Jessica Miglio/FOXIt's officially time to start worrying about the villains.
With two new iconic baddies entering the mix, it's safe to say Gotham's midseason return, aptly titled "Wrath of the Villains: Mr. Freeze," will be quite a trying time for our resident villain: Oswald Cobblepot aka Penguin (Robin Lord Taylor).
Fans should prepare themselves now to see Penguin go through a massive (and horrifying) change in the second half of the season, something Robin Lord Taylor was "thrilled" to portray.
"Any time you always want to play opposites, after the first season as the king of Gotham and then managing that through the first half of the season, it was actually kind of great to basically have the rug pulled out from under the character and end up at the bottom of the bottom," he told us at the Savannah College of Art and Design's aTVfest television festival in Atlanta earlier this month. "As you'll see as we go on...he goes through one of the most horrifying experiences of his life and it's really fun to play."
The cause of that change? A stay in Arkham Asylum, where he finds himself under the care of new baddie Hugo Strange, played by the "amazing" B.D. Wong.
"I can say that I believe Strange has the best of intentions with Oswald, even though they're from his own very warped perspective," Lord Taylor cautiously previewed. "And I can also say that it doesn't, even though they are the best intentions, it's probably one of the worst things you can do to a person."
But Hugo Strange isn't the only iconic villain making his debut in the midseason premiere, as House of Cards' Nathan Darrow will be officially introduced as Victor Fries aka Mr. Freeze (after a brief appearance in the finale). It's a role most Batman fans associate with Arnold Schwarzenegger's campy take in Batman & Robin, which Darrow admitted he's never actually seen."I was just trying to just do it as honestly as I could," Darrow said of taking on the role of a man who will do anything to save his dying wife. "Like with anybody, you have questions about what makes them go, and specially with a character that maybe is a little bit more known for one thing or known in a certain world, it's almost like you're working even harder to try and look at is he actually a really creative person in there or does he doubt himself, is he actually really confident in himself? I was interested in all those things. I was interested in knowing where he ends up, I was interested in is some of that in there already? Like, is there some of the particular impatience of the kind of control freak that can become a ‘villain'?"
Of course, we had to ask about the Mr. Freeze costume, which Darrow said gets him "a lot of attention."
"People like to see the costume and then as it progressed, there are like three iterations of it, but they've gotten more and more complex," he teased. "So then I put on the costume and I have all these wardrobe people around me, adjusting things and asking me if I need a water or I need a fan. That's not so bad!"
Gotham returns tonight at 8 p.m. on Fox.