It seemed somewhat odd for WB and HBO to make a show about the Penguin, a Batman villain, in a way that at least initially sounded like the weird stuff Sony is doing with its Spider-Man-less Spider-Man movies.
But obviously The Penguin is 50x better, and is also not doing the main thing those movies do, try to turn their featured villain into some sort of antihero. And that was on full display last night. Spoilers follow.
Oz essentially does nothing “good” in this show. His “heart of gold” moment is taking in Vic and training him to be a higher level criminal which you can argue is…not actually good as there’s probably an 80% chance it will get him killed. It already almost has several times.
Everything else is either wholly self-serving or acts of blind rage, like killing Alberto Falcone. We might enjoy his clever plans, but he’s no hero. No anti-hero. And actually he’s a full sociopath, as we saw from his childhood.
We knew his brothers died when he was younger, but we did not know the context until this week. He said they were “lost to the city” which is very literally true, drowned in some dark corner of the sewer system after he locked the two of them inside it. This is not some accident he’s haunted by. While it may not have been his initial intention to commit fratricide, clearly he was extremely jealous of his brothers, and once they died, he seemed to exhibit no remorse now that he had his mother all to himself. Sure, he’s bothered when they’re brought up now, but I don’t think it’s because he’s racked with guilt about it. Rather he’d rather just forget it ever happened.
The Penguin is a fascinating series because it has set up a situation where the anti-hero, or the closest thing to it, is Sofia Falcone, who was gaslit and imprisoned by her family, so when she got out and killed them all for revenge, we all cheered. She wants power and to kill our lead, Oz, but it’s easy to feel like she deserves power. And there are many times when you want to root for her to beat Oz.
She won’t, though.
Whether she survives is up in the air, but what Matt Reeves has already said outright that The Penguin is telling the story of how he makes it to the top of the underworld, and how that will set up a returning role for him in The Batman 2. There is no question about whether this universe’s version of the Penguin dies, even though that seems with how grounded this series is, it felt like it could happen. But if it does, it won’t be in this show, and the people leaving on slabs may be Sofia, Vic or both.
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