- "I can show the people of Gotham that standing up to terror is the only way to take its power away."
- ―Bruce Wayne[src]
Bruce Wayne, later known by his vigilante identity Batman or Dark Knight, is the son of Thomas and Martha Wayne and the sole heir to the Wayne dynasty in Gotham City. He appears as the deuteragonist of the television series Gotham, which explores his development in fulfilling his destiny as Gotham City's protector.
History
Born in Gotham City to the wealthy and influential Wayne family, young Bruce's seemingly ideal life was shattered one night. Taking a shortcut through an alley after seeing a movie, Bruce bore witness to a mugger shooting his parents, Martha and Thomas Wayne.[1] The ongoing investigation into their murders lead young Bruce to his friendships with GCPD detective James Gordon and street orphan Selina Kyle, who witnessed the events of the Wayne murder. As he delved deeper into the mystery, Bruce began to uncover a web of corruption inside his own family's company, Wayne Enterprises.
After being suspicious about the illegal activities under Wayne Enterprises, Bruce meets with the company's Board of Directors together with Alfred. He then gets in trouble with a secret society called the Court of Owls, which is revealed to be the ultimate reason behind the Waynes' murder, through Thomas Wayne's former acquaintance Hugo Strange. He is sent by the Court to a mysterious Sensei far from Gotham City, where he was trained to fight with the League of Shadows. Bruce then finds out that a man named Ra's al Ghul, is the one behind the murder of his parents as Ra's believes that Bruce is his heir, and that he will become Gotham's Dark Knight before dying on Bruce's arms.[2]
Bruce becomes a vigilante by hiding his Batman identity and fighting crimes during night, until he takes a self-destructive phase due to his guilt for murdering Ra's al Ghul.[3] He falls into a deep depression, which he tries to surpass by drinking and partying with friends every night, and later firing Alfred. At one time during his dark stages, Bruce meets a now-grown up Ivy Pepper, who tries to kill him with her poison, but is ultimately saved by an anti-dote from Lucius Fox. During his slow death, Bruce dreams of his future, including a caped man with the facade described as a bat. After waking up, he makes Alfred return as his legal guardian, and reconciling with Selina Kyle, who he consistently ignored before.[4]
During Bruce's face-off with the nihilistic anarchist Jerome Valeska, Bruce meets the latter's twin brother Jeremiah Valeska, a sane and intelligent engineer.[5] He becomes good friends with Jeremiah, until it was revealed that the latter was sprayed with Jerome's insanity gas.[6] Jeremiah forms an obsession with turning Bruce into an insane man, the same way Jerome did to him, which ultimately fails. Instead, they become archenemies, with Jeremiah torturing Alfred and shooting Selina to get through Bruce. Jeremiah also destroys Wayne Manor with bombs during the time that he relived the Waynes' murder.
While Gotham's No Man's Land event, Bruce stays in the City despite its dangerous state to protect and fulfill his responsibility, as he blames himself for Gotham's destruction which was caused by Jeremiah and Ra's al Ghul.[7] However, during the course of this timeline, his relationship with Selina continues to improve despite going through ups and downs as usual. Later, he is attacked by Bane and Nyssa, Ra's al Ghul's daughter, with the agenda to avenge for his father who was killed by Bruce.[8] In order to delay the attack in Gotham, Bruce sacrifices by blowing up Wayne Tower. After Bruce, Jim Gordon and the citizens of Gotham City win the battle against Bane and Nyssa, Bruce feels guilty and responsible for all the incidents that happened in the city. He concludes to the decision to leave Gotham for good and abandoning Selina.
Ten years later, Bruce returns to Gotham City for the opening of the new Wayne Tower. He is now known as a masked vigilante named Batman, as he promises Selina that he will never leave Gotham City again. He then comes to face off a different Jeremiah Valeska, who now goes by the name Mr. J and has completely lost his grip on sanity. As Batman, Bruce meets Jim Gordon, with the latter calling the former "a friend".[9]
Personality
After the death of his parents, Bruce began to show erratic behavior, such as self-harm, listening to heavy metal, drawing disturbing artwork, refusing to eat and overall behaving recklessly, doing things such as climbing on top of the roof of the Wayne Mansion, burning himself, and cutting himself, as Alfred says to Jim in season 1.[10] He is very serious, though also kind, caring, selfless, observant, and intelligent. He can sometimes be naive, but despite this, he can easily tell when someone is lying to him or when they are not telling him the entire truth. He shows a great deal of personal strength and maturity for his age. He loved both of his parents very much, and becomes angry if anyone speaks ill of them, such as Tommy Elliot, who he physically assaulted after the latter taunted him about his parents' deaths, and disrespected his mother.
Harboring leftover guilt from not doing anything when his parents were murdered, Bruce devoted all of his time and efforts towards finding clues that could be used to discover the identity of the man who killed his parents. Bruce has a strong moral compass to do what is right, showing a huge reprehension against the act of killing, calling the Balloonman a criminal because he did so, and berating Selina Kyle for killing Reggie Payne, and telling her that he'd never cross that line. Though Bruce later decided to kill Matches Malone as he had killed his parents, after realizing that Malone was just a man, Bruce realized that he couldn't murder, nor get revenge on evil.
Bruce is shown to be courageous as he handed himself over to Jerome Valeska to bide Alfred's time to save himself from Jerome's followers and again when he attempted to save a citizen from being killed by Jerome. Bruce has also developed a strong sense of justice from investigating the reasons for the murder of his parents, the corruption in Gotham City, and Wayne Enterprises. Bruce's sense of justice is most notably shown when he takes it upon himself to fight and capture Jerome Valeska after he saw the latter murder innocent civilians.
In season 4, Bruce's personality has not changed as he still retains his sense of justice and stubbornness, especially when it comes to Alfred discouraging him from becoming a vigilante, but recently his mental state has started begun to spiral after avenging his parents and accidentally killing Ra's al Ghul. Indeed, this dark path of his has induced Bruce to become an arrogant playboy and womanizer (because he does not want to come to terms with the fact that he has a dark side) a choice his parents most likely would've been most ashamed of and has even given up on his war on crime.
This dark path of his has caused most of his relationships to be destroyed. Most notably, firing Alfred and threatening to have him arrested when Alfred was trying to stop him from spiraling further. After being poisoned by Ivy, Bruce is able to see how corrupt he has become. He is gradually starting to learn how to accept his dark side within the rest of his personality. Bruce makes amends with Alfred by apologizing for his behavior and resumes his fight for justice as a vigilante.
Physical appearance
Bruce is a young Caucasian male, with dark brown hair. He is of muscular build as of later episodes and is pretty average to tall for his age. He is found attractive by many girls, including Selina Kyle and Ivy Pepper, who both made comments implying they were physically attracted to him.
Under his secret vigilante identity, Bruce is used to dress up in black clothes, wearing black pants, shoeing black shoes with his hands wrapped with black gloves, and his body is wrapped with a black leather jacket while on his face, in order to hide his identity, he dons a black mask.[11]
Abilities
- Maximum Human Conditioning: Bruce was trained by both Alfred and the temple Shaman for a long period of time which has led to him being in excellent shape, possessing above-average levels of strength, speed, endurance, metabolism, and senses, but not at superhuman degree, after extensive training from Alfred and the Sensei, his natural muscle power is much greater than most teenagers of his age, he was able to overpower and beat down a full-grown thug using his combat abilities and focused strikes, his reaction time, maneuverability and counterattacks had profoundly increased as well, he could even dodge Selina Kyle's attacks as well as take down an armed thug, who was trying to rob a family, with incredible speed and ferocity, he was able to sense Selina Kyle's presence without looking behind himself (despite the fact that the former has excellent skills in stealth, by feeling the breeze she created when she came through his window) detect the Whisper Gang approaching, and smelled vinegar from another room in Selina's cup. His speed has been remarked on by Alfred and Harvey Bullock.
- Master Hand-to-Hand Combatant/Master Martial Artist: Bruce was trained by Alfred for a long period of time, and during which, he gained basic but efficient hand-to-hand combat skills, Bruce has proven his combat capabilities when he was able to defend himself from Selina Kyle, best Jerome Valeska (though the latter did not fight back and he was finally apprehended by Jim Gordon) and defeated Sonny Gilzean and his goons, Bruce has since gained further combat training with the temple Shaman following his abduction by the Court of Owls, after the Shaman helped him conquer his rage Bruce has become more focused and capable of defeating his opponents without any drawbacks, Bruce has learned the martial art of Escrima while training with the Shaman and was seen training with a Talon in the temple, three months into his role as a vigilante, Bruce has proven to have become a far more skilled hand-to-hand combatant and martial artist, singlehandedly taking on thugs and street gangs. Along with Selina Kyle, he defeated The Mutants, and later defeated two of Ecco's henchmen while he was cuffed to a wall. Alfred has also rigorously trained Bruce in various advanced Boxing techniques, and his style also appears to be comprised of Karate, Muay Thai, Taekwondo, Judo, Krav Maga, Kali, and Jiujitsu. Following the events of No Man's Land, Bruce spent ten more years of mastering his combat training in order to become Gotham's, Dark Knight. He was able to quickly dispatch Penguin and Riddler. According to Ra's al Ghul, during Bruce's crusade, he has ultimately become the greatest fighter in the Gothamverse.
- Expert stick-fighter: Bruce has become an excellent stick-fighter in the martial art Escrima through his training with the temple Shaman. Bruce has excelled further in this training after the Shaman helped him conquer his rage thus making him more focused and capable of defeating his opponents, most notably a highly trained Talon, when he tried to rescue Jerome Valeska from his uncle Zachary Trumble, he defeated Lunkhead, a former circus strongman and a much larger opponent with pool cue after a lengthy struggle, albeit with the assistance of Selina Kyle's intervention. In his youth, Bruce engaged in makeshift swordfights with Alfred using wooden canes.
- Skilled swordsman: Bruce is a skilled swordsman, having taken fencing classes while attending Anders Preparatory Academy.
- Master marksman: Bruce is an expert marksman with throwing weapons, this is seen when he threw glass shards at a chemically altered madman attacking Alfred, as Batman, he can throw his batarangs with precision against J. He is also an expert in using his grappling gun to hold back Selina's hand when she attacked the Mutant gang leader.
- Free-running/Acrobatics: After spending some time living on the streets, Bruce was able to jump from rooftop to rooftop with ease as well as perform advanced parkour maneuvers with excellent precision, stamina and speed. He could also scale the building tops very easily.
- Stealth/Infiltration/Escapology: Bruce possess impressive stealth skills, as he was able to easily sneak out of GCPD headquarters without Jim Gordon hearing or noticing him. Bruce was capable of breaking into Blackgate Penitentiary without being detected.He is also a highly capable escape artist, being able to flee a crime scene by blending with the shadows to appear invisible. He used his aptitude for stealth to surgically bring down a group of thugs raiding a clinic's medical supplies.
- Intimidation: As a vigilante, Bruce has begun using intimidation/individuals' fears to get information and what he wants. Bruce did this to the crime licensing officer to get the list containing the names of all criminals in Gotham who had a license for crime. As Batman, Bruce commands a far more intimidating presence to the point where most criminals fear him; even high profile criminals; such as Oswald Cobblepot and Edward Nygma respectively were visibly terrified of him in their first encounter.
- Genius-Level Intelligence: Despite his young age and lack of proper experience, Bruce possesses a high-level intellect and above-average mental faculties. As an adult, Bruce is far more intelligent.
- Expert investigator: Bruce has become quite the investigator, as he has begun to take notice of even the smallest details, given as he was able to find out that Jim Gordon is dating someone just by looking at the lipstick on his coffee mug. During Pax Penguina, he successfully deduced the existence of Penguin's master list of crime licenses based on their numbers. As an adult, Bruce is an excellent investigator.
- Criminology: Due to spending years trying to understand the criminal psychology, Bruce has developed a deep knowledge of criminal mindsets and tactics.
- Indomitable will: Like his father, Thomas Wayne, Bruce is certain his mission and has the courage to fight for what he believes in without error. Bruce has demonstrated incredible will-power as he was able to break through Sensei's mind control a feat thought impossible, this act profoundly impressed the immortal Ra's al Ghul.
- Skilled lockpick user: Bruce learned how to pick locks from Selina Kyle. He used his new technical skills to break into Karen Jennings' residence.
- Archeology: Bruce was able to identify the Court of Owls insignia easily.
- Network: As the chairman, later the CEO of Wayne Enterprises, Bruce has access to a nearly inexhaustible array of funds, technology, intelligence, and other resources.
- Sewing: Bruce possesses sewing skills, as he was able to sew the sleeve of Selina's jacket.
- Expert of deception/Manipulator: Bruce is capable of deception and manipulator, as seen when he managed to hire Tom to get Malone's identity out of Silver St. Cloud.
- Expert driver: Bruce is an excellent driver.
Equipment
- Dark Knight suit: Bruce wears a protective suit as the Dark Knight, to hide his identity when fighting crime. It was seemingly designed by Lucius Fox.
- Ballistic implements: As the Dark Knight, Bruce uses mini boomerangs in the shape of a bat as his primary weapon.
- Utility belt: As the Dark Knight, Bruce wears a belt designed to carry his gear when he is out fighting crime.
- Smoke grenades: As the Dark Knight, Bruce uses smoke grenades in order to help make quick exits.
Former equipment
- Vigilante suit: Bruce wore a suit as a vigilante, to hide his identity from his enemies when he went out fighting crime, the suit he wore was little more than a jacket, along with a ski mask. Bruce later abandoned this suit, for a military-like suit that he receives from Lucius Fox.
- Grapple gun: Bruce used a grapple gun, which he used to break into Blackgate. He later used a more portable grapple gun to stop Selina from killing the Mutant Gang Leader.
- M84 stun grenade: Bruce used a stun grenade against Talon during a heist attempt at the Court of Owls safehouse.
- Mustang: Bruce drove a car with a V8 5-liter 460 horsepower engine. The car is painted matte black to make the car reflective and very difficult to see at night. The car is also 100% bulletproof, as it was able to survive two bullet shots from a gun by Alfred.
- Night vision goggles: Lucius made a pair of night vision goggles for Bruce that allowed him to see when the power was out at the Hospital. However, they are sensitive to light; as seen when he was overwhelmed when the lights came back on.
Trivia
- In 2014, showrunner Bruno Heller stated that Batman would not be appearing in Gotham, stating "As soon you're into capes and costumes, it's less interesting than seeing how these people got there." Star Ben McKenzie clarified in 2015 that Bruce Wayne would don the cape in the final shot of the final scene of the final episode. In 2018, it would finally be confirmed that the series finale would end in a ten-year time jump, with Batman wearing a matte, metallic short-eared battlesuit that showrunner John Stephens compared to the The Dark Knight Rises batsuit.
- In February 2019, it was stated by Stephens that Batman would be featured all throughout the episode and not just in the final scene, "The last episode is one scene in the timeline of the rest of the season, and then the rest of the episode is in the future. It almost feels in a weird way like another pilot." However, Batman ultimately wasn't shown until the final shot of the episode (as originally planned).
- According to Stephens, it was planned to not show Batman until the final frame since Season 1 because the series is told from the eyes of Jim Gordon.
- Batman uses David Mazouz's face and voice, but he is physically played by Mikhail Mudrik.
- The show's Batman costume is described by showrunner Danny Cannon as a "highlight reel" of all the best Batsuits from the comics. They originally asked Warner Bros. Pictures to borrow one of the Batman costumes from the films, but they declined.
- David Mazouz practiced developing his Batman voice long before the finale was filmed.
- Bruce is a fan of Deliverance.
- Bruce's favorite animals are owls.
- As of "Mad City: The Gentle Art of Making Enemies", Bruce has taken an oath never to kill, which foreshadows him becoming Batman. However, Bruce later breaks this oath by killing Ra's al Ghul; albeit by accident.
- It has been revealed by Chris Chalk in an interview in January 2018 that by the end of season four, Bruce will be eighteen years old. He celebrated his eighteenth birthday in the episode "That's Entertainment".
- Season Four had already suggested Bruce was in his late teens, as Bruce is seen in bed with girls during his self-destructive billionaire playboy streak.
- Bruce's birthday being February 19, might be a reference to the DC comics, in which Bruce's birthday is also February 19. Coincidentally, David Mazouz's birthday falls on February 19.
- Bruce has so far had three known love interests, as are listed in order; Selina Kyle, Silver St. Cloud and Grace Blomdhal.
- Bruce was 12 years old when his parents were murdered. This is unlike other versions in which he was 8 years old when the murders took place.
- Bruce used to go to private school, until the death of his parents, he began being homeschooled.
- This appears to have started after the Order of St. Dumas made an attempt on his life, as he was still going to school at the time.
- The scene in "A Dark Knight: A Beautiful Darkness" in which Bruce has an encounter with his future self could be a reference to the pivotal storyline moment in which Bruce is inspired to create his Batman persona after having an encounter with a flock of bats.
- Bruce is right-handed.
- The way that Bruce stealthy sneaks away from Jim Gordon in GCPD without him hearing or seeing him do so in "Pax Penguina" is a reference to how Batman stealthily sneaks away from Gordon in traditional Batman lore.
- Bruce hates magicians.
- As of the No Man's Land event, after the death of Tabitha Galavan, he shared something in common with Silver St. Cloud, they are both the last survivors of their families.
- Bruce's favorite food is, or at least was a grilled cheese and Branston pickle sandwich.
- Bruce is 29 by the end of the series, since by the time of the season 4 episode "A Dark Knight: That's Entertainment", Bruce celebrates his 18th birthday, and since the season 5 episode "They Did What?" takes place over a year later, making Bruce 19, plus the ten year time jump makes him 29 by the time of "The Beginning...".
- This coincides with the comics, wherein most incarnations, Bruce becomes Batman at 29. (In Pre-Crisis, and the New 52.)
- Throughout the entire series, Bruce has never been called "Batman" (directly or indirectly) however, Ra's al Ghul has called Bruce the "Dark Knight".
Appearances
Gotham
Season 1
|
References
- ↑ Pilot (Gotham episode)
- ↑ A Dark Knight: The Blade's Path
- ↑ A Dark Knight: A Day in the Narrows
- ↑ A Dark Knight: A Beautiful Darkness
- ↑ A Dark Knight: That's Entertainment
- ↑ That Old Corpse
- ↑ A Dark Knight: No Man's Land
- ↑ I Am Bane
- ↑ The Beginning...
- ↑ Pilot (Gotham episode)
- ↑ A Dark Knight: Pax Penguina