In the latest Gotham recap, Galavan’s reason for attacking Gotham City is revealed and a new villain is born…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
Ever since he arrived in Gotham City, Theo Galavan has been spouting off about how he was there to reclaim his family’s heritage and now after some back story revealed during the latest episode we know why.
It seems 200 years ago when Gotham City was still in its infancy, there were five ruling families in high society that controlled everything in town. Two of those families were the Wayne’s and the Dumas.
It seems Celestine Wayne — also known as the crowned jewel of Gotham — was promised to marry the eldest son of one of the other five families named Elliot. Despite her being betrothed to another, Caleb Dumas was enchanted by Celestine and one night during a party, the two ended up disappearing.
They were found in an illicit encounter and while Caleb swore that he and Celestine were in love, she insisted that he forced himself upon her. As revenge, the Wayne’s took a rather large knife and severed Caleb’s arm for touching Celestine and then banished his family from the city forever.
The Dumas ended up overseas while joining up with religious sect founded by their patron saint while the Wayne’s wiped out their very existence from the history of Gotham City. Eventually, the Dumas changed their names to outlive the disgrace and now they are known by Galavan.
So now you understand why Theo has such a grudge against the power brokers in Gotham City, most notably the Wayne family and their last living heir Bruce.
With that said, let’s recap the rest of Gotham‘s latest episode titled ‘Scarification’
Fire It Up
With Penguin now serving him as a loyal lackey, Theo Galavan has a few more orders to dish out to his new underling. Penguin wants to be Theo’s equal but Galavan doesn’t have equals so he prefers the ‘King of Gotham’ to remain under his thumb.
Galavan orders Penguin to stay by the phone until it’s time to receive some orders about his next mission. Following Penguin’s exit, Theo and his sister Tabitha reveal that they’ve secretly kidnapped Sid Bunderslaw, the executive at Wayne Enterprises who warned Bruce Wayne about digging into his family’s business. They want information out of Bunderslaw, but first they pluck out one of his eyeballs to access a safe at one of the Wayne properties in Gotham.
It seems Galavan’s next mission involving Penguin is torching five buildings across town — the last of which contains a safe with something very valuable inside and only Bunderslaw has access.
While Penguin tries to devise a plan to get out from under Galavan’s control, he sends Butch to the Pike brothers to handle the arson attack as ordered by his new boss. The Pike brothers are the best fire bugs in town, but there’s one problem — they were loyal to Fish Mooney and believe Butch turned traitor on her so he’s forced to team up with Selina Kyle to get him in the front door. Apparently, Selina has a reputation around town now for being Fish’s favorite so she can help broker a peace and Butch can hire the arsonists to get the job done.
Once the Pike brothers accept the job, they need supplies but that’s where the problems begin.
See while Penguin has been worried about his mother in Galavan’s clutches, he’s missed out on the new war being waged against him by Captain Nathaniel Barnes and the Gotham Police. They hit one of his money houses and took more than $2 million in illegal funds before taking down a place called ‘The Merc’, which was the one-stop shop for every kind of gun, explosive and weapon you could ever hope for as an illegal felon.
A Walmart for weapons of mass destruction if you will.
While taking down The Merc, Jim is forced to shoot one of the perpetrators running away and he blows to smithereens thanks to some plastic explosive he had tucked in his pants. Oh yeah the guy who got blown up — he was the youngest Pike brother and now they are forced to turn to their half-sister Bridgit to help finish the job or they won’t be able to torch anything without an ‘inside’ person to set the explosives.
New Friends
One random side story this week involved Edward Nygma inviting Jim Gordon and Leslie Thompkins on a double date along with his new girlfriend Kristen Kringle.
While Jim could think of several dozen things he’d rather do than hang out with Edward Nygma for a night, Leslie gladly accepts on their behalf and also invites the new couple to her place for fondue!
As strange as it sounds it appears getting laid agrees with Nygma, but he’s stopped a lot of his quirky, odd behavior and seems almost normal these days. It’s definitely a big switch from the chirpy annoying lab tech Gordon used to deal with, but this new Nygma is almost tolerable.
Almost.
Jim has other things on his mind, however, because Theo Galavan pays him a visit at work to ask for his endorsement for mayor. As the union chief for the police, Jim’s endorsement carries a lot of weight but he’s not willing to back anybody at this point. Jim would rather not get involved although he promises the prospective mayor to think about it.
A New Villain is Born
The Pike brothers force their little sister to get in on the family business by using her to plant the bombs inside all the buildings belonging to the Wayne family because she’s small enough to wiggle through the cracks and then get back out again.
During her first blast, Bridgit is also forced to use Bunderslaw’s eye to retrieve a knife from a safe — the same knife that was use to cut off Caleb Dumas’ arm — and now it all makes sense why Theo wanted it so badly. Unfortunately on the way out of the building, Bridgit gets burned, which forced the newest arsonist to rethink her strategy when setting fires.
Her work isn’t finished because Penguin (by way of Galavan) has them torching a few more buildings the next night.
Bridgit fashions a new fireproof suit to prevent any further burns and she’s equipped with a giant flamethrower as a weapon. Selina tries to talk her friends out of taking up the family business but Bridgit is already convinced this is what she needs to do to survive.
Unfortunately for Bridgit and her brothers, Gordon finds the connection between the buildings all being owned by the Wayne family and so he looks around the pattern and finds the next likely target if the arsonists return to work the next night.
The cops stake out the building and when the Pikes arrive, Gordon springs his trap. The elder Pike brothers take off and leave their sister behind and Bridgit’s only option is either getting arrested or firing back — literally.
So Bridgit unleashes a gigantic flame to back the cops off, but she misses the one behind her and when he tries to grab the little fire bug, she turns and sets him aflame before Selina helps her escape. The cop caught in the fire ends up dead and that puts Gordon, Barnes and every other police officer in the city on the trail of this new firefly.
Trojan Horse
Before Penguin returns the stolen knife from the Wayne family safe to Theo Galavan, he finds out the true story from a local antiquities dealer about the history of this infamous and cursed weapon. He finally has some inside scoop on Galavan’s true nature and what he’s after in Gotham.
Unfortunately, Theo will never trust him so Penguin has to use an inside man to invade Galavan’s organization. The only person he can trust is Butch — thanks to his mental conditioning — so he convinces the underling to go to Galavan and claim that Penguin went crazy, tossed him out and now he’s looking for a job. The only way Galavan will believe Penguin lost it is to send Butch there with a little bit of damage done — so Penguin lops his hand off.
And finally following the death of one of his Gotham untouchables, Gordon turns to Galavan and says he’ll back him as mayor so long as when he’s in charge, the cops get all the support they need from the government. Galavan agrees and a partnership is struck.
What Gordon doesn’t know is behind the scenes, Galavan has met with a member of the religious sect who helped save his family all those years ago and they have one plot in mind to finally get vengeance for what happened to the Dumas — Bruce Wayne must die.
Tune into the next episode of Gotham on Monday night at 8pm ET on FOX!
