Intergalactic Comics: Gotham: “How The Riddler Got His Name” Review

Thursday, April 27, 2017

Gotham: “How The Riddler Got His Name” Review

By: Tyler Carlos (@tylos624)

After weeks and weeks and weeks of waiting, Gotham finally returned to the airwaves Monday night with a new episode, strongly centering on Edward Nygma as he completed his evolution into the villain that we all know and love. The episode provided some great moments involving The Riddler and Lucius Fox, but beyond that, it seemed much more like a prologue than a new chapter in season three.

Caution: Spoilers ahead.

The main point of this episode was for Edward Nygma to complete his transformation into The Riddler. After killing Penguin in the last episode, Edward was lost because he did not know who he was as a villain without Penguin at his side. While seeking out a person to match his intelligence, he discovered that he could stand on his own. But I gotta say, I thought there would be a bit more to this. I thought Penguin’s “death” was Edward’s way of taking his place as a villain.

In the end, however, it was great to see that Edward is finally going to be standing on his own as The Riddler. We’ve all known since the show began that this would eventually happen, and now there are some GREAT things on the horizon – including the unavoidable Penguin vs. Riddler battle that is to come.

One of the best things about this episode was that we finally got to see a bit more action from Lucius Fox. Usually, Jim Gordon is the guy the villains go after, and although that was indeed Nygma’s plan, it did not go the way he intended, but I think it was for the best. We haven’t seen much action from Lucius lately, so it was great to get him in on the excitement. He is a valuable character in Batman lore, yet he has been very underutilized thus far on Gotham. With any luck, this is only the beginning for Lucius.

Jim, on the other hand, had a more low key episode. His discussions with his Uncle Frank, who is a member of the Court of Owls, took up most of his time on screen. These moments, while needed for the character development, kind of took away from the excitement of what was happening with The Riddler and Lucius. Who knows if Frank is lying about why Jim’s father died or if Jim will actually align himself with the Court. Only time will tell.

Then, there was Bruce and the Bruce clone. After thinking that Selina wanted to meet up to patch things up, Bruce was abducted by the Court and clone Bruce took his place in Wayne Manor. Alfred seems to have bought this for now, but no doubt he will slowly begin seeing the differences in Bruce. This is obvious. What is confusing is the Court’s choice of prison for the real Bruce. He’s in what appears to be a dojo in the mountains…is this where Bruce is going to continue his training? Why would the Court send him there and not to a dungeon. They definitely have one.

Lastly, it was no surprise that Penguin is alive, though I thought it was cool that Ivy was the one who actually found him. I was starting to worry that the writers were going to do to Ivy what they did to Harvey Dent. Hopefully, Penguin can teach Ivy a thing or two about what it means to be a villain before he tries to kill Riddler.

Overall, this was a fun episode, if not a slightly confusing one. Edward’s journey to become the Riddler is complete, and he has taken a completely different road of villainy than Penguin – he is not working undercover. Everyone knows that Riddler is out there, the whole GCPD is after him, and that was Riddler’s intent. For the rest of the characters, this was more of a beginning to the rest of the season. But there is still plenty of season left.

PS: WHEN ARE WE GOING TO FIND OUT WHY ISABELLA LOOKS LIKE MS. KRINGLE?!? I’m never going to let this go.