Gotham Season 1 hits Blu-ray on Tuesday, September 8th, featuring all 22 episodes in glorious 1080p. It will also be available for streaming on Netflix beginning September 21st — the same day that Gotham Season 2 premieres on FOX. The reason to buy the 4-disc Season 1 of Gotham on Blu-ray is for all of the special features that won’t be available on streaming services. So is it worth the $45 on Amazon? Let’s go over all the bonus content and find out.
Deleted Scenes
The Gotham Season 1 Blu-ray features deleted scenes from 6 of the 22 episodes. Do not buy the Blu-ray just to check them out. It’s easy to see why these scenes were deleted and they are short! Most run for less than a minute.
Gotham Invented
This three-part documentary talks about how the world of Gotham was created. It features comments from the show’s creator, producers, actors, writers, and even DC Comics’ Geoff Johns. Part one is titled “Building Our Gotham”, and focuses on the city itself. Part two is titled “Paving The Way For The Caped Crusader” and focuses on the origins of Bruce Wayne and Jim Gordon. Part three is titled “Fractured Villains of Gotham” and focuses on the villains that were introduced in Season 1. The documentary runs for about 31 minutes and is pretty interesting. It answers a lot of the questions you might have had while watching Gotham and wondering why certain decisions about the show’s direction were made.
Gotham: Designing The Fiction
This 20 minute special feature takes you from concept to creation of the gritty streets and dark skylines of Gotham city. The beginning focuses on New York City, where the show is shot. You get an inside look at the production design and the sets of the show. There’s a big focus on the GCPD set, which was built by hand and is incredibly detailed. Other sets that are highlighted are Fish Mooney and Penguin’s clubs, and Wayne Manor.
The Game of Cobblepot
This 26 minute special feature focuses on Robin Lord Taylor’s standout performance as Oswald Cobblepot… aka The Penguin. It recaps how Cobblepot treated Season 1 like his own chess game, controlling both sides of the mob to ultimately end up on top of the city himself. This was a cool video because the Penguin is one of my favorite parts of the show, so it was great to relive some of his best moments and get some insight from Robin Lord Taylor himself.
Gotham: The Legend Reborn
This 21 minute preview of Gotham’s first episode was officially released over a year ago to promote the premiere of the show. No need to buy the Blu-ray to check out, it’s available below:
DC Comics Night at Comic-Con 2014
This special feature is the DC Comics television panel from Comic-Con 2014 that features Gotham, The Flash, Constantine, and Arrow. This panel has been available on YouTube for over a year, so it’s not a compelling selling point for the Blu-ray.
Character Profiles
These are two minute featurettes that focus on the main characters of Gotham like Gordon, Bruce Wayne and Alfred, Harvey Bullock, Fish Mooney, Oswald Cobblepot, Dr. Leslie Tompkins, and the villains. I’m pretty sure most of these have been released on the Gotham YouTube channel over the past year.
Gag Reel
The gag reel and outtakes are my favorite part of any Blu-ray release and there’s no exception here. It’s great to see funny moments break out, especially in very dark and violent scenes. The only downside is that it’s only 5 minutes long.
Wrap Up
If you loved Gotham Season 1 and want to be able to watch the episodes whenever you’d like, this Blu-ray is a no-brainer. It comes with a digital copy as well. If you have a Netflix subscription though, you may not need to rush out and buy it since it’ll be available to steam in just a couple of weeks.
The special features are the main reason to buy the Blu-ray and unfortunately a lot of them are recycled content that have been released for free over the past year. However, there’s a good 90 minutes or so of new exclusive content that really helps explain how and why Gotham was created. If that sounds interesting to you, the 4-disc Gotham Season 1 Blu-ray is only $45 on Amazon. Not a bad deal at all, considering you also get all 22 episodes of the show.
