Joe Chill, Gotham’s most notorious murderer, is suddenly set to be executed for his crimes. But he has one last message to deliver which may shift how Turner and his friends perceive everything. Stephanie seeks her dad’s help with cracking the McKillens’ code. Carrie finds herself somewhat grounded by her mother’s insistence on keeping a close eye on her.

Anyone passingly familiar with the Batman mythos knows the name Joe Chill, and anyone watching Gotham Knights probably is so familiar, so quite why the show insists on battering us over the head with the identity of Thomas and Martha Wayne’s killer is anyone’s guess. However, here we are. The man is all of a sudden, after fifty years behind bars, scheduled to be executed. But before he goes he has something he wants to say, and he’ll only talk to ‘Batman’s Killer’.

This being Gotham Knights, District Attorney Harvey Dent does the logical thing for a man in his position and immediately reaches out to known fugitives of justice to make this meeting happen, also taking steps to stay the execution so they have a bit more time. Sure, OK.

Chill’s revelations, when they come, radically re-frame a lot of things, and also actively work against the basic (and potentially interesting) arc which the show otherwise conceives for him via Duela’s adoration of the man’s legacy. As she says, when Chill killed the Waynes, he sent a message to the wealthy of Gotham that they were no longer safe in their ivory towers presiding over the muck and misery endured by the poor. That’s an angle I’d like to see developed, especially given Turner’s origins in this version of the Bat mythos, but instead Chill tells Turner things which actively work to crumble that story before it even gets chance to start.

It doesn’t help that Doug Bradley can’t quite seem to settle on the accent he’s using for Chill, nor that the man’s obsession with the Waynes is portrayed quite the way it is. In the end, it’s a series of scenes which devolve into parody and beyond, with Chill being oddly coy about what he wants to say to a man he’s apparently desperate to say something to.

Elsewhere, Stephanie turns to her dad for help but instead walks away with a ‘cryptic’ clue which it takes the supposed genius way too long to work out. More undermining here too – given Stephanie’s clearly defined misery at her mother’s addiction issues, her decision to suddenly get wasted on alcohol with the gang as they puzzle out the riddle is just odd.

Then, there’s a struggle, a fight which is just too absolutely barmy to even credit and another chance to slip the old ‘Gotham Knights’ thing into a newsreel. There’s other stuff too but honestly, it’s difficult to care when the majority is dumb and the rest is interesting titbits you sense will get overwritten by something else next week when the writers forget about it.

Verdict: I wanted to see this show done, so badly. Turns out I came to the right place. 3/10

Greg D. Smith