Bruno Heller Says Gotham Learns From Its Mistakes For Season 2

Gotham showrunner Bruno Heller, had an extensive conversation with ComicBook.com where they talk about how the premiere episode of the second season was like a second pilot for the FOX television series, how the mistakes and successes of the first season has helped shaped the second season into a better series, they also talk about possible new story arch to kick-off once Spring rolls around.

When I was on set a couple of weeks ago, the cast universally agreed that the season 2 premiere was virtually a second pilot. After you seemed to get the serialized nature during those last four episodes of season one where you really expanded the story; what about it worked so well that you wanted to carry over into season 2?

BH: Yeah, it’s as much learning from mistakes as it is learning from successes. We realized that we had to – season one had so many great stories to tell, and we tried to tell too many stories. This season, we’re able to sharpen the focus. It’s almost just a matter of airtime! People need to live in the stories for longer. You need to pay far more attention to the emotional weight of storylines instead of just going through a checklist.

Here’s the thing, from a writing perspective, there are so many wonderful moments in the DC mythology that you have to pay attention to. It’s an embarrassment of riches! For instance, discovering the cave underneath Wayne Manor, that’s not something you can just do as a plot point. It’s a huge moment in that young man’s life.

The other side of it, it’s true, every season will start with an episode that feels like the pilot, the start of a new era, because that’s the epic scale of the story that we’re telling. There are so many momentous, mythical things that happen to these characters that you have to take it that way. To a degree, the speed at which modern drama burns through story is antithetical to telling this kind of mythic, historic, epic story. We need to take a step back and give the stories the weight that they really need.

Mythology is a very different kind of storytelling from pure fiction, if you can make that distinction between them. Pure invention, which to a degree is most shows, you’re introducing characters you haven’t met before. With these stories, it’s like telling someone stories about their mum and dad. It’s your own family. So you need to give the emotional weight with that kind of familiarity and closeness and passion that people have for these characters. You need to give them the weight that expectation deserves. That’s really what we learned about, working through the first season and into the second season.

To read the full interview head over to ComicBook.com.