Good news: Fox has renewed Gotham for a fifth season. Bad news: it's the last one. The Batman prequel drama will get 13 episodes, say reports, though Warner Bros. and the network have yet to make a formal announcement on the season tally.
The fifth and final season will center on protagonist Bruce Wayne's transformation into the troubled superhero.
Gotham Gets 13-Episode Final Season
The Hollywood Reporter notes that a 13-episode fifth season means that by the end of the show, Gotham will have exactly 100 episodes — which is a requirement to sell the show in syndication. The report adds that Warner Bros. fought hard to convince Fox to renew the show for another season despite changes in its creative direction.
According to the show's producers, the final stretch of Gotham aims to wrap up the origin stories for "the great DC Comics Super-villains and vigilantes, which revealed an entirely new chapter that has never been told."
Declining Ratings
With a massive franchise to back it up, Gotham got off to a strong start when it debuted in 2014, but ratings have been dipping since. Per Deadline, the show's season-to-date average is a 1.4 rating among the 18-49 demographic compared with a 1.9 rating last season. Despite this, the show's quality has increasingly improved over the past few seasons. The current season, in fact, holds a 92 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes as of writing.
The announcement came not long after Fox made some other startling cancellations. Fan-favorite comedies including Brooklyn Nine-Nine, The Last Man on Earth, and The Mick all received the axe on May 17, which ultimately caused fans to worry about Gotham's future on the network. But for Brooklyn Nine-Nine, a cancellation turned out to be a blessing in disguise as it will now return to the same network where it was originally pitched to — NBC, which picked the show up for a sixth season following widespread and outspoken outcry among fans.
For its fourth season, Fox moved Gotham from Monday to Thursday nights, where it had to compete with The Big Bang Theory, Supernatural, and Grey's Anatomy. When the show returns this fall, Fox will move it again to a different time slot to accommodate Thursday Night Football season.
Gotham's Season 4 finale, A Dark Knight: No Man's Land, will air on May 17 on Fox.
Are you thrilled Gotham is returning for a fifth and final season? As always, feel free to sound off in the comments section below!
