Shane West Wishes He Could’ve Starred as Bane in a Gotham Season 6

Bane actor Shane West says he wishes that Gotham season 6 was renewed so he could have continued playing the character. The Batman prequel series began airing on Fox in 2014, following James Gordon (Ben McKenzie) and Bruce Wayne (David Mazouz) in the years immediately following the murder of Bruce’s parents. The show, which ran for five seasons and 100 episodes, also introduced the origin stories of many of Gotham’s most prominent villains and antiheroes, including the Penguin (Robin Lord Taylor), Selina Kyle/Catwoman (Camren Bicondova), the Riddler (Cory Michael Smith), and Harvey Dent/Two-Face (Nicholas D’Agosto).

Gotham season 5 episode 5 introduced the character Eduardo Dorrance, who was played by A Walk to Remember‘s West. The character is James Gordon’s former military rival, and after a near-death experience, he is exposed to Venom and becomes a supersoldier, taking on the moniker of Bane. His final of four appearances was in the penultimate episode, right before the Gotham series finale in 2019.

Screen Rant had the opportunity to sit down with Shane West to discuss his new film, Outsiders, which is currently out in theaters and on VOD. During the conversation, the actor speaks about how “it’s always exciting to be a part of [a Batman project].” However, he regrets that it wasn’t bigger and wishes he’d been given the chance to play the character for a longer time, noting that, “it being the final season, they kind of just wrapped it up pretty quickly.” Read his full quote below:

It’s always exciting to be a part of [a Batman project]. I wish it was just bigger. It would have been more fun to play with that character more and to go longer, but it being the final season, they kind of just wrapped it up pretty quickly.

Typically, when West appears on a television show, he’s in it for the long haul. On Salem and Nikita, which are his most recent major TV credits, he appeared on 36 and 73 episodes, respectively. Before that, he appeared on the long-running medical drama ER, which launched George Clooney’s career in the mid-’90s, for 70 episodes. This certainly explains why the actor feels somewhat shortchanged by a mere 4-episode arc as Gotham‘s Bane.

Although Gotham season 5 was well-received by critics and audiences, the show just wasn’t sustaining the kind of viewership to keep it on the air. However, in this age of superhero dominance across media, there’s always a chance that the brass at DC will see fit to renew it if there is enough fan interest. They certainly have been taking more chances on projects recently, including bringing back Michael Keaton’s Batman in the upcoming The Flash movie and allowing James Gunn to let his sense of humor run wild in the HBO Max hit Peacemaker.

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