Spoiler Review!!!
With the series now complete, it’s time to discuss HBO’s The Penguin. The series is billed as an interquel set immediately after the events of Matt Reeves’ 2022 hit film, The Batman. It chronicles Oz Cobb’s (Colin Farrell) rise to power in Gotham City’s criminal underworld and possibly its political machinations. This was an incredible series from beginning to end, especially how it ended which…man oh man. Okay, without further ado, let’s talk about it.
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Set directly after The Riddler flooded almost half of Gotham and his plans thwarted by Batman in The Batman, the city is reeling from the aftermath with Gotham’s wealthiest unaffected but the poor being the most affected, post-flood crime waves such as the scarcity of drugs a la Drops, and looting/rioting in the streets. The criminal underbelly faces a massive power vacuum after the death of mob boss Carmine Falcone (John Turturro) as his son, Alberto takes control. That is until Falcone’s former right-hand man, Cobb, decides to step in with his plan to take over the criminal empire himself. Along with the help of a car booster Victor Aguilar (Rhenzy Feliz), he schemes to take out his competitors, the Falcones, and the Maronis through the usual gang stuff and psychological gaslighting. He does everything so that he and his mom, Francis (Deirdre O’Connell), can achieve that “perfect life”. A boy’s love for his mother is wholesome, but in this case…that distorted wholesome love can become weird, disturbing, and dangerous.
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When audiences see the show’s title, they automatically think “Isn’t he a Batman villain? Why are we painting him as an anti-hero of the common man?”. Don’t worry; the screenwriters will remind people he’s not that great of a guy. Farrell’s Oz is hauntingly brilliant because of his mannerisms and plotting to do whatever it takes to get to the top. In the first couple of episodes, his goals to make life better for the poor and the helpless like Vic and his mom seemed generous. It’s not until episode seven that we get the backstory about his relationship with his two other brothers, Jack and Benny, where he wants his mom’s attention over his brothers. He kills his brothers out of pure jealousy and hatred, and then self-taught himself to lie to his mother just so that he can have mom all to himself.
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It does call back to Turturro’s Carmine in The Batman where he harbors an amount of disrespect to Oz saying, “You were always a gimp in an empty suit”. Heck, even in this show Alberto mocks him for his dream of becoming a respectable mob boss like Rex Calabrese (Louis Cancelmi). Salvatore Maroni appears in this show and also has resentment towards him because he’s nothing but a master manipulator. It paints a very beautiful, and disturbing art about a guy who grew up wanting to be the center of attention but gets disrespected at every step. A man wants to become a “respectable” person who promises their friends and loved ones out of a bad situation through criminal means. Then uses those same people as a means to an end and ruins a lot of people’s lives to achieve his goal.
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His mom, Francis, is one part of what makes this disturbingly tragic. Cobb has an Oedipus complex where after he kills his brothers, he exhibits mild to passive-aggressive sexual desires for his mom—which is weird. Francis knew about her son’s sociopathic nature and the shock of her other sons’ deaths resulted in her having Lewy body dementia which is quite sad and heartbreaking. All of these terrible things that have happened to her by her son caused her to go into having a stroke and then into a vegetative state. This is a loss for Cobb, but at the same time, he deludes himself into his promise of having her at the top floor of his penthouse instead of at the bottom. What also rubs salt in the wound is that he gets his prostitute girlfriend Eve (Carmen Ejogo) to wear the same dress his mother wore when they danced at Monroe’s jazz club and have her say the same words his mother told him. Finally getting the attention and respect that he deserves.
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Man oh man…Vic had such a wonderful arc for it to turn into another tragic piece in this show. From him accidentally running into Cobb trying to boost his car to becoming his trusted right-hand man was sort of poignant. They were both raised in impoverished areas of Gotham, their loved ones died in a flood of some kind albeit Victor’s parents died during The Riddler’s attack in The Batman. Like Cobb, Vic wants a better life out of poverty and hopes to make a name for himself alongside Cobb rather than leaving for another state with a significant other. He had to grow past his stuttering to become a better man to survive in a place like Gotham City. He even resorted to killing which was a bigger leap to manhood now that he has killed a man. It’s this twisted hero’s worship of Cobb looking out for the common man that ended up getting him killed. Cobb, having killed his brothers out of jealousy and wanting the attention of his mother, kills Vic for the need to remove all evidence tying him to his rise to power—ergo chasing the same wanting of attention and respect.
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Sofia Gigante Falcone (Cristin Militoni) also had a powerful arc that took a major left turn as well. She had a traumatic upbringing with her mom being hanged by her father, Carmine (Mark Strong—plays a slightly younger Carmine). Her father is so narcissistic, sociopathic, and manipulative in his ways to cover up killing his wife by painting his daughter as a crazed woman who has killed other women that he was culpable for and dubbing her “The Hangman” by the public while in Arkham Asylum. It’s through a series of psychological gaslighting and extortion that she exhibits quiet, yet bubbling rage toward her own crime family for one they are unabashedly sexist. Even when it comes to their family members, women are still regarded as throwaway playthings for the men which drives Sofia into taking ownership of the family after her father was shot by The Riddler in The Batman. She does succeed in erasing her family’s name by adopting her mother’s name Gigante as the new crime syndicate and allying with Salvatore Maroni (Clancy Brown) who also harbors ill-intent towards Cobb. She even torches the house to put an end to a malicious patriarchal psychological cycle that has swallowed the Falcone family for decades. She was about to put Cobb on the ground for good due to a bounty on his head. She gets played by Cobb and Vic and seemingly is about to meet a fatal end by Cobb who was formerly her driver, only to be met by the GCPD to be taken back to Arkham Asylum and stripped of everything she had accomplished in her stead—Another stark parallel to how her dad treater her long ago. She was also a means to an end for Cobb to eliminate the competition for the attention and control of Gotham’s criminal underbelly and seedy politicians. However…she does receive a letter from Selina Kyle (Zoe Kravitz) whom she says that they are both half-sisters of Carmine Falcone. So…there might be a possible team-up in the future.
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The Penguin is a brilliant show about delusional morality and how far and ugly that person will go to achieve a goal. It’s…quite striking and reflective of the times we live in where sociopathic, narcissistic, morally delusional, and dangerous people have lost their humanity and will do anything necessary…even if the facts are flying at their faces that they are terrible people and psychologically unstable…to bombard their way into positions of power by using, abusing, and even silently getting rid of people to maintain their achievements. Farrell’s Cobb comment about how “America is a hustle” rings true: How he played the role of looking out for the common man then evolved into him walking into Gotham City Hall, sitting on the mayor’s chair, and getting the idea of possibly sliding into Gotham’s politics and running for mayor–A familiar concept taken from Batman Returns. This has been a fascinating show from the start to the end. Everybody did an excellent job with the characters, screenwriting, story, and acting, production, and well…it’s just an exceptionally well-made show that happened to be based around superheroes and supervillains that mirror real life. Ozwald Cobb gets his victory for now…until the Bat-Signal lights up Gotham’s wintery sky heralding Vengeance’s wrath that awaits him and whoever the true villain will be in The Batman: Part II coming in 2026.
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