We already know that in the upcoming TV seriesGotham, we will be seeing both Arkham Asylum and Hugo Strange. It seems that we will actually get to see the origins of Arkham, which should be pretty fantastic, and based on this quote from Bruno Heller a few weeks ago, it looks like the asylum will pop up throughout the series.
Hugo Strange is going to pop up because we're going to start dealing with how Arkham was created and why Arkham was created in the way that it was so, yeah, absolutely. It's a Season One thing because in our telling of it the way Arkham was created and the why and how is one of the causes of the particular criminal climate in Gotham that allowed Batman to happen. The revolving door of Arkham is both a brilliant narrative device because it allows you to -- you don't have to kill people off, you can just put them in cold storage.
Now we can actually see the Baley Seton Hospital on Staten Island all decked out as the famous Gotham prison, and it looks great! Thus far, we only have these two photos of the iconic front gates, but they look phenomenally dark and Gothic.
In fact, I'm a little surprised at quite how dark and gothic it appears. If we are, in fact, seeing an origin story for the prison, it should be starting off as an actual mental health facility, and disintegrate into a madhouse/prison. Given that this is a prequel, that would make sense, but perhaps Arkham will already have turned (so to speak) and we will simply hear the story of how it happened.
Of course, it could also simply be that the entirety of Gotham city has this look to it, and this will still serve as an Arkham origin. After all, we have seen that the police station is almost Tim-Burton-esque.
The shots of Arkham were allegedly taken during the filming of the fourth episode, titled "Lavender". Not quite sure of the significance of the name, but I wonder if it has something to do with Ivy Pepper, because of the plant connotation. All we know now is that it has at least something to do with the asylum, and we'll have to wait till October to find out what!
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