New 'Gotham' Villain Victor Fries Has A Sad Motive

It was a few months ago, so it might be a stretch to remember, but the winter finale of Gotham went out on a big cliffhanger: the first appearance of what looked like classic Batman villain Mr. Freeze. Then the follow-up episode asked another, bigger question: why was Fries stealing bodies and freezing them? The episode actually gave the answer — he was trying to figure out a way to freeze a person that wouldn't kill them in order to save his wife, Nora. She is suffering from some kind of lung disease that can only be treated with a specific medication (given how often the show points the finger at big corporations, this could turn out to be a clue to a larger conspiracy) and seems to be getting increasingly worse.

As her condition worsened, Victor resorted to using his cryogenic experience in order to preserve her body to stop the disease. And while he hasn't frozen Nora yet, at the end of the episode, he finally found the right combination of chemicals that allows him to freeze a person solid, putting them into a suspended animation, and then defrost them and bring them back to life. Anyone who's seen another depiction of Mr. Freeze's story knows that this usually ends pretty badly for Victor and Nora, but at the end of Gotham, Victor ran off, determined to use his discovery to help his ailing wife.

Probably the saddest part of the episode was that both Victor and Nora wanted to do the right thing. Nora chose to ignore Victor's experiments, but once she saw that he was freezing people, she confessed everything to the police and let them into his laboratory. And while Victor was totally blinded by his scientific mind and zeal to help Nora, he did wind up going to the GCPD to turn himself in. Of course, he slipped out before he could give a confession, but clearly Gotham is planning to pull on the heartstrings with the story of this couple, even if they may have some icy casualties.

Images: Jessica Miglio/FOX; Giphy