Lucius Fox Is Coming To 'Gotham' City

When you think about it, Gotham has covered an incredible amount of material in a single 22-episode season, and it's still adding new stuff right to the end. Now, Gotham is introducing DC Comics character Lucius Fox, who has also been portrayed in Batman movies and is played here by Chris Chalk. Fox has always been an ally for Batman/Bruce Wayne, and is sometimes the person behind Batman's cavalcade of gadgets and technical acumen. Lucius Fox dates back to the comics as the CEO of Wayne Enterprises. He's always super competent, a great businessman, and usually unaware that his boss is a vigilante, though as one of the smartest non-villain characters, he does sometimes get a little hint that Wayne isn't just a shallow millionaire.

Lucius Fox is also now one of the most beloved characters in the Batman universe, largely thanks to Morgan Freeman's portrayal of the character from the Chris Nolan Dark Knight films. In that version, Fox is a wise, sage, older man, who's languished at Wayne Enterprises for years because the company wasn't being managed by the right people during Bruce Wayne's childhood and adolescence. In the movies, Freeman uses his sonorous voice and natural gravitas to sell all of Nolan's outlandish Bat-tools. Like having Michael Caine as Alfred, adding an Oscar-winning actor in a supporting role helped to sell the "realism" of the comic book-inspired franchise. And Freeman brought a fantastic sense of humor along with him as well.

Plus, there was always a sense — and later it became part of the story — that Lucius was the one person besides Alfred who knew Bruce's secret identity. He's Batman's version of James Bond's Q, the mechanical genius who gives out all the gear.

Key moments of the film version of Lucius go from his jokes (like the classic "spelunking" quip above) to the moment at the end of The Dark Knight where he expresses that he's uncomfortable with the idea of having the Big Brother-y power to access everyone's cellphone footage. While the movie ultimately kind of comes down on the side that the program was needed, even if it invaded people's privacy, Lucius Fox is definitely a moral compass in Chris Nolan's Bat-verse.

I spend so much time discussing Freeman's portrayal because I think it's genuinely the most influential version of Lucius Fox ever put to the screen, and provided a strong take on a character who's never had one before. And I'm sure, with the whole Wayne Enterprises ongoing storyline in Gotham , that it will be a big influence on the series. Obviously this Gotham version of the character will already start to build a relationship with Bruce Wayne before he gets the idea to become Batman, but I think this could be the key to who takes over Wayne Enterprises after Sid Bunderslaw is stopped.

Images: Jessica Miglio/FOX; CandaceDoesGifs/Tumblr (2)