’16 Years Later, ‘The Penguin’ Achieves Success Where DC And Warner Bros Have Struggled’

The Penguin has come and gone. Its shocking and tragic finale has haunted me ever since. I always expected this show to be good, but I had no idea we were in for such a profoundly excellent character drama from a comic book series.

The last time I watched something from DC Comics that impressed me this much was back in 2008, when The Dark Knight came to theaters. Nothing since—including Christopher Nolan’s third Batman film—has been as compelling or as genuinely excellent. (I liked The Dark Knight Returns but it’s my least favorite of the three Nolan films).

This is a shame, of course. DC has so many great characters—especially in its Gotham contingent—and so many stories to explore. But ever since the Synderverse, DC’s TV and film efforts struggled to make a real impact. Yes, there were some decent seasons of DC shows on the CW. The first season of The Flash was quite good, as was the first season of Arrow, but these were never premium TV shows and both series went downhill rapidly. HBO’s Watchmen was fascinating, but perhaps leaned too heavily into politics at times.

In many ways, attempts to connect the various DC films the way the MCU had managed was just a bad idea, and the more they got away from that—in films like The Joker, for instance—the better the results.

The DCEU wasn’t all bad. Wonder Woman was pretty good, though its horrendous sequel ruined it for me. Shazam was funny, at least in its first half. Still, it’s no surprise that post-Snyder, non-DCEU films like Matt Reeves’ The Batman—which is where we first met Colin Farrell’s Oz Cobb—have been much better.

Spoilers ahead.

As much as I enjoyed The Batman, the spinoff series is better, and manages this without even a Caped Crusader cameo. Largely this is thanks to its stellar cast. Farrell is brilliant as the manipulative, sociopathic Oz, a man so ruthless that as a boy he left his brothers to drown to death just to get more attention from his mom, Franciz. A man so self-centered, with such enormous drive, that he would rather let his mom suffer and possibly die than admit the truth. The great and powerful Oz—all smoke and mirrors, always craving more power.

In the end, he gets his ma the fancy penthouse he always promised. We see her, in her coma, looking out at the beautiful view, a tear running down her cheek, a prisoner of her monstrous son. “I know,” he says as she stares out. “It’s everything you wanted.” Of course, he’s talking to himself.

Oz’s mommy issues run deep. The final scene of the show is perhaps its most disturbing. He leaves his mother and walks down into the sprawling living room of his new Gotham penthouse. Eve, his prostitute girlfriend, is there waiting for him, dressed up as his mother. “There she is,” he says as he walks down the stairs. “You look beautiful.”

“Dance with me sweetheart,” Eve says in her best Francis impression. “Tell…

The camera pans out and we see the bat symbol in Gotham’s night sky—an ominous sign for our newly-made villain. And what a chilling scene! It manages to be even more chilling than Oz’s betrayal and murder of his sidekick, Victor, who everyone—including me—expected to become an important underling in the Penguin’s organization.

What works about The Penguin is how utterly the show embraces Oz’s villain arc. There is no redemptive leeway. He is not an anti-hero or perched awkwardly on some morally grey branch. There are hints early on in the season that he has a heart of gold, but even those are misdirection. The story he tells Alberto Falcone of the gangster in his old neighborhood, and how he took care of everyone, made us think that perhaps Oz wanted to be that kind of man. A man of the people. By the end, this is clearly not the case. Oz doesn’t care about helping people, he’s just very good at using them, and speaking to their innermost resentment and secret hatreds.

This is how he finally turns the tables on Sofia, through a Godfather-worthy series of betrayals across every criminal organization in Gotham. But he doesn’t kill her. That would be too kind. Instead, she’s arrested and sent back to Arkham Asylum to live out her days in agony, her brief rise over in the blink of an eye.

All Sofia wanted, of course, was out. Out of Arkham, out of her family business, out of Gotham. Oz made sure she got nothing at all.

As brilliant as Farrell’s performance was—I suspect many people still don’t realize it’s him—Cristin Milioti was The Penguin’s dark horse. Her portrayal of Sofia was quite possibly the best female performance I’ve ever seen in a DC Comics show or movie. I know we all love Harley Quinn and Catwoman, but Sofia Falcone really stole the show for me, giving us one of the most layered, sympathetic, no-nonsense female characters in a comic book show or movie. I knew nothing about Milioti before this, and very little about Sofia Falcone. By the end of the season, I was captivated by both actress and character.

I was rooting for her, actually. I wanted her to kill Oz and rid Gotham of his presence once and for all. I wanted her to get away, ditch the family business, burn down the house, hop on a jet and fly to freedom. Ride off into the sunset.

The Penguin isn’t that kind of show. It’s an unflinchingly dark and gritty take on these characters and the crime-infested streets of Gotham. Oz Cobb and Sofia Falcone are two of the most complex and well-drawn characters out there, and the show doesn’t pull its punches, giving us a true villain in Oz. In the end, Sofia is back in Arkham Asylum, everything she fought so hard for taken from her once again. The indignity of it is galling. This is so much more interesting than giving me—or Sofia—what we want. Tragic, sure, but a lot ballsier.

Verdict

I will refrain from calling it a perfect show, however. There were some small issues that held it back from true greatness. Oz gets out of too many scrapes too easily, for one thing. How many times do his enemies capture and lose him? Four? Five? And he’s not exactly a sprinter. I also thought his plan to trade his mother for the drugs was a bit silly. Nobody searched Sofia’s SUV before allowing it to drive into their base? Talk about a security oversight. Little stuff like this irked me from time to time, but it was easy to look past since the rest was so excellent.

As an examination of evil, The Penguin knocked it out of the park. So many comic book movies have lousy villains. DC often gives us big, earth-destroying mega-villains that are about as interesting as a brick. The most compelling villain in the DC-verse prior to Oz was probably The Flash’s Reverse Flash in Season 1 of that show, and it was precisely how intimate his relationship was with Barry Allen that made that work. The intimacy here, between Oz and Sofia and Victor and Oz’s mom allowed us to sit with all of it and question our own feelings and interpretations as the story unfolded. And it made Oz’s villainy so much more personal and horrific.

If Warner Bros. and DC are smart and pay attention, they’ll see The Penguin recognize the show as DC’s equivalent to Disney and Lucasfilm’s Andor, both TV series made for adults. Too often, these big properties can’t seem to make up their mind about who the audience for this stuff actually is, and as I’ve said before: Mostly grown men (and women who have similar tastes as men) who tend to bring their friends, wives, girlfriends and families along with them. If the core demographic shows up, they’ll bring everyone else along for the ride. That’s why the early phases of the MCU worked so well, and why shows like The Acolyte failed.

Of course, that’s just one side of the penny. The other is quality. Too many comic book movies (and Star Wars movies and Marvel movies) seem to not only misunderstand who their core audience is—who buys the movie tickets, the merch, the toys and games for the kids—but fail at the very basics of storytelling. Thankfully, The Penguin is a show that treats its audience with respect while giving us plenty of organic diversity and well-drawn, complex characters like Sofia, Victor Oz to follow, a healthy side of grisly violence, and lots of story meat on the proverbial bone. A satisfying television meal, if ever there was one. I haven’t been this satisfied by a DC movie or show in 16 years. That says something.

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