Ben McKenzie on Jim Gordon's New Alliances, Love Interests, and Battling Penguin (Interview)

Ben McKenzie's starring role as Jim Gordon on "Gotham" has been filled with action, heartbreak, and a whole lot of detective work. Season three introduced the Court of Owls, which presented a new glimpse into Jim's father and his origins as a character, something that will have its lasting effects in season four.

"It's informed how he feels about things. It's not so much playing out on the screen in terms of actual pieces of action because we've seemingly close-ended that. However, we effective haven't. The presence of Ra's who is kind of behind the Court of Owls on a deeper level, Ra's is very much in season four so we'll be dealing with the practical implications of that but in terms of the emotional stuff, Jim [is] more fully understanding who his father really was, who his uncle really was, and his relationship to them further deepens and makes more complex his relationship to justice, the justice in Gotham, how that's achieved, how that's maintained, and law and order.

Jim Gordon has also had his fair share of romantic entanglements, all of which have ended from bad to worse. "Jim can't make it work with a woman for the same reason that no one can make it work with anyone in a relationship in Gotham which is that we're telling a story of tragedy, of darkness, and moral depravity all around us. Jim will seek out new relationships and will explore those in season four. One of the delicate balances of the show is, it's a dark world, it's a world of Batman in terms of its tone, but we do wanna keep some hope alive, some glimmer of humanity in that. Whether it's the villains being empathetic on some level, to be able to understand their human motivations, or the heroes failing and succeeding and failing again, that applies throughout whether we're talking about the power struggles, or the relationships, or the power struggles in relationships."

Jim's story has also often been closely intertwined with Penguin, with whom he has a recurring cat and mouse dynamic of power and control that alternates between being foes or reluctant allies. "I think Jim, particularly at this point in the series, much more fully understands his limitations and what he's capable of doing and what he's not. Whereas he would've just charged straight at Oswald initially and tried to crush him, particularly when Oswald was much weaker, now that's not really a viable option. Instead, he seeks out new alliances. In this case it's with Sofia Falcone, daughter of Carmine Falcone, who will become prominently featured this season."

Watch our full interview with Ben McKenzie here: