Valerie Is The Mad Hatter's Latest 'Gotham' Target

Gotham has proved it's not afraid to up the stakes in Season 3 and potentially even potentially kill off a few characters. The most shocking moment of the Oct. 24 episode was, of course, when Valerie Vale was shot by Jervis Tetch as a part of his twisted tea party designed to torture Jim (yet somehow never put him in any physical danger). But will Valerie die from her gunshot wound? I sincerely doubt it, since that would have been an odd place to end the episode, if it's going to lead into Valerie's death in the first few minutes of next week. I guess the show could always surprise us — but I think it might feel more impactful if Valerie and Jim get the chance to speak again.

With Valerie and Lee sitting in front of him, Jim chose Lee as the person that he wanted to die, but then was shocked when Jervis vindictively decided to shoot Valerie instead. Did Jim know that Jervis would go against what he said? Was he really trying to move on from his relationship with Lee by... getting a madman to murder her? What I was actually wondering during the scene was, why would Jim make a choice at all? I suspect the preceding scenes in Jervis' torture maze hold the answer. While he was attempting to find and stop Jervis, Jim watched as his indecision killed four people — the married couple, the doctor, and the journalist.

By the time he made it to the final challenge, Jim must have been stressed. He knew that Jervis' plans could and would be very deadly, and I think he was attempting to minimize the casualties, especially once Lee's dopey husband-to-be showed up with an empty gun. However, in the moment it's hard to deny that it came across as pretty callous for him to abruptly announce that he wanted Lee to be shot to death. In the final moments of the episode, Lee and Jim still managed to finally settle into a groove after their breakup and hopefully, next week's episode will start with Valerie waking up as Jim realizes the consequences of his decision.

Images: Nicole Rivelli/FOX (2)