When it was first announced that Colin Farrell would reprise his role as Oswald Cobblepot from 2022’s The Batman in a streaming series, it was a scary proposition. After all, we’ve seen what happens when a popular superhero movie franchise continues its story on TV. We all saw how Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD was not in any way a proper extension of the MCU. And don’t even get us started about Inhumans. HBO’s The Penguin, though, is almost an exact opposite of those shows, with a stellar cast and story that feel as though they were ripped directly from the world of The Batman, as opposed to tacked on after the fact.
With The Penguin, showrunner Lauren LeFranc and executive producer Matt Reeves have crafted a genuine extension of the world built in The Batman. The series also truly brings Gotham City to life in ways the movie wouldn’t be able to. With eight episodes in Penguin’s limited run, viewers not only learn more about Cobblepott–now named simply Oswald “Oz” Cobb for some unexplained reason–and what motivates him, but about Gotham, as a whole, in the aftermath of The Riddler’s bombing of the seawall gates at the climax of the film.
This Gotham is suffering, as seemingly everyone but the wealthy elite has seen their lives destroyed by explosions and devastating flooding at the hands of Paul Dano’s Riddler–who, like Batman, doesn’t appear in the series. And it’s in that space that the characters we meet (or already know, in the case of Oz) thrive.
The setup for The Penguin is simple. In the aftermath of Riddler’s destruction of Gotham and the death of Carmine Falcone in The Batman, life and crime is in a tailspin. Oz, complete with Farrell’s fat suit and tough guy wannabe mob boss accent, sees the opportunity to install himself as the most powerful man in Gotham’s underworld.
Enter Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti), Carmine’s daughter. She’s a serial killer fresh out of Arkham, where she was dubbed Hangman due to how she dispatched her victims with a noose. She wants to save what’s left of the Falcone family and, in turn, find herself in charge of the city’s criminal enterprises.
I cannot overstate how incredible Milioti is in The Penguin. She is, by far, the biggest standout on the show, even topping an excellent performance from Farrell himself. She’s devious, demented, and violent, while spending most of her time on the show keeping her most-graphic tendencies hidden behind steely, cold eyes. There’s a rage bubbling beneath the surface that the actress is playing so well that you can’t help wait for when the dam finally breaks and all hell is let loose.
That’s what’s happening here. Regardless of who trusts who at any given moment–which is something that’s frequently shifting throughout the series–it’s painfully evident from the jump that none of this will end well for anyone. The struggle for power in Gotham also includes the Falcone family’s chief adversaries, the Maronis. That family, led by Clancy Brown’s imprisoned Salvatore, also sees the power vacuum left by the death of Carmine Falcone as a way to make a play for their own supremacy. To say much more would be a spoiler, but much like with The Batman, the supporting cast brings the best they have to offer. Brown’s portrayal of Sal is often a study in quiet rage and manipulation, while his wife Nadia (Shohreh Aghdashloo) is more open about her hatred of Oz, the Falcones, and anyone who stands in her family’s way. In the moments the two share on-screen, they are magnetic. At their base, they are very similar humans–lustful for power and vengeance, willing to do whatever they need. It’s refreshing, though, to see the patriarch of the family be the one conditioned to hide his feelings more, while the matriarch makes no bones about saying how badly she wants you gutted for being in her way.
Of course, it’s hard to talk about The Penguin without discussing Farrell’s reprisal of the role. While he was a standout in The Batman, he’s even better here with the time to flesh out the character and get to the heart of what makes him tick. Ultimately, it’s Oz’s love of his mother Frances (Deirdre O’Connell) that, at least in his mind, drives him to crave power. Whether that’s true or not is something the viewer can decide.
Anyone who has tracked the Penguin character over the last several decades knows his relationship with his mother is core to who he is. In The Penguin, it has a bit of a different spin, as do his overall origins. This Oz has spent most of his life as the only person his mother had to rely on. Now, though, she’s older and battling Lewy body dementia. You see the toll it takes on Oz as he tries to convince himself his mother will be okay and the things he’s done to provide for her will be worth it in the end.
O’Connell, who previously played Foggy Nelson’s mother on Netflix’s Daredevil, is hauntingly beautiful in her role. As her mental and physical health declines and she slips in and out of lucidity, we see the toll it takes on her and the confusion it brings. She doesn’t fully understand what’s happening most of the time, and when she does, she’s either impressed by her son’s ruthlessness or attempting to push him further.
There’s clearly a deeper issue between them to explore, but Oz’s fixation on giving his mother everything she could ever want, even as she reached a point of sometimes not recognizing he’s in the room, is heartbreaking. It also explains a bit as to why Penguin takes a young man, Vincent (Rhenzy Feliz), under his–ahem–wing. He views the young man with no connection to the crime families as someone he can mold into the perfect right-hand man, whether it’s helping him care for Frances or doing any number of menial illegal tasks to slowly immerse the young man into the life of crime.
And it’s those types of stories that would be nearly impossible to tell in a movie like The Batman. These are the stories longer-form storytelling like this was made for. Coming out of The Batman, I knew very little about Oz except that he was a bad guy craving more power (and assumptions based on past incarnations of the character). With this show, though, he’s a fully drawn-out character who, should he return in The Batman 2, should be far more engaging than he was in the initial film.
While this series is a massive creative and storytelling success, it’s not without its faults. One of them is no doubt something you’ve heard about: Robert Pattinson is nowhere to be seen in The Penguin, as Bruce Wayne or Batman. In fact, I believe the character was only referenced twice across eight episodes provided for review.
While it’s not a surprise he’s missing from the story, as The Batman director and Penguin executive producer Matt Reeves has been very vocal about it, his absence is a strange one. A week after Batman fought The Riddler and attempted to save so many Gotham citizens from the ensuing flooding, he’s just mysteriously absent while gangs take to the streets committing a long list of crimes–and leaving an untold amount of dead bodies in the wake.
This is the exact sort of thing practically anybody who has read a Batman comic or seen a Batman movie would expect to lead to the arrival of the Dark Knight just in time to save the day. Instead, criminals do their business with very little interloping from the law. Explaining Pattinson’s absence could have been as simple as a news report saying Bruce Wayne was missing in the aftermath of the attack on the city. Instead, I was left wondering more than once what was keeping Batman so busy while things were literally exploding.
The other knock against this show comes in the form of one of the new characters. Theo Rossi, who was superb on Sons of Anarchy and Marvel’s Luke Cage, stars here as Sofia’s doctor, Julian Rush, and serves almost no purpose. He pops up now and again to help Sofia solve a problem, installing himself in her life, and then sort of disappears during the climax of the series. It’s not that Rossi isn’t good in the role; he’s engaging enough. Instead, it’s a character who could easily be plucked out of the series without really changing much of anything. While the creative team could certainly find a way to follow up on the character in the future, whether in The Batman 2 or even a potential second season of The Penguin, his addition seems mostly unnecessary.
Those weaker points of the show still don’t take away from how much of a success The Penguin is. At the end of eight episodes, you understand who Oz is and who he wants to become. Moreover, you somehow care for him and hate him for his choices simultaneously. And, perhaps most importantly, you care for Gotham City as a whole. To see the city struggle under the weight of its criminal oppressors, where it’s clear that even darker times are ahead, Gotham is the real victim in this and every Batman story, and your heart breaks for it time and again.
The Penguin premieres on Sunday, September 19, on HBO. Episodes will also stream on Max.
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