SPOILER WARNING: This article contains spoilers for tonight's episode of "Gotham," which has not yet aired on the west coast.
While Penguin may have lost all the alliances he’d forged over the years in this third season of "Gotham," tonight's return episode “How the Riddler Got His Name” revealed an exciting new alliance is in the making when Oswald Cobblepot (Robin Lord Taylor) woke up and discovered his life was saved by none other than Ivy Pepper. The idea of Penguin and the future Poison Ivy (Maggie Geha) teaming up is a fun one, and sure to mean trouble for Penguin’s enemies as well as the whole city of Gotham.
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When asked at a recent press event in New York City if the two characters would indeed be teaming up, Robin Lord Taylor confirmed that it is in fact an alliance.
“One of the hardest things for the character he went through in the previous episode was losing every alliance that he had," Taylor explained to press, including CBR. "Literally everyone he had worked with at some point had turned against him. He’s all by himself and then even as an actor you’re like, 'Bye everybody. I’m not going to work with you for a while,' but then it’s a perfect opportunity to come in with another character who is also finding herself. It’s a perfect time for the two of them to come together and there’s a real odd couple about it. Someone who is as cynical, has been through it all, as Penguin, with someone who is very innocent.”
Ben McKenzie, who portrays Jim Gordon and directed the show's next episode ("These Delicate and Dark Obsessions," which airs May 1), joined in to say the two characters have a fun dynamic, and that more Ivy and Penguin will be in next week's episode.
“It’s a really fun pairing and speaks to where Poison Ivy can go for the future and also where Penguin can go as well," McKenzie said. "The alliances that can form with a character that’s suddenly in adult form and yet they’re still childlike, and there’s a certain sort of interesting, aspirational aspect of Poison Ivy. She looks at [Penguin] like, 'Teach me a few things. Teach me how to be bad.'"
Taylor went on to describe how status is always changing on the show, and here is an interesting pairing that sees someone who was once the mayor of the city crash all the way down and meet someone who is finding out who she is -- and yet here they are on the same level.
“They need each other equally," Taylor said. "That’s what I love about the show. Those kinds of switches and changes."
Geha, who joined "Gotham" this season to portray the older and altered Ivy Pepper, was asked by press about the experience playing a role where she’s an adult, but also seemingly still a child. Geha admitted it was confusing for her at first as well.
“It was interesting coming into a show that’s in its third season and taking over for Claire [Foley] who did such a brilliant job and wrapping my head around the idea of being transformed by this mutant monster thing," Geha told reporters. "Your body aging. Your mind mentally, emotionally growing up a little bit, but suddenly you’re in this new body and she’s lacking all these years of experience. I don’t really think of her as a child in an adult’s body. I think of her as changed as she says from the inside out, but she’s naive because she missed all those years of her adolescence so it was really fun trying to play that. I think there’s a lightness to her and she brings a little bit of fun to the show and I had a lot of fun this season playing her and I look forward to playing her hopefully a little darker in season four."
Between the potential for a darker Ivy, Ivy being mentored by Penguin, and Penguin learning from Ivy’s experiences, it certainly seems like things may get a lot more interesting and complicated very soon with this new villainous duo on the scene in "Gotham."
"Gotham" airs 8 p.m. on Mondays.