'Gotham's secret weapon was its unpredictable queenpin played by Jada Pinkett Smith.
For all that you could say about FOX's Gotham, if there’s one thing that resolutely stood out about the show was its propensity to double down on the crazy. The series, which seemed like a poorly conceptualized procedural set in Gotham pre-Batman, slowly turned into an edgy Elseworlds-esque take on the Batman mythos. One addition that not only captured all that the series had to offer but stands as a resolute reminder of what made Gotham work was Jada Pinkett Smith’s Fish Mooney.
While Gotham had no shortage of rogues from the infamous villains' gallery of The Caped Crusader, with everyone from The Madhatter to the Joker popping up, they took a while to fully develop into the evil masterminds we’re familiar with. Additionally, much of the early Gotham was part-cop procedural and part-mafia drama, with characters like Sal Maroni and Falcone being the chief power brokers in the city.
The series struggled in its early days to coopt a direction to take its stable of popular characters in, Fish Mooney though, suffered no such qualms. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that she felt more fully realized than any of the other characters that were introduced to us, including Jim Gordon himself . Fish made every scene so much more fun because there was no indication if she would flip the switch or not.
It’s a shame that Fish's character never quite made it to the comics the way characters like Harley Quinn and X-23, who started out as animated series creations, did. Smith’s scenery-chewing and ability to be campy in a way that harkened back to the Burton films made her Gotham’s most vibrant character, and there’s no denying that she could be a great addition to the crime-infested hellhole that is the Gotham City of the comics today.