Gotham Season 2 Finale Recap

GCPD SWAT team is set up outside Arkham. Bullock tells his team if they don’t see Jim in ten seconds, bust it open. In about eight seconds, “Jim” appears – really, it is Basil, posing as Jim. One of the cops thinks he looks “hinkey” but seeing is believing. The team packs up and heads back to the precinct.

The real Jim Gordon is still tied to a chair in the basement. Strange and Peabody are preparing to destroy Indian Hill, with a bomb ready to go off. Ed is playing a game with Bruce and Lucius: “Who runs Indian Hill?” They have five minutes to come up with one guess amongst them. Bruce answers “Wayne Enterprises.” Correct answer, but Ed has one more question before they are safe: who runs Wayne Enterprises?

Strange injects Jim with a truth serum and gets him to admit he made a plan: if he doesn’t check in with GCPD by noon, they are coming in after him. Strange assures him that he did check in, and no one is coming. Basil, meanwhile, is at GCPD, where Bullock thinks “Jim” looks odd, sounds odd, and finds it odd that he claims Strange is clean. Again, seeing is believing and he lets it go. Strange continues with Jim, declaring that Jim feels guilty over his father’s death. He also finds out that Jim still loves Lee, who is somewhere “down south,” and Strange declares that he is god, all powerful, and can absolve Jim of all his guilt. It works; Jim says he feels better. Now Strange peppers him with questions about Indian Hill. Jim knows it is a program for building monsters for military use, and that it is run by Wayne Enterprises. Strange pushes him for answers on who controls Gotham. “The rich?” Jim answers, a perfectly appropriate answer. Strange asks if he has ever heard of a “secret council.” He has not, which pleases Strange.

Peabody is directing the clearing of Indian Hill, instructing guards to take out patients by lowest risk first. Fish tries to grab Peabody through the food slot in her door, but misses. She engages Peabody, insisting that she is human. Peabody tells her she is Test Subject 13, a priceless scientific discovery. She makes another attempt to touch Peabody, but again misses. Her food slot is shut.

Back to Bruce and Lucius. Lucius wants to answer that the board of directors runs Wayne Enterprises, but Bruce can’t believe it would be that simple. With time running out, Lucius gives it as their final answer. Incorrect. They lose, and Ed hits a button, filling the chamber with noxious gas. They collapse. But then Bruce and Lucius wake up, in the same room as Jim. It was just knock-out gas. They struggle to come to, then free Jim from his binds.

Ed brags of his riddle prowess to Strange, who is quite impressed. But now Ed wants to know who runs Wayne Enterprises. Strange isn’t going to tell him, but does tell him he would make a great addition to the staff. Too bad he is insane. Ed is thrown back into his cell. Strange returns to his office to check in with Madame, assuring her that Bruce, Jim, and Lucius are all ignorant; their secret is safe. Madame is only mildly comforted. She still directs Strange to kill them all, insisting that none of his patients see the light of day for any reason.

Selina is brought in to check on Bruce. He apologizes for getting her mixed up in this and encourages her to get out. Selina becomes indignant, telling him that she used him; it wasn’t the other way around. “I have you wrapped around my pinky,” she huffs and leaves.

The Indian Hill monsters are loaded onto a bus. Peabody goes to Fish, telling her it is time to take a trip. She prepares an injection, and Fish uses this to touch Peabody and manipulate her. “If you let me out I will be your friend.” Strange arrives to see Fish leading Peabody by the hand. She is doing what Fish says, and she doesn’t know why. Strange is impressed by her new powers, but can’t allow her to go outside. “I will have to kill you before I let you out,” he insists. Fish advances on him, causing Strange to run. Peabody goes after him and finds him turning on the bomb. She tries to stop him, but he knocks her out. The timer is set to go off in thirty minutes. Meanwhile, Fish has made it to the garage, with the bus full of monsters, but discovers the facility is on lock down. She arrives in time to see the steel doors clamping shut.

Back at the police station, no one seems to notice that Jim isn’t really Jim, despite him acting like a loon. Bullock seems on his way to sussing it out when Alfred bursts in, demanding to know where Bruce is. “Jim” has no answers, and babbles on a bit. Alfred notices that he is acting weird, but it is not until Barbara breezes into the station and has a word with “Jim” alone that they finally discover the imposter. Basil is immediately hot for Barbara, which confuses her. She asks about Lee, and Jim says “Screw that ho.” Barbara punches him, and his face looks like Silly Putty.

Strange has released Fries and wants him to kill his captives, starting with Selina. But Selina is now Firefly’s handmaiden, so Firefly defends her. Fire and ice face off against one another, blasting their respective weapons at each other. In the fracas, Selina slips away and returns to Bruce, Jim, and Lucius. This was all part of her plan – she was just waiting for the right moment. Strange seems to enjoy watching Mr. Freeze and Firefly duke it out. The bomb announces fifteen minutes to detonation, and they stop for a moment. Strange uses the opportunity to run, but the fight starts up again and he is caught in the crossfire.

Thirteen minutes until detonation. Jim finds Strange and slaps him awake, desperate to find a way out. He insists they can’t go downstairs because of the bomb, and there is no time to get the radioactive material out. The lab is sealed off, and Strange seems genuinely terrified. He didn’t think about the radioactive material. Selina points out that Ed knows how to get to the lab. Jim and Lucius go find Ed while he tells the kids to get away.

Ed trips the wires and gets Jim and Lucius into the lab. This breaks the security lockdown, and the garage door opens, allowing Fish to drive the monster bus out. Jim and Lucius find the bomb, with one minute twenty seconds left on it. They decide to just start pulling cables. Peabody wakes and groggily mutters, “need water.” Worth a shot. Jim runs out into the hall and fills a cup with water. He pours it into the bomb detonation system and shorts the whole thing out. The timer stops at one second, and disarms. Peabody again asks for water – she was asking for water for herself, not the bomb. It just happened to work.

But the show is not over yet. The GCPD have rolled out again, and a couple squad cars peel off to chase the monster bus. Those at Arkham take Strange into custody. He is dragged away, begging for his “people,” promising consequences. Jim warns Bullock that the monsters are on the bus and it can’t get away.

Fish rams a car off the road so she can pass it, and more cops roll out to try to cut off the bus. The bus ends up on a bridge, cops blocking the way forward. Behind the bus is Butch and his men, who keep the cops at bay with crazy-huge machine guns. The bus plows forward, trying to crunch over the cars; instead, it crashes. Penguin marches up to the bus, yelling for Strange, wanting him to pay for what he did to him. Instead, he is greeted by Fish, who scares the hell out of him. “Nothing is impossible” she purrs and hypnotizes him. Penguin collapses. Butch is scared; he and his men run away.

Bullock is sending out another tactical team to find the bus. Jim, responding to the “revelation” he had with the truth serum, decides he is going to find Lee. He tells Bruce to say goodbye to Bullock for him. Alfred thinks that, with Strange caught, Indian Hill destroyed, and Jim leaving, that is the “end of his adventures with the cops.” Not so much. Bruce still wants to find out about the secret council that runs Gotham.

At the site of the bus crash, a homeless woman hears the monsters calling for help. She feels bad and opens the door, but immediately regrets it. She watches a hazy, unfocused parade of villains pour out of the bus. Only one becomes clear, because he has Bruce’s face.

What did you think about the Gotham Season 2 finale? Let us know in the comments below!