After teasing fans with but a glimpse at Bane's look for the fifth and final season of GOTHAM, the show's writer and producer, Tze Chun, has revealed the complete version of the Batman back-breaking villain in a new photo. In the pic, an exerted-looking Shane West – complete with red circles under his eyes – sports an intricate mask and high-tech vest apparatus. Though it's difficult to tell from the photo, one would assume that each of the many tubes attached to the chest plate serves as a way of pumping Venom into Bane's system, a chemical that vastly increases his physical strength. In the comics, Bane needs to partake of the lethal drug by shooting it directly into his brain, lest he suffer a series of debilitating effects.
You can have a look at West's Bane for yourself in the tweet below:
For the past several weeks, fans of the Batman prequel series have speculated that West's Eduardo Dorrance character would eventually become the giant-sized masked menace. In the show, Dorrance is a former Army associate of Jim Gordon's, which is just one aspect of the characters's new backstory for the upcoming season.
In talking about the inclusion of Bane for the upcoming adventure, GOTHAM showrunner John Stephens told fans at this year's New York City Comic-Con that, "Finally, we found that if you beg and you plead enough, and then they find out that your show is not going on anymore, they'll give it to you." Stephens then continued, "We always wanted to do it and we wanted to do it in a way that has not been told as much on screen or in the comic books, which was to really tell the story of how he was before he became Bane. And we tied it to Jim's back story, in a way that I think is clearly different than canon, but I feel like it is like a tributary that then goes into the canon."
For those of you who are curious as to how "non-cannon" Bane's part in GOTHAM will be, I'll provide you with a taste of what's to come. However, I consider this next bit to be something of a SPOILER, so please proceed with caution.
It would appear that since Bruce isn't the Batman just yet, Bane's iconic back-breaking maneuver will be used on Sean Pertwee's Alfred Pennyworth, the Wayne family butler and bonafide British badass. While I understand that the paralyzing maneuver is a staple of the iconic character, couldn't we have just, I don't know, given him something else to do? Why take such a defining moment of Batman's journey and give it to Alfred? Is it just to have that moment on screen? Again?
What do you think of West's new look for Bane? Our own Matt Rooney thinks he looks like a Marilyn Manson stage prop, whereas I think he resembles an 80s action figure with a poor paint job. Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.