'Gotham' Season 1 Spoilers: 6 Things To Know About The New Fox Drama Before The Sept. 22 Premiere

“Gotham” is set to premiere on Fox on Monday, Sept. 22, and there are a few things every viewers should know about the new show. The Batman prequel is one of the most anticipated new series of the fall season, but audiences might be surprised to learn that this isn’t really a show about the well-known superhero. Find out who "Gotham" follows, what influences it took from the comics and more:

1. This Is Not About Bruce Wayne

While the series kicks off with the death of Bruce Wayne's (David Mazouz) parents, he isn’t about to become Batman before he hits puberty. “Gotham” will follow the beginning of Commissioner Gordon’s career. As Detective James Gordon (Ben McKenzie), the rookie will discover that the criminals of Gotham aren’t exactly scared of law enforcement because the city has plenty of corruption. The show will also focus on the origins of some of Batman’s most famous nemeses.

2. Villains Aren’t Evil Yet

It might be hard to root against some of the villains “Gotham” will introduce. The series has already cast the Penguin (Robin Lord Taylor), Catwoman (Carmen Bicondova), the Riddler (Cory Michael Smith) and Poison Ivy (Clare Foley), but the famous villains may not be so evil yet as this is an origins show. Oswald Cobblepot is just a minion for a mob boss, while Selina Kyle is just a homeless kid. It’s about the choices they make that lead them down a bad path.

[Watch Gordon meet the Penguin HERE]

3. The Joker Is A Mystery

Donal Logue (who plays Detective Harvey Bullock) explained that the show isn’t planning to introduce the Joker right away. “The Joker is kind of the crown prince of the villains of this thing,” Logue told MTV. “I’m excited to see who they get, and when it’s introduced. It might not be in the first season, it depends probably on how well it does after it starts to air.”

4. There Is No Time Period

The drama has an old school noir feel, but it doesn’t necessarily take place in the past. At the Television Critics Association press tour, showrunner Bruno Heller explained that they weren’t aiming for a particular time period in the show. “If today Batman exists, then this world is the past. But it’s everybody’s past, an 18-year-old’s past and a 54-year-old’s past,” Heller said, according to Entertainment Weekly. “So in your memory, the past is all mashed up together. So in this Gotham, it’s a kind of timeless world. It’s yesterday, it’s today, and it’s tomorrow all at the same time, because that’s the world that dreams live in.”

5. Original Villains

Batman fans won’t know everyone. While familiar names are still in the process of growing up, original villains like Fish Mooney (Jada Pinkett Smith) will be leading crime in Gotham. “My character wants to have her chance at taking over Gotham — she works for the Falcone family, which is one of the mob families that's running Gotham," Pinkett Smith told the Hollywood Reporter. “A lot of people say she is the mother of evil and has influenced some of the villains that we know already.”

She won't be the only one influencing villains. Carol Kane will guest star as Gertrud Kapelput, the penguins's mother. As previously reported, she'll influence Oswald Cobblepot's downward turn.

6. It’s A Crime Show

It’s not quite a procedural like “CSI,” but “Gotham” is still a detective show. It’s about Gordon solving crime. Expect serious crimes like murder and child trafficking as well as a lot of violence.

“I think violence, if you show it, should be disturbing,” Heller said, according to Entertainment Weekly. “That’s the only moral way to show violence … if you go back to the comics in the '30s, they were scary and disturbing, and it was precisely about a morally compromised, violent world.”

Watch the trailer below:

“Gotham” Season 1 premieres Monday, Sept. 22, at 8 p.m. ET on Fox. Will you be tuning in? Sound off in the comments section below!