Poison Ivy's Rebirth From Child to Sexed-Up Adult on 'Gotham' Covered in New Featurette

The Gotham cast & crew tease the re-birth of Ivy Pepper.

The wacky world of Fox's Gotham has long embraced its brand of crazy. "Anything goes," seems to be the motto as the show has tried to fill in the blanks of a pre-Batman Gotham City. Besides making the future Commissioner Gordon an erratic hot-head, his future wife a sociopath, and brought back a villain from the dead, the latest stunt involves aging-up a teen Ivy Pepper magically into an adult to use her powers as a seductress.

Executive producer Ken Woodruff explained this creepy premise to THR:

We made the change for two reasons: The character Ivy in the comics, one of her greatest powers is the power of seduction. Everyone was much more comfortable with that with an older actress as opposed to a teenager. We want to explore that classic, canonical power of Ivy. And we didn't just make her older with that attack. When she's changed and transformed, there's a real character change as well. She'll still have some of the same traits, but she'll be much darker, more manipulative than the Ivy we've seen so far. There's a more evil quality to her as well. It's more than just physical.

In the new video featurette below entitled "Ivy Pepper is Reborn," cast members and producers including Maggie Geha, who replaces Claire Foley, as the new Ivy tease her arrival. 

Little Ivy has been changed, she’s been morphed into big Ivy via one of Professor Strange’s monster creations. Ivy doesn’t really know what happened to her; she doesn’t even really know if it’s a dream, but she likes it.

In the video, Ivy emerges from the bay as a fully formed adult, astonished at her transformation, confused to her whereabouts, finding help from a stranger. It's not exactly clear why it had to be the young Ivy whose age was accelerated instead of introducing a different older character instead. 

On its face, the producer's explanation was simply that they wanted a sexy Poison Ivy now and couldn't do that obviously with the current teenage version of her. The reborn Ivy is physically older and supposedly more mature, darker, and manipulative. She's not the teenager trapped in an adult body because that would be, you know, creepy. It's futile to try and make sense of the show's crazy storylines and character transformations. The Ivy stunt is just sleazier and more transparent than most plot devices. 

Season Three will peel back the curtain on the infamous criminal organization known as the Court of The Owls. With the Indian Hill escapees on the loose, JIM GORDON (Ben McKenzie) must take matters into his own hands as a bounty hunter in Gotham. He makes it his mission to find HUGO STRANGE (guest star BD Wong), the mastermind behind the horrifying Indian Hill experiments, and FISH MOONEY (guest star Jada Pinkett Smith), one of Strange’s subjects. Meanwhile, GCPD Detective HARVEY BULLOCK (Donal Logue) and Captain NATHANIEL BARNES (Michael Chiklis) remain at the forefront of the fight against crime in the monster-ridden city. Also, BRUCE WAYNE (David Mazouz), with the help of his trusted butler and mentor, ALFRED PENNYWORTH (Sean Pertwee), and former Wayne Enterprises employee, LUCIUS FOX (Chris Chalk), discovers there are still more secrets to uncover regarding his parents’ murders.

As the city sinks deeper into chaos, GOTHAM will continue to follow the evolving stories of the city’s most malevolent villains: THE PENGUIN (Robin Lord Taylor); EDWARD NYGMA/the future RIDDLER (Cory Michael Smith); SELINA KYLE/the future CATWOMAN (Camren Bicondova); BARBARA KEAN (Erin Richards), TABITHA GALAVAN/TIGRESS (Jessica Lucas) and BUTCH GILZEAN (Drew Powell). The series also will catch up with the future POISON IVY (Maggie Geha), who, after an encounter with a monster from Indian Hill, finds herself reborn as a young woman who’s harnessed the full power of her charms; and will dive into the origin stories of JERVIS TETCH/MAD HATTER (Benedict Samuel), a talented hypnotist teetering on the edge of madness; and the TWEED BROTHERS.