Though Gotham has already fulfilled fans’ wishes for a Batman who isn’t so emotionally guarded and cumbersomely large, and is instead a kid perpetually on the verge of tears, there are still plenty of other iconic DC heroes and villains the show plans to introduce and make more adorably tiny. Along with promises of a couple episodes on Scarecrow—the deranged psychology professor who experiments with fear, to be seen here as a much smaller, much cuter kid—showrunner Bruno Heller tells Entertainment Weekly that the Fox drama is also preparing to introduce Batman’s sidekick Robin. However, as Gotham strives to make every character younger and smaller—and Robin is already quite young and small—logically, he’ll have to be shrunk down to little more than a twinkle in his father’s eye.
“We’re going to do a prenatal origin story for Robin down the line,” Heller says, no doubt kicking himself for not thinking of doing the entire show about Batman characters as lovable fetuses, battling it out in the womb. However, Heller assures, “There are no MRIs involved,” since doing a show that looks in on a superhero before they’ve even emerged into the world would be plainly ridiculous.
Instead, the episode will finally answer the long-burning question of “how Robin’s parents got together”—which, strangely, no Batman writer has ever thought to address, so eager were they to kill Bruce Wayne’s parents again and again. (It’s almost as though these writers have no interest in romance.) It’s believed that learning how the Graysons met and fell in love, before eventually fulfilling their only purpose by falling to their deaths, will add extra dimension to Robin’s character, who won’t exist until well after Gotham has ended.
Once Gotham has revealed how Robin’s parents got together, it’s hoped that the show will move on to similar mysteries, such as how Alfred learned to do laundry.