Meanwhile, Bruce continues discovering more about Ra's al Ghul and finds out about his origin and a certain item he takes an interest on: a 2,000 year old knife.
The episode received positive reviews with critics praising Bruce's character development as well as the cinematography but Gordon's storyline attracted mixed response.
Back to the present day, Bruce (David Mazouz) investigates a new merchandise that arrived at the docks at Cobblepot's (Robin Lord Taylor) name but finds a thief advancing to the boat.
While Cobblepot and Zsasz (Anthony Carrigan) leave the club, a woman (Ilana Becker) uses a blowtorch to free Nygma (Cory Michael Smith) from his frozen state.
However, he begins to show signs of brain damage from the freezing process when he can't answer riddles and escapes.
In September 2017, it was announced that the third episode of the season would be titled "They Who Hide Behind Masks" and was to be written by Steven Lilien & Bryan Wynbrandt and directed by Mark Tonderai.
[1] Morena Baccarin, Jessica Lucas, Chris Chalk and Drew Powell don't appear in the episode as their respective characters.
In September 2017, it was announced that the guest cast for the episode would include Ilana Becker as Myrtle Jenkins, John Doman as Carmine Falcone, Anthony Carrigan as Victor Zsasz, and Kelcy Griffin as Detective Harper.
Matt Fowler of IGN gave the episode a "good" 7.8 out of 10 and wrote in his verdict, "'They Who Hide Behind Masks' honed in sharply on Bruce's vigilante tutelage at the hands of Alfred, who encouraged him to not only take on different personas, but to strongly play up a public 'spoiled brat' facade to achieve his goals.
"[6] Sydney Bucksbaum of The Hollywood Reporter wrote, "Thanks to some advice from Alfred (Sean Pertwee) in this week's Gotham, Bruce (David Mazouz) invented his most famous character yet in his quest to be a secret vigilante by night by pretending to be a rich, obnoxious brat during the day.
"[7] Vinnie Mancuso of Collider wrote, "By now, we all know what it looks like when Bruce Wayne became Batman; we've watched a hundred times as he realized his tactical mask would be more effective with tiny, pointy ears, observed him sanding town perfectly good ninja stars until they look vaguely like bats, witnessed his parents' murder so many times we're all technically responsible on a moral level by this point.
"[8] Lisa Babick of TV Fanatic gave the series a 3.5 star rating out of 5, writing "'They Who Hide Behind Masks' was a mixed bag.