Gotham season 5, episode 2 recap: Trespassers brings back a familiar face

Despite the bounty on his head, Jim ventures into the Badlands with Harvey. Elsewhere, Bruce seeks out the witch on tonight’s Gotham.

Picking up where the Gotham season premiere left off, Jim leads a mission to rescue the “brothers and sisters” of young Will Thomas. Will was orphaned in a home invasion and trafficked into a child slave labor ring run by a gang known as the Soothsayers.

They operate out of “the Badlands,” the sector of Gotham that never regained power after the blackout, so Jim and a reluctant Harvey head out with assistance from a surprising ally.

Meanwhile, Bruce runs into a familiar face in his quest to help Selina and is forced to make an impossible choice when he learns that a cure for her paralysis will come with life-altering side effects.

More. Gotham season 5 premiere recap: Year Zero. light

Catwoman Begins

As it turns out, the witch is not a stranger but an old frenemy of Bruce and Selina’s. Bruce finds Ivy Pepper locked up in a park. A group of vigilantes is seeking revenge because she took the “souls” of their friends, who had sought her out for help.

Bruce negotiates for five minutes alone with her to inquire about his “missing brother.” Ivy claims innocence and insists that “the plants” had killed the men to protect her. She agrees to help Bruce get a seed that can cure “his friend” if he protects her from the angry mob.

Of course, Ivy is playing Bruce, though. She gleefully kills the men as soon as Bruce frees her, explains that she’s been using dead bodies to strength her plants and threatens to make Bruce her latest victim. Nonetheless, Bruce tries to appeal to her humanity and reveals that it’s Selina who needs the cure.

Unfortunately, Ivy is still mad about Selina destroying her last Lazarus water vile, but she offers to help Bruce in exchange for him leaving her alone. We’ll have to wait and see if proto-Batman holds up his end of the bargain going forward and lets her continue killing people.

As promised, Ivy gives him the cure, a weird looking seed that has human blood in it. However, she warns Bruce that it won’t work if Selina isn’t strong enough and will “alter her forever.” (DUN DUN DUN!) “The darker angels of [her] nature [will be] unlocked and set free.”

Back at the hospital, Bruce is conflicted about giving it to Selina, especially because Ivy can’t be trusted, but Selina says she wants to take it. “If Ivy wants to kill me, she can have at it.”

The cure appears to have no effect at all, though, and Selina nostalgically reflects on her past with Ivy. In a touching speech, wonderfully delivered by Bicondova, Selina reveals that she still cares about the person she “took under [her] wing”, once upon a time. “She’ll always be that little girl to me.”

Just then, Selina starts seizing violently, and Bruce fears that he’s killed his best friend. Hours later, Selina emerges from her baptism of fire walking around with no pain and feeling “even better than before, in fact.” She and Bruce hug for the first time in months and her green cat eyes make their debut!

Jim Gordon 5.0

As long-time fans know, Jim has changed quite a bit over the years. He’s felt torn between maintaining his moral code and doing what it takes to survive in and save Gotham. This episode proves that he’s no so torn anymore.

Jim successfully rescues the kids from the Soothsayers, who had tasked them with tunneling to the Mainland, but he puts a target on his back (courtesy of Penguin’s bounty). And they aren’t the only gang-bangers who want to reap the rewards of his death. Jim soon gets caught up in a turf war between the Soothsayers and what appears to be the Neon Gang (introduced to the DC universe in Batman Forever).

Jim is ultimately rescued by Barbara, who rolls onto the scene in a tank. However, it’s Jim who takes down the gang leaders… in a very un-Jim-like fashion. He shoots them in the head without hesitation, despite them not aiming at him first. He shoots preemptively, not in self-defense.

By all appearances, the rookie who risked his life to spare Penguin’s in Gotham‘s pilot is gone. Or is he?

While Jim shoots the gang leaders rather callously, he appears to still have a bit of a soft spot for Oswald. After all, Jim felt guilty for non-lethally shooting him, and despite Penguin subsequently putting out the bounty, Jim seems reluctant to help Barbara kill him.

Granted, that’s partly because it would be a suicide mission given the army that Penguin has acquired. Barbara is, of course, still raw from losing “best friend in the world” and is more than willing to join her, if it means taking Penguin down, too. “We’re all slowly dying, just some of us get to choose how.”

It’s understandable that Jim doesn’t want to follow Barbara down a self-destructive path, but that can’t be the only reason he doesn’t want to join the Penguin assassination squad. Barbara certainly seems to think she has leverage over him now, though, after lending him truck trucks to rescue the kids from the Soothsayers and saving his life.

Here I go again

Barbara isn’t the only person in Gotham gunning for Penguin. Despite taking the drastic step of chaining himself to his bed, Riddler/Ed continues to experience memory gaps. During his latest sleepwalking session, he may have framed Penguin for a massacre.

Ed wakes up to find a man, who identifies himself as Tank, tied up in his tub. He reveals that Ed kidnapped and tortured him to get information but claims he can’t remember what the information was.

Since Ed can’t remember either, he interrogates Tank again. Tank reluctantly reveals that Ed wanted to know where The Street Demons’ base was and if the boss, Emmanuel Vasquez, would be there at a certain time.

Still unsure whether it was Ed or Riddler who kidnapped Tank, he also asks Tank about the kidnapper’s personality. Tank describes him as being “in a daze,” but Ed isn’t sure what to make of that description.

Next. Gotham: Penguin and Riddler comics-accurate costumes revealed. dark

He then takes Tank to the Demons’ base and discovers that it has been massacred. “Penguin was here” is spray painted on a wall, but Ed doesn’t think Penguin is actually is responsible. Tank asserts that even if Penguin isn’t, he will still face retaliation for the massacre.

What did you think of tonight’s episode? Are you excited to see Selina become Catwoman? Let us know in the comments section below.

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Gotham season 5, episode 2 recap: Trespassers

By Catherine Palmer | Jan 10, 2019

Despite the bounty on his head, Jim ventures into the Badlands with Harvey. Elsewhere, Bruce seeks out the witch on tonight’s Gotham.

More from FOX

Catwoman Begins

Jim Gordon 5.0

Here I go again