Legend of the Dark Knight: I Am Bane

I will admit I was skeptical I heard that Shane West would play Bane in Season 5 of Gotham. With the first appearance in this episode I am pretty impressed. In the past, Bane was often portrayed as over-the-top buff guy with a luchadora-type mask with tubes strapped to him that fed the venom drug into his system. When Dark Knight Rises came out in 2012, it departed from that character portrayal, showing audiences a guy who was strong, but not through a super-drug. With this iteration of Bane in Gotham you have the venom drug in play, but how Bane looks gives off a cybernetic-enhancement feel (like General Grievous and Darth Vader). Plus the voice definitely is inspired by Tom Hardy's performance. If anybody asks me whether Tom Hardy or Shane West is the better Bane, I'd say it's not a competition. While both have similar roles (being a part of the League of Assassins/Shadows) they both developed in different ways. Gotham's iteration of Bane is the latest in the DC Universe, with surly more to come.

Now to Nyssa Al Ghul. With her reveal in this episode was a surprise to me. I first assumed it would be an Amanda Waller-type figure since the show kind of teased us by giving here the alias "Walker", which I have to applaud the writers for their creative deception. With Nyssa all the signs are there. She lets her emotions dictate her actions, which ultimately leads to her downfall. Keep in find that Nyssa Al Ghul as a character has only existed since 2003 and the only other live-action portrayal of her is in Arrow by Kristina Law. So far Jaime Murray's portrayal of Nyssa is spot on. We will just have to see what happens in the final two episodes of Gotham