‘Gotham’ sets the stage for Barbara to become queen

Barbara (Erin Richards) is always scheming on “Gotham” — but this time it looks like she may be ready to start a war. At the conclusion of “Mad City: Time Bomb,” Babs revealed Penguin’s (Robin Lord Taylor) love for Ed (Cory Michael Smith) to Butch (Drew Powell), and realized it’s exactly the ammunition she needs to turn them against each other.

With Penguin behind the death of the women Ed loved, that’s a volatile situation waiting to happen and Barbara is just the person to stir things up.

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“That’s a huge weakness for [Penguin]. And for a man that doesn’t have many weaknesses, it’s very usable and she sees that it can be his ruin,” Richards explains. “Straight away she’s scheming and thinking, realizes that he’s killed Isabella — a huge thing that will divide him and Nygma.”

How does pitting Penguin against Ed benefit Barbara though? “She realizes she needs to get one of them on her side to be able to go up through the ranks,” she continues. “She needs to set them against each other and pick a side, and potentially get rid of that person at the end as well.”

Babs truly is the smartest person in the room, even though she’s a little unhinged and rather volatile. What happens if she does rise up through Gotham’s underworld and become queen? What would that look like?

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“I think it’d be pretty glamorous and cut-throat. She’d rule with panache but also with an iron fist,” Richards teases. “We could also bring in a storyline of how men don’t like to be ruled by women…”

In that scenario, we feel sorry for anyone who decides to come up against Barbara. In the meantime, get ready for a wild ride. Babs is as unpredictable as she is devious — and if she’s playing Ed and Penguin against each other, who knows where she’ll fall.

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“True to Babs’ usual style, you never quite know what she’s doing or whose side she’s going to be on,” Richards says. “She’ll keep playing both sides, and there will be a lot of twists and turns for the next four or five episodes where she hasn’t quite picked a side that you can clearly say she’s on.”

“Gotham” airs Mondays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Fox.

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