Proving once again that, for comic book characters, there is no superpower or sci-fi space gun can that overcome the unstoppable power of canon, Jada Pinkett Smith has announced that she and her character Fish Mooney will be leaving Gotham at the end of its first season. Mooney, a ruthless crime lord who initially acted as the superior to future Penguin Oswald Cobblepot, is the show’s only recurring original character with no ties to the larger Batman mythos. (She seems likely to remain so, too—there’s been no sign that DC is planning to pull a Harley Quinn and adopt Fish from the show to the comics.) In fact, Mooney is barely part of the Gotham universe now, having been trapped for several episodes in an organ-dealing side story that seems specifically designed to let Pinkett Smith do her crazy, eyeball-stomping thing.
Pinkett Smith made the announcement on Live With Kelly And Michael, where she responded to direct questions about her role in the Fox show’s second season by saying, “I don’t think so, no. I signed for a year and the year is up.” But while obviously adamant that she’s heading for parole the moment her Gotham sentence concludes, Pinkett Smith was coy about the character’s eventual fate. “She could show up anywhere, you never know,” she said, with the laughing glee of someone who can say whatever they like, because they’re free now, free forever from winking foreshadowing and sad little baby bats.