter. Like the fall's Firefly's arc. More interesting here was the first live-action appearance of Hugo Strange and his role as - possibly - the architect behind most everything sinister in Gotham dating back to the series premiere.
Editors' Choice
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