Season 5 of Gotham is the show’s final season, so I’d like to begin with a bit of a retrospective first. I’ll be honest, I never thought this show was all that good. I think the first season is the worst, but it didn’t get a ton better as the years have gone on. Season 1 definitely had growing pains as it struggled to find itself, but I still saw the potential in it, so I kept watching. Seasons 2 and 3 were slightly better, but ultimately the show still just frustrated me, because I saw what it could be, and it just wasn’t. I also had the problem of the show changing arcs for characters every other episode, which the show did get better with over time. It’s amazing that I ended up watching the show for three seasons since I really didn’t think it was that great, but the thing about Gotham is that it’s always had this “soap opera” element to it, where I was hooked on it despite it not being that good. It had something to it that just kept bringing me back. Then, I don’t necessarily think season 4 was the best season of the show “objectively,” but when I watched it, something just clicked for me. I really accepted the show for what it was, and in doing so I was fully on-board with it. I loved it in a guilty pleasure kind of way, and so I had the most fun with the show during its fourth season. Around the time season 4 ended, it was announced that season 5 would be the final season of the show, and I weirdly got super excited for it. I loved season 4, even if it still had its ups and downs, and so I was really excited to see how it would all end. And here we are.

I’m going to tread lightly on spoiling stuff, but if you’re reading this you probably have at least some investment in Gotham already, so I’m not going to guarantee that this will be spoiler-free. I still want to do my best to not spoil anything big in this season though. Anyway, if you’ve been following the show, you might remember that season 4 of the show left Gotham pretty fucked up by Jeremiah. Season 5 picks up with this, with Gotham basically in ruins, and our main cast of characters left there to pick up the pieces. The government actually deems the place too unsafe to even save, so it’s up to the people still living there to do with Gotham what they will. This is all I’m really going to say about the plot of the final season, as it probably gives you a bit of a direction on how things are going to go.

I think that the showrunners made a wise decision in trimming this season down to 12 episodes instead of the usual 22, because it helped with the overall flow and focus. Little time is wasted on extraneous storylines, and so all of the weird nonsense stuff is pretty much out the window here. Instead, we follow the characters we know so well as they take their final steps into becoming the classic Batman archetypes they were always meant to be. While I’ll admit that I wasn’t the biggest fan of the general story of Gotham being in ruins with this season, what I did really like is how each character’s individual story is handled. All I really wanted from this season was for it to propel the characters towards the end goal of who they’re supposed to be, and at the end of the day it all really worked out.

This brings me to one major thing I want to talk about (but that I won’t spoil)…the finale. I’ve always envisioned the finale as wrapping up everyone’s stories and showing them how they’re all meant to be. No more teasing at hints of how Edward Nygma is going to eventually become the Riddler…no, now it’s time to actually see him as the Riddler. I figured the perfect ending shot for the series would be to show Bruce Wayne in the Batman costume. These are the kinds of things that I hoped the final episode would deliver on, and it did. If anything I say is going to be a spoiler, it’s this: the finale takes place 10 years after the rest of the season. So, we get to see the characters really embrace their roles fully, and the result is fantastic. While the show has had its obvious ups and downs over the years, they really stuck the landing with the finale. It was exactly how I was hoping they would end the show, and they did it perfectly.

Overall, I still think that I did have the most fun with the show during season 4, but the final season is still pretty good. While I definitely had some major issues with the show during its first three seasons, these last two ended things pretty well. I’ll still never say that Gotham is one of the best comic book shows ever or anything like that, but it definitely was a memorable show. It was rarely great, but it was certainly never boring. The show got really ridiculous at times, but it was always entertaining. Given the show’s dramatic range in quality over its run, the final season is probably the best I could have hoped for. It still has its bumps, but ultimately it ended the series on a pretty good note. If nothing else, the series finale is really worth watching. I’m glad the show didn’t get dragged on to 10 seasons like Smallville did, because I feel like Gotham ended exactly when it should have. Goodbye Gotham, hello Batman.

3.5/5