The Penguin
Hey everyone, and welcome. Today, we will be talking about the show The Penguin. Fun Fact: This is Clancy Brown’s 19th DC Comics Role. I won’t list them all, but you can search if you want to. This show came out in 2024, stars Colin Farrell, Cristin Milioti, and Rhenzy Feliz, and was developed by Lauren LeFranc. So, without further ado, let’s get right into it.
The Penguin picks up two weeks after the events of The Batman, with the Falcone family dealing with the death of their patriarch. This has created a power vacuum that Oswald Cobb plans to use to his advantage.
The Penguin is a crime drama that’s a spinoff from The Batman. It has similar vibes to Daredevil, Batman: The Caped Crusader, or The Sopranos.
I really liked The Batman, and in that film, we are introduced to Oz, but he is not the main focal point in that film, so I was happy to see that we got a show to explore his character more. There have been villain spinoffs before, so I was wondering how they were going to show his rise, whether batman is going to appear, and Who else might we see that is important in this franchise. I knew Colin was going to be good, but once I watched, I found so much more to love within this show.
The Penguin has this theme of the underdog rising to the top. I saw this in the sense that Oz has a disability and how people with disabilities are overlooked and seen as weak and not fit for a powerful leadership role, and Oz plans on changing that. I also see this idea of the underdog rising becuase Oz doesn’t come from a wealthy family and wasn’t given power. Instead, he has to take it. It’s not an easy task, but it’s what he wants, and he works hard to get it. Becuase of this theme, I think it made me root for him to make a name for himself and see what he could become. After he gained all this power, I no longer rooted for him, but looking back, I was still interested in the character and how they were able to develop him into this Crime Boss. In the Finale, there is a scene where Oz tells Sofia that the rich overlook the people below them and are too busy filling up their plates to see how the poor people are starving, and we see the heads of the different gangs getting killed by someone loyal to them before. The idea of the underdog coming out on top is also shown with Sofia within her own family and how she kills them and takes a leadership role, and also with VIc when he goes from nothing to Oz’s right-hand man. It was fascinating seeing these different underdog stories and how they flourished throughout the season.
Colin Farrell portrays Oswald “Oz” Cobb, who was a henchman under Carmine Falcone before he died. In this show, he decides it’s time to make his move to become a crime boss in Gotham. At the beginning of the series, I was rooting for Oz even though he was a criminal because he was the underdog and he was doing what he was doing to get the best for his mom, but as the season went on, I stopped rooting for him as much when I was reminded that he is, in fact, a villain. There are a lot of villains in various superhero media where you’re like hmmm they have a point and this show made sure by the end of the season you wouldn’t think that and instead realize he is a villain. Oz may not seem like the smartest person, but I loved how he adapted to situations well, even if he could have been in those situations because he acted too rashly. There were plenty of times when I thought this might be the end, but it was either part of a plan that was made off-screen, or he would quickly pivot to find a solution that made sense to whoever he was trying to fool. I think my favorite part about his plan was him starting a mob war between the Maronis and Falcones so he could make it easier for himself to ascend to the throne. Through flashbacks, we see that Oz has always worried about himself and everyone close to him except his mother is disposable. When we learn how he betrayed Sofia, I got the hint that he was not one to care about others unless it benefited him, but then when I saw what happened to his brothers, I was shocked partly at the act but even more so at how he acted like he did nothing wrong after that and only really cared about how it benefitted himself. The actor who portrayed a younger version, Ryder Allen, did a great job showing how twisted Oz was at a young age. His mom later tells him that she knows what he did, and he still doesn’t want to admit that he was the cause of his brother’s death. Oz has a limp, so when he walks, he looks like a penguin, and I must say that it took me way too long to notice the connection between his walk and the title of the show. It seems like his disability is the reason that he ends up taking Victor under his wing because he sees how people look down on people like them. In the end, he kills Victor, which is a shock, but I think it is because Victor saw him in a fragile state and also because Victor said he’s like family, and after everything with his mom, he knows that family is a liability and the more of them he has, the more liability there is. He has a weird view of the world and thinks what he’s doing is right or the best. As I noticed throughout the season, he would say, Mom, I’m going to get you a penthouse but I never once heard his mom ask for that as a matter of fact, when he said that when he was a kid, his mom said she liked where she was. He was obsessed with doing what was best for his mom, but he never really asked her, and then the one very clear thing she mentioned is that she doesn’t want to be an empty shell because her disease was kicking her ass, and by the end of the season instead of letting her go as she wished, he kept her alive which makes him happy, but you can see that’s not what she wants as a tear falls down her face. He has his girlfriend dress up as his mom, which is weird, and he just doesn’t see anything wrong with it. Colin did such a job with the voicing of this character and the movements because even with all the prosthetics, he was able to show the emotions of Oz and give the viewer hints as to what he might do. I’m interested to see the future of the character and how they will tie him back into the events of The Batman 2.
Rhenzy Feliz plays Victor, who the penguin takes under his wings and teaches him the ropes of the criminal underworld. Besides the fact he has a stutter, he also has PTSD from the Ridlers attack that killed his family and destroyed his neighborhood. In the flashback episode, his parents really want him to make a better life for himself and not get involved with the criminal activity that plagues Gotham. Victor isn’t clean per se becuase when we meet him, he is attempting to steal from Oz, but he has the chance to be better before Oz comes along and messes up his life. Victor becomes Oz’s right-hand man and immediately helps him to start putting pieces in motion so that Oz can become a king in the Gotham underworld. He learns from Oz, and he’s more impressionable since he sees how the poor neighborhoods get attacked and then are neglected by the people who should be helping them, and he sees Oz as a means to better his future. He knows the city is bad, and early in the season, he has the chance to leave with his girlfriend but instead stays, which gets Oz out of a pickle that he was in. In the episode where he kills Squid, I knew he was in too deep even though it was an accident. I thought Oz was looking out for him, and I thought he would be his right-hand man, and they bonded about grief, but Oz decided to kill him, which was so sad. Rhenzy did such a great job in this role showing the fear of coming face to face with this gangster, walking on eggshells around him, killing your first person, and, in one of the most chilling scenes, showing how Victor begged for Oz not to kill him while he’s being suffocated.
Oz’s mom, Francis, is played by Deirdre O’Connell, who has dementia and Parkinson’s. She has moments of Time-Shifting, Memory Lapses, and Shadowing, and at the end of the season, she ends up having a stroke. Dierdre did such a great job showing how her mind was leaving her, and then she had these sudden moments where she remembered where she was and who she was talking to. Whether or not she understood what was going on, she was one not to be played with, and in the flashbacks, we see how she had been involved with underground crime for many years. Oz tells everyone she’s dead, and as we come to see, that’s for the best because when people know about her, then she becomes a liability. In flashbacks, we see how she tried to keep her kids safe and made sure they had a place to live and food on the table, but Oz wanted all her attention. After her sons die, she becomes depressed and finds out that Oz knew and did nothing to save his brothers. She was going to have him killed, but she instead doesn’t even years later, she still holds onto that pain, and even when she tells him she knows so, he can just tell the truth so she won’t be tortured, he acts like he doesn’t understand what the problem. She stabs Oz in the end and has a stroke, and it seems like she is ready to go, but Oz decides that he is not ready to let her go, and we last see her in a penthouse crying because she is trapped in her own body.
Sofia Falcone, later Gigante, whom Cristin Milioti portrays, is the daughter of Carmine Falcone, whom we meet and learn was in Arkham for the murder of some girls, and she has been nicknamed the hangman. I have only seen Cristin in more happy roles, so it was such a big shock to see her in such a villainous role. We see how she finds a way to get rid of the Falcones and takes what is left using her mom’s maiden name. She leans into the psycho persona, and I think what helps with that is how quiet and stoic she can be becuase there were times when I was wondering what was next for her. Even before we found out what happened, one thing that made me so mad was how everyone treated her and talked about her as this psycho and tried to make her feel like an outsider in her own family. The show tells us that Oz was her driver, but there seemed to be more to their relationship, which caused tension. In the episode that explains her backstory, we see how she talked to a reporter a couple of times about the murders of women employed by her dad, and while she didn’t give up any confidential info, the act of meeting with a reporter was a no-go from her dad. Carmine kills the reporter and then frames Sofia for all of the murders of the women who have been killed by hanging, hence the name the hangman. She states how she is falsely imprisoned many times and starts to piece the puzzle together and realizes it’s all her dad’s fault that she’s in the predicament that she is in. With more digging, she finds out he did something to her mom which was ruled a suicide even with suspicious circumstances. While in prison, the guards try very hard to break her and get her killed, but she realizes no one is on her side and survives by leaning into that psycho persona that her dad has told the world about. The one person rooting for her is her brother, whom Oz kills, and in this flashback episode, we further see how close they were, considering he was the only one who came to visit. Her love for her brother in her flashback episode made me understand why she went so crazy trying to find him. In the present day, Sofia gives a speech about how her family didn’t support her even though she was innocent, and later, she gets rid of them all and assumes leadership. She later partners with the Maronis to go after Oz and eventually run the city together, and she does eventually find Oz by using his ex-girlfriend. I know Sofia is not completely evil because she did spare her niece, and when talking to Oz’s girlfriend, she doesn’t kill her and shows her some respect. In the end, she wants Oz and plans to leave Gotham, but after Oz captures her, she looks like she is ready to embrace death, but Oz gives her a fate worse than death: imprisonment back in Arkham. Cristin is so good in this role, and I hope to see her back at the end of the season they give us a glimpse of what is in store when she gets a letter from her half-sister Selina Kyle, whom fans know as Catwoman. One thing I know is that she should stop trusting men because all they do is let her down. If there is anyone who is an example of how this criminal world will ruin you, it’s Sofia because, in that flashback scene, you see how something so minor effectively ruined her life.
Clancy Brown plays Sal Maroni, and besides the fact that he has such an iconic voice and has been in so many DC roles, he is just a great actor. When I watched The Batman, I wondered when we would see Maroni because I am aware of the character, and it was interesting to see him running stuff out of prison. Oz tries to use him to start a war between the Maronis and Falcones by playing both sides and while Sal kind of goes with it, his wife does not. By the time Sal gets out of prison, all he’s set on doing is getting revenge for the death of his family at the hands of Oz. It’s interesting to see how he would never betray his family, while we see Carmine betray his family members multiple times, which Sofia seems kinda sad about because she found out her relationship with her dad wasn’t what she thought it was. Carmine ruled his group out of fear, and it seems like Sal focused more on fostering this sense of loyalty. In the end, he dies of a heart attack and while that may not seem like the way he should’ve gone out, I love how Oz takes credit for it instead of telling the truth. I feel like how Oz did that showed that Oz understood how good it would look if he killed Sal to help bolster his claim that he is a crime lord now.
Sal’s wife Naida is played by another iconic actor by the name of Shohreh Aghdahloo, whom I love to see on screen or voice a character because her voice is so unique that it stands out. She is the reason Oz’s plans fall apart when she exposes him in front of Sofia and is going to kill him if Victor doesn’t save him. After her son is captured, she reels in her intensity so she can get him back, but that motherly love becomes weakness because she hugs her son, whom we find out is covered in something flammable, and Oz lights them on fire and kills them both. I just loved how even though her husband was calling the strings, she wasn’t afraid to speak up or just show up to confront Oz for the shadiness he was pulling.
Having Oz introduced in Batman and then not having Batman in the show was something I was slightly worried about, and I only say slightly becuase the thing is that they have established that Batman is in this universe, so they won’t be able to pretend that he’s not like films as the Joker did. I love how they were able to set this show up as a mob show and give us such a compelling storyline that they didn’t need to even mention Batman until the finale. The way that the show is set up feels very grounded and makes it digestible to people who didn’t watch The Batman. The penguin stands on its own and shifts the focus to the crime underworld of Gotham, showing how they control the city and are often overlooked by politicians because the city is so corrupt. I feel like the question could come up as to where the Batman was during all this, but one thing of note is that he is just one man in a city filled with crime.
My Favorite part of The Penguin was the acting performances across the board. I am not going to list them all here, and I’ve gone through some of them. Whether big or small, I thought they got some good actors to portray these characters. I was fascinated with how these characters would interact and how they would affect the story by doing something to shake up something or help set up future events. The leads of the show helped draw me in and had me completely hooked on the show and wanting the next episode to come quickly.
The Penguin is a masterclass on how you introduce a villain without a superhero and show how they rose to power. I’m not saying all villains need to be introduced this way, but I’m saying if you are going to do it, maybe look at what they did because they did a fantastic job. The story not only had me completely invested but also made me question if I should be rooting for him or not. I’m interested to see what his future is in the Batman franchise and how he will remain in power.
