'Gotham's Flying Graysons Are Key Characters

When the next episode of Gotham takes a trip to the circus, Detective Jim Gordon will meet a whole crew of new characters, including two young acrobats developing their own act. But who are John Grayson and Mary Lloyd? "Grayson" should be a familiar last name for any fans of Batman, because the alter ego of Robin the Boy Wonder is Dick Grayson. Dick grew up in the circus, performing as an acrobat with his parents... who are named John and Mary. So Gotham is introducing some very famous characters who will eventually bear an even more famous character. John and Mary Grayson aren't normally very deep characters. Like Thomas and Martha Wayne, they mostly exist just so they can be killed and scar the young Robin for life, damaging him enough to give him a thirst to spend the majority of his life stopping criminals, and hopefully save other innocent kids like himself from becoming orphans.

Surprisingly, the episode, titled "The Blind Fortune Teller," will show the Flying Graysons' acrobatic act already, with the young Robin a glint in his parents' newly loving eyes. Get a glimpse at John and Mary, and their Haly's Circus act, in the preview below.

This timeline would make Robin about 15 or so years younger than Bruce Wayne. And while I can buy a 25-year-old Batman no problem, with this chronology that's how old he'd be when adopting Robin. That's a young Batman, who doesn't have very many years of experience under his belt and is still getting wasted by stray bullets and bruised by fights with mobster muscle. He's not the stable, reliable billionaire who's going to be able to provide a good life for a boy ward. They'd both qualify as boy wards with that kind of age spread. Unless the plan is to have Dick become an orphan at 20 or something. I guess that is what the Joel Schumacher Batman movies did — I swear, Chris O'Donnell looked older than Val Kilmer and George Clooney combined by the end of Batman and Robin.

By adding the Graysons now, it seems like we'll get a look into the world of the surprisingly deadly Gotham City big top circus. According to Fox, Gordon and his new girlfriend, Dr. Leslie Thompkins, are out for a romantic night at Haly's Circus, when a murder happens during the show. This will surely send Gordon right back into work mode, probably shunting Lee aside and putting their new relationship under strain... again.

While the life of the snake charmer has to be avenged, it must be hard to always come in second place to murder. But along the way of the investigation, Gordon will probably end up having an important conversation with two characters he doesn't even know will turn out to be incredibly important to the future of Gotham City.

Images: Jessica Miglio/FOX; Giphy