Comic Book movies and TV shows are still going strong right now, with Sony-Marvel’s Venom: The Last Dance opening in theaters, while DC’s Batman spinoff The Penguin is earning major acclaim on HBO. Most superhero fans would agree that Venom 3 and The Penguin couldn’t be more different in terms of tone and subject matter; however, they do share something in common: breakout performances by lead actors (Tom Hardy and Colin Farrell, respectively), which are the heart of both franchises.

There’s also a dark weird connection between Venom: The Last Dance and The Penguin – specifically Episode 6, which aired during Venom 3‘s opening weekend:

Did You Spot The Same Actor In Venom 3 & The Penguin?

Actor Jared Abrahamson had quite a week for an aspiring actor: he played a bit role in Venom: The Last Dance as Captain Forrest, a member of Imperium; he also had a recurring role in The Penguin as “Squid,” a local shot-caller and drug dealer operating in the slums neighborhood of Crown Point.

Abrahamson was much more of a background character as Cpt. Forrest in Venom 3: he appeared in scenes as a right-hand-man to Imperium military commander General Rex Strickland (Chiwetel Ejiofor); however, in the film’s third act, the symbiote god Knull sends his Xenophage monsters to attack Imperium’s base at Area 51 resulting in the death or retreat of nearly ever Imperium team member. Forrest’s fate is unknown after the film (though is wiki lists him as “alive”).

RELATED: The Penguin Just Turned One Major Character Into A True Villain

The Penguin gave Jared Abrahamson a much bigger spotlight in Episode 6: his story arc with Penguin’s sidekick Victor Aguilar (Rhenzy Feliz) came to a head when Squid finally leaned on Victor to set him up with an introduction to Penguin. When Squid goes so far as to threaten Victor with snitching to the cops or rival gangs, Victor takes the drastic step of shooting him in the neck. Abrahamson got a bloody death scene as he bleeds out in an alley – but it’s a performance that will definitely spice up his highlight reel! Not to mention the rush that Abrahamson is probably enjoying right now, having two high-profile projects out simultaneously.

Jared Abrahamson has previously appeared in the indie comedy On the Count of Three (starring Jarrod Carmichael and Christopher Abbott); episode arcs in the Hulu series Letterkenny and Ramy, and Apple TV+’s The Changeling. He is probably best known for starring in Netflix’s time-travel sci-f-drama-mystery series Travelers (2016-2018).

You can also catch him in Venom: The Last Dance (now in theaters) or in The Penguin (airing on HBO and streaming on Max).

The post The Penguin & Venom 3 Have a Weird Connection Fans Probably Missed appeared first on ComicBook.com.

The Penguin has had viewers questioning one character who didn’t seem to fit with the show’s lineup of gangsters, psychopaths, and criminals: Victor Aguilar (Rhenzy Feliz). A key flashback in Episode 3 revealed that Victor was once a good kid from a good home (complete with a humble and hard-working father) – but also hinted that there were seeds of some burning ambition for a “better” life already smoldering inside of the boy. Victor has shown how much actual fire there is behind that ambition as he’s helped Oz Cobb/Penguin (Colin Farrell) wriggle his way through an underworld power vacuum – at least up to a point. The Penguin Episode 6 forces Vic into a corner where he has to finally cross the point of no return in becoming a villain.

WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS!

When Oz’s wars with Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti) and Sal Maroni (Clancy Brown) went sideways (Episode 5), he had Vic relocate his mother Francis Cobb (Deirdre O’Connell) to an apartment in the third-world slums of Crown Point, where both Oz and Vic grew up. Unfortunately, Vic’s move-in didn’t go unnoticed: Squid (Jared Abrahamson), the local shot-caller spotted Francis, and – together with rumors about the new drug Bliss hitting the streets – discerns that Vic is The Penguin’s sidekick in a major new operation. Squid wants in, and leans hard on Vic to introduce him to the boss. Vic goes to Oz for help, but Oz already has too many problems to listen to another one, and basically tasks VIctor with solving the issue himself. Vic tries to give Squid the out of taking a bribe to leave the issue alone; instead, Squid throws the money back in Vic’s face with the counter-offer of snitching about Oz’s drug operation and hideout to the police or the Falcone/Maroni mobs. Victor pretends to acquiesce and take Squid to see Oz, before turning and shooting his long-time bully point-blank in the neck.

Victor’s first murder doesn’t go as cleanly as he hoped: Squid dies painfully and bloodily, staring at him the whole time. The only thing more haunting than the murder is what happens when Vic returns and let’s Oz know what happened: Penguin gives Vic the “fatherly” advice that when it comes to murder, “It gets easier,” a promise that will only pull Vic further into the depths of soul-sucking criminality.

In fact, the Karmic payback for Vic’s dastardly deed comes quickly: by the end of the epiosde Sofia Falcone tracks down Oz’s hideout in Crown Point, and finds Vic and Francis happily dancing the night away, celebrating Oz’s ascension to the head of his own mob. Now viewers are wondering if Vic has a big death flag planted on him, as ‘punishment’ for choosing the dark path. Then again, other fan theories about The Penguin speculate that “Victor Aguilar” could turn out to be one of Batman’s most notorious villains.

The Penguin airs episodes Sunday nights on HBO and streams on Max.

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Much of The Penguin has shown the varying rises to power of Oz and Sofia Falcone, who are both rather amazing at seizing the moment and turning bad things to their favor. The last few episodes have focused a heavy share of the attention on Sofia especially (played by the amazing Cristin Milioti), and while episode 6 of The Penguin does so as well, we also see a different side of Sofia’s life early in the episode, courtesy of a romance with its own share of twists. Spoilers are incoming for The Penguin’s sixth episode Gold Summit, so if you haven’t watched the episode yet you’ve been warned.

A Twisted Romance

Early in the episode the attention shifts to Sofia’s home, and we see her in the midst of a romantic night with someone off camera. We soon learn though that the night is now over, as turns towards that person to reveal it’s her therapist Dr. Julian Rush (played by Theo Rossi). She turns around and tells him “you’re doing it again…you’re scrutinizing).”

She walks towards him and we then learn he’s actually tied up in a chair. He says “I’m admiring you”, and she responds “are you hurt?”. The camera moves closer as she unties him and you can see what she’s referring to, as he’s clearly bleeding a bit from what seem like scratches on his shoulder and chest. He then says “I deserved it.”

As she walks away he says “are you bored with me already?” and she says “I have work.” He gets up to leave and says “When you find Oz, feel free to take advantage of my expertise.” Sofia smirks and then says Dom will see him out. That’s when she heads to the kitchen and encounters Salvatore Maroni (played by Clancy Brown) to talk about that man Oz.

[RELATED: The Penguin Episode 6 Ending – Will SPOILER Die?]

The One Who Believed Her

Sofia has been betrayed by many to this point, especially when she was imprisoned in Arkham Asylum and left to rot by Carmine Falcone. With the power the Falcone family wielded, no one was on her side, but Julian was different, and he’s been by her side since he got out of Arkham.

In past episodes we’ve seen their relationship start to become something different, with hints that there was more there than just a doctor and patient relationship. Julian has dug into her past trauma and helped her face it, and now she has gone from someone who is desperately trying to get people to believe she’s innocent to someone who is seizing power and leaning into that aura of fear.

This ties into their relationship in the present as well, as Sofia is clearly in the power position regarding their dynamic, and Julian saying things like “are you bored with me already” only furthers that notion. We don’t get any more looks at their relationship after this throughout the episode, but it will be interesting to see where it goes from here and how Sofia and Julian react to Oz moving forward.

The Penguin Episode 6 is now streaming on Max.

What did you think of the episode? You can talk all things DC and TV with me on Threads and Twitter @mattaguilarcb!

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The Penguin Episode 6 “Gold Summit” just ended on a cliffhanger that has fans sweating like crazy, wondering what kind of tragedy could be coming in Episode 7. So far, the major characters of The Penguin – Oz Cobb (Colin Farrell), Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti), Victor Aguilar (Rhenzy Feliz), Sal Maroni (Clancy Brown), and Francis Cobb (Dierdre O’Connell) -have all managed to dodge a bullet, shank, or worse in the war for Gotham City’s Underworld. Until now, at least…

WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS FOLLOW!

In Episode 6, Oz Cobb/Penguin finally got his big break to make a name for himself as a crime boss, after uniting Gotham’s rival gangs under a banner of blue-collar frustration. But while ‘Oz Mob’ was rising, Sofia Falcone doled out some unexpected mercy to Penguin’s main lady Eve Karlo (Carmen Ejogo) that came back to her in the form of a tip from Eve about where Oz may be hiding out in his childhood slum of Crown Point.

Meanwhile, over in Crown Point, Francis is coming apart over having to return to her old slum living ways, confusing past and present with greater frequency. To prove his worth to his “ma,” Oz seeks to get the power in the ‘Point turned back on (winter is coming!), by tracking down the crooked city official on Carmine Falcone’s payroll. Oz leans on the councilman to be Penguin’s patsy, and the guy bends to the blackmail, getting power diverted back to Crown Point. As the lights and heat come back on, Victor and Francs dance to celebrate Oz’s big successes – which is exactly when Sofia arrives at the apartment, gun in hand, realizing that Oz has kept the secret of his mother being alive, playing her once again.

Will Sofia Falcone Kill Francis Cobb or Victor?

To Cristin Milioti’s credit, she’s made Sofia Falcone such a deeply layered and complex character that it’s hard to read what she’ll do next. She owes Oz a big emotional blow to the heart for killing her brother – but as she explains to Sal Maroni earlier in the episode while tossing Oz’s apartment for clues, Penguin’s great advantage is that there’s seemingly nothing and no one he cares about. It won’t take Sofia long to discern just how deeply attached Oz is to Francis, and know what her loss could do to him; however, Sofia’s meeting Eve seems to highlight the distinction that she is hesitant to hurt women and further fuel the lie that she’s “The Hangman.” That said, Sofia’s harshest weapons are often her wit and her words; she didn’t just give Eve a pass in their conversational joust: she made Eve feel the shame of getting played by Oz, the same man that helped Carmine Falcone kill dozens of women – including friends of Eve’s. It was a way of undoing the spell of deception and manipulation that Penguin excels at – maybe that will be the same goal with Francis: not killing her so much as killing her love for her son.

Then there’s poor Victor, who just gave us all the necessary runway for his untimely death, after making the final ‘fall from grace’ of killing neighborhood thug Calvin (Ben Cook) in cold blood. By TV show standards, Victor is now fair game for moral punishment, since he’s decided to follow the example of his surrogate dad (Oz) instead of his real dad. The only things that may save Victor are Sofia’s belief that he’s still some kind of good-hearted innocent Oz is using – and her skepticism that Penguin doesn’t truly value anyone.

Fans must wait until next Sunday when The Penguin Episode 7 airs on HBO and streams on Max.

The post The Penguin Episode 6 Ending – Will SPOILER Die? appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Through six episode of The Penguin, Oswald Cobb (Colin Farrell) has been desperately trying to fill the power void in Gotham City. The death of Carmine Falcone — and the destruction of the bridges into the city — left a unique opportunity for the criminals of Gotham to step up and become the new kingpin. Oz has obsessively chased that goal, throwing under the bus anyone and everyone possible to achieve the power he seeks. At the end of this week’s new episode of The Penguin, it looks as though the titular villain has finally made it happen. At the very least, he’s closer than he’s ever been.

WARNING: This article contains MAJOR SPOILERS for the latest episode of The Penguin! Continue reading at your own risk…

The power struggle in Gotham City has been something of a roller coaster over the course of The Penguin, and Oz has been at the center of all the drama. He worked with both the Falcones and the Maronis to try and climb his way up the ladder, only to toss them both aside at the most opportune moments. Little did he know, he was creating a new monster, as Sofia Falcone rallied her father’s former members to create a new family: The Gigantes. Using that momentum, she made a deal with Salvatore Maroni to bring their families together, united with the sole purpose of taking Oz down.

This has left Oz in yet another precarious situation, especially after the gangs working with him started seeing their members killed by the Gigantes trying to send a message. All of this led to one of the final scenes of The Penguin‘s sixth episode, as Oz called a meeting with a majority of the gangs in Gotham.

[RELATED: Every Movie and TV Show Coming to Max in November 2024]

While they came to the meeting wanting vengeance, the leaders of the gangs end up going something surprising. They actually listen to what Oz has to say. And they all agree to continue working with him, making a massive Gotham City crime syndicate that Sofia and Salvatore will have a hard time standing up against.

The key for Oz in this big meeting is that he continued to push the same narrative he always has. The timing, however, is finally right, and people are in a position to hear him out. He talks about his history and how he made his way through the ranks, starting as a kid who had nothing and becoming a driver for Falcone before being allowed to take on any other responsibility. Unlike the traditional crime lords, who have always had wealth at their side, Oz understands the plight everyone else in Gotham City. He’s been through the hardest experiences the city can throw at someone, and he’s found a way to continue on. Now, those experiences have made him the most powerful man in Gotham.

The most interesting aspect of this entire situation is how Sofia and Salvatore might respond. They obviously aren’t going to take it lying down, so there will be something coming Oswald’s way in the near future.

The post The Penguin Episode 6 Introduces a Whole New Mob Syndicate to Gotham City appeared first on ComicBook.com.

The Penguin Episode 5 “Homecoming” has truly taken things up a notch, by featuring some of the most gruesome death scenes we’ve seen in this show – or any comic book TV show, for that matter. The latest chapter of The Penguin picked up from the big twist of Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti) killing off her mob family and seizing control as the new don. Sofia’s power grab is just one element of Oz Cobb/Penguin’s (Colin Farrell) master plan that goes wrong: his triple-cross play against the Maronis also blows up in his face. By the time the dust settles, some bodies get dropped, in ways viewers are never going to forget!

WARNING: SPOILERS FOLLOW!

Getting Rid of the Competition

A big turn in Penguin Episode 5’s story happens when Oz kidnaps Taj Maroni (Aria Shahghasemi), the spoiled influencer son of mob boss Sal Maroni (Clancy Brown). Oz uses Taj as a hostage to negotiate for the return of the psychotropic mushrooms that create the hit new party drug Bliss – product that Sal’s wife Nadia (Shohreh Aghdashloo) stole from him.

The Maronis concede to an exchange of the mushrooms for their son but plan their own double-cross, ambushing Oz and his man with some additional gunmen hidden in the rafters. However, Oz has his own betrayal planned: giving Taj a kerosine shower before the exchange and then lighting the trail of liquid behind him on fire.

Nadia can’t stop the trail of fire from catching up with her son but refuses to let him go, leaving mother and son to burn alive, screaming. The most chilling part about the scene is how director Helen Shaver keeps the camera on Oz’s face the entire time, as we see a gleeful smile spread over his face, watching the horrific event. If we didn’t know who “The Penguin” was before… we do now.

New Don, New Day

Sofia spends most of the episode trying to both get out from under the murders she committed and secure her new place as the queenpin of her own crime family. Early on in the episode, it’s revealed that Sofia is keeping Falcone underboss Johnny Viti (Michael Kelly) prisoner, to locate and secure the nest egg of money she knows her father Carmine Falcone amassed. Instead, Johnny appeals to Sofia on the strength of their family bond, and offers to help her grab the respect of the underworld, so they can lead the Falcone mob into a new era.

Johnny indeed gets the various Gotham mobs and syndicates to come to the table with Sofia. However, he’s blindsided by her sudden announcement that she’s ending the Falcone line and starting a new mob, under her mother’s maiden name, “Gigante.” Johnny dismisses Sofia in the middle of her speech, trying to wrestle control of the meeting – only to catch a bullet to the skull. Sofia dumps a bag of money into the blood pool as the entry fee to her new family. The table of gangsters all snatch up the literal blood money, while Vitis lies slumped on the table with a bullet hole in his head.

The Penguin is now, officially, the most violent and disturbing vision of Gotham City we’ve seen onscreen. It’s actually getting hard to see how fans of The Batman can go back to the almost-certain PG-13 rating of The Batman: Part II when Penguin is giving us R-rated greatness – that also haunts our dreams.

The Penguin is now airing on HBO and streaming on Max.

The post The Penguin Episode 5 Horrifies With The Batman Universe’s Most Gruesome Death Scenes Yet appeared first on ComicBook.com.

It’s wild looking at the fall 2024 television season and seeing both Marvel and DC shows getting acclaim as they enter their respective back halves. HBO’s The Penguin is getting phrases like “best of the year,” and “Emmy contender” thrown around; meanwhile, Agatha All Along is the dark horse breakout that many Marvel Cinematic Universe fans are pleasantly surprised to be enjoying so much. As the discourse about both series flows, there is one thing that is true about both of them, collectively: they are performance-driven shows, built on two very talented lead actors.

And with their respective levels of success and/or acclaim, Agatha All Along and The Penguin are proving that some new-age theories about entertainment are dead wrong, and the old ways are still true: franchises are built primarily on star power, not necessarily just the power of IP.

Let’s just step back and look at this: The Penguin and Agatha All Along were initially met with overwhelming skepticism. The question of why either show needs to exist was asked often and repeatedly, with the only real answer being the strength of the performances of Colin Farrell as Oz Cobb/Penguin in The Batman, and Kathryn Hahn as Agatha Harkness in WandaVision. That didn’t seem like enough to justify spinoff series for two minor characters – but both Penguin and Agatha have been wise to take those central performances as foundations, and build on them with entire ensembles of acting talent.

Penguin is giving Sofia Falcone actress Cristin Milioti the breakout she’s long deserved, and all but locking her for the Emmys next year; it’s also earning praise for Rhenzy Feliz, a young actor who has been trying to break through in projects like Marvel’s Runaways. Agatha All Along is both reminding fans that Aubrey Plaza is a top-tier talent while breaking in new Marvel franchise talent like actor Joe Locke – who is just now breaking out with the reveal that he’s Scarlet Witch’s son Billy Maximoff, the magical Young Avenger known as Wiccan. Those standout supporting actors are also bolstered by many talented veteran actors, with a list that includes the likes of Clancy Brown, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Mark Strong, and Michael Kelly for Penguin, and Debra Jo Rupp, Patti LuPone, Sasheer Zamata and Ali Ahn for Agatha All Along.

The buzz on both shows makes it undeniable that the individual performances and character interactions are taking precedence over any in-universe ties, crossovers, or cameos. Now granted: by the time Penguin and Agatha both come to an end, one or both shows may get the biggest signal boost from some kind of late-game crossover or game-changing reveal for the franchise. Yet it feels like Penguin showrunner Lauren LeFranc and Agtha All Along showrunner Jac Schaeffer (no dots to connect there…) are much more interested in focusing on complex and layered characters, created by actors who have the talent to deliver on them.

Marvel Studios and DC Studios are hopefully taking note that the old star-driven franchise model isn’t yet as dead as many declared it to be. Loyalty to an actor and their performance as a character will get audiences to engage with even the most unlikely IP concepts. Farrell and Hahn’s now-proven ability to go from supporting roles to carrying shows also proves that no casting should be taken frivolously, as any breakout performance is potentially a new spinoff project of some kind. For the actors, it should be well-earned validation (and future leverage) that the craft is still a valuable commodity.

The Penguin airs Sunday nights on HBO and streams on Max. Agatha All Along streams on Disney+.

The post The Penguin & All Along Prove Superhero Franchises Are Driven By Actors, Not IP appeared first on ComicBook.com.

The Penguin Episode 5 features a cameo appearance from a pivotal character we met in The Batman (2022), and a lot of fans may have missed it! Episode 5 of The Penguin “Homecoming” had to deal with the game-changing twist of Episode 4 (SPOILERS!) that saw Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti) murder nearly all of her crime family in a bid to seize power. Well, The Penguin treats the death of the Falcone family with the gravitas it deserves – meaning the Gotham City Police Department shows up in force to deal with it.

The Penguin Episode 5 Brings Back The Batman’s Chief Bock

Matt Reeves’ movie made it clear that Batman (Robert Pattinson) has a pretty uneasy relationship with the GCPD. While Lieutenant Jim Gordon (Jeffrey Wright) treated Batman as an ally and fellow detective, his superior Chief Mackenzie Bock (Con O’Neill) was vehemently opposed to the masked vigilante being involved with a police investigation.

Bock only got the spotlight for a couple of scenes in The Batman; he’s primarily featured in the sequence after The Riddler blows up D.A. Gil Colson during Mayor Don Mitchell Jr.’s funeral. Batman is knocked unconscious by the explosion and taken to police headquarters; he wakes up to Bock, Gordon, and a gang of cops surrounding him, and immediately gets into it with Bock, who accuses Batman of having Colson’s blood on his hands. Bock and Gordon get into it a bit when Gordon steps up to defend Batman, but the chief ultimately lets Gordon talk to Batman one-on-one – which sets up Bruce to make a wild escape off the roof with this flight suit. By the end of The Riddler’s attack, Chief Mackenzie is one of the noble city officials left holding together a city that’s literally drowning.

The Penguin Episode 5 conveys a lot of history (and some great onscreen chemistry) with Chief Bock’s cameo. The policeman comes to the Falcone estate to personally supervise the crime scene and investigation – interest that Sofia Falcone weaponized against him. Bock goes fishing for a lead, questioning the “luck” that Sofia wasn’t in the house when the “accident” happened, because she was having a sleepover with her niece Gia in the greenhouse. Sofia easily dodges that hook and throws out her line of inquiry about what Bock is doing there – prying into his motivation to come and survey the demise of her family and the fall of their criminal organization. Sofia gets even darker, suggesting that Bock is secretly so pleased with the deaths that he and his officers will share photos of the crime scene and celebrate at their cop bar – before selling the gruesome images to the press. Bock doesn’t bite the bait either, leaving Sofia with sarcastic condolences before departing.

The Penguin continues to do a precise job of peppering in tie-in elements and unexpected character cameos that remind us the show is set in The Batman Universe and is reacting to events and mythology established in the first film. It manages to achieve that immersive effect without shoehorning heavy-handed name-drops or callback exposition, and (so far) the show has managed to feel relevant and interesting without having an appearance from Batman himself. If the back half of the season keeps that trend intact, Penguin will stand as a shining example of how to do these franchise universe spinoffs right in a TV format.

The Penguin airs Sunday nights on HBO and streams on Max.

The post The Penguin Episode 5 Brings Back A Pivotal Character From The Batman appeared first on ComicBook.com.

The Penguin mid-season trailer has been released by HBO and Max streaming, teasing the epic gang war between Oswald “Oz” Cobb (Colin Farrell) and Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti). As this mid-season trailer arrives, we’ve seen four episodes of The Penguin deliver some of the most highly-acclaimed television that DC and Warner Bros. have produced for the franchise, with Episode 4 sparking major Emmys buzz for the series. Interest in The Penguin is higher than ever – and this kind of trailer will probably ensure the current audience sticks with the show, and get new viewers to believe the hype!

The Penguin mid-season trailer shows the streets of Gotham exploding into a gang war for the new drug trade. (SPOILERS) After Episode 4 ended with Sofia Falcone murdering most of her own crime family, it looks like she will be building a new on its bones, with her seated at the head of the table as the new don. Meanwhile, The Maronis are still on the rampage, looking to finally end the Falcones. At the same time, they’re weak – and squeezed in the middle is Penguin, who is seen looking unusually vulnerable and down, with the women in his life – his mother Francis (Deirdre O’Connell) and main girl Eve (Carmen Ejogo) – pulling away from him as the underworld power struggle takes this ugly new turn.

As always, however, Oz seems to use his twisted, scrappy resourcefulness to wriggle and waddle through to new opportunities. Then again, the footage makes it seem like Sofia is truly committed to ending Penguin and owning the city herself – so much so that we get hints of it coming down to some violent shootouts between the two.

As stated, The Penguin has beat all odds to become the most acclaimed show – not just a comic book show – of the fall 2024 season. Farrell and Milioti’s portrayal of Oz and Sofia are certainly highlights, but the entire cast and crew of the show are cooking with real gas. This series is making big strides for widening The Batman Universe and making fans go back and look at Matt Reeves’ 2022 film in a whole new light. It’s also making viewers and critics alike rethink some of the underlying skepticism that major superhero movie franchises can’t produce prestige-level content.

In fact, HBO is betting heavily that after the Emmy-winning success of HBO’s Watchmen (a DC comic book series) and now Penguin, the fusion of prestige programming and major IP brands will be a potent formula for both ratings and streaming success. So far, it seems to be working: The Penguin is keeping HBO Sunday night appointment TV alive just as much as Game of Thrones, or The Sopranos (a show Penguin is often compared to); it’s also getting viewers to head back into Max streaming to watch The Batman again. HBO is already restructuring its slate with this new strategy in mind: James Gunn’s and John Cena’s Peacemaker Season 2 is set to air on HBO next year, while the Green Lantern TV series Lanterns is currently in production and set for the same kind of HBO release.

The Penguin airs new episodes Sunday nights on HBO and streams on Max.

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Like its titular character, DC and HBO’s The Penguin has played on viewers’ initial underestimation of a spinoff TV series centered around The Penguin character. The Batman director Matt Reeves, showrunner Lauren LeFranc, and a talented team of writers, directors, and actors have arguably delivered DC’s first prestige-level live-action TV show – one that’s directly connected to a major movie franchise (The Batman). At the time of writing this, The Penguin has aired four of its eight episodes, and even now, at the halfway point, there’s already talk of the show and its cast being locked for 2025 Emmy Awards.

However, now that Emmys are looking more and more like a realistic possibility for The Penguin, those awards hopes could have a direct influence on another big question looming over the series: will it continue?

The Penguin star Colin Farrell has been hesitant to commit to another whole season playing Oswald “Oz” Cobb/Penguin; the actor is already slated to return for Reeves’ sequel film, The Batman: Part II, but beyond that his future in the franchise is unclear. But as far as HBO, Warner Bros., and DC Studios are concerned, announcing a second season of The Penguin may be a key strategy.

Earlier this year, another breakout hit TV series – Disney and FX’s Shōgun – found itself in almost the same place as The Penguin: not that much hype initially, before exploding into a critical darling and trending consistently, as fans drummed up support for awards acclaim to follow for the actors, crew, and show itself. Like Penguin, Shōgun was first presented as a “limited series”; however, once the show became a big hit, and Emmys entered the discussion, the studios had a pivotal decision to make.

Being a limited series left Shōgun facing the actual limitation of only qualifying in the smaller range of Emmys categories set aside for limited series; Disney and FX were hoping for the series to be a much larger Emmys darling, which could only happen if it was an ongoing series. Despite Shōgun being based on a single novel by author James Clavell, FX announced (before the Emmys) that Shōgun would be returning for Seasons 2 and 3, with series star and executive producer Hiroyuki Sanada already signed on to return as Lord Yoshii Toranaga. That change in show format worked as masterfully as one of Toranaga political schemes: Shōgun walked away as a big winner at the 2024 Emmy Awards, with 18 nominations, resulting in a win of four Emmys at the Primetime Awards (including the biggest categories of “Oustanding Drama Series,” Outstanding Lead Actor in A Drama Series” (Sanada), “Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series” (Anna Sawai), and “Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series”), as well as fourteen additional award wins at the Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards (in major production and technical categories).

It seems that the Shōgun just blazed the kind of path that The Penguin should follow. It’s looking like DC Studios and HBO (as well as HBO’s Max streaming platform) finally have their first piece of prestige-level comic book TV content since HBO’s Watchmen. Watchmen stuck to its guns as being a limited series – and cleaned up in both the major categories for limited series and the creative ones, as the 2020 Emmys. HBO knows better than anyone what the gap is between the perception of limited series wins and major category wins; there’s also the fact that Farrell’s Penguin is already part of an ongoing story with The Batman: Part II on the way.

Keeping The Penguin set as a single-season limited series seems like the kind of wasted opportunity for greater glory that Penguin himself would be furious about. There’s still skepticism about whether we’ll see Shōgun push forward into additional seasons, or if the cast and crew fade away into new projects towing their Emmy wins, while those promised new seasons fade into development limbo. DC and Warner Bros. are in an even better position to “tease” another season of Penguin early next year, run an Emmys campaign in all the major categories, and later revise those plans under the excuse of The Batman 2 or larger The Batman Universe changing course. It’s the kind of hustle Oz Cobb would run, and a power move fans would (enthusiastically) support.

The Penguin airs new episodes Sunday nights on HBO and streams on Max.

The post Will The Penguin Get Season 2? Why The Series’ Emmys Hopes May Depend On It appeared first on ComicBook.com.

We’re almost halfway through the first season of The Penguin, HBO’s buzzy new series inspired by the lore of the DC Universe. The live-action series continues the story of Oz Cobb (Colin Farrell), who made his debut as a standout villain during 2022’s The Batman. The series’ role as a bridge between The Batman and 2026’s The Batman Part II has allowed for some fascinating franchise connections, ranging from massive plot points to smaller ties. The latest episode of the season was no exception, delivering plenty of surprises — including the live-action introduction of a character best known for playing a prominent role in the beloved Batman: The Animated Series. Spoilers for Episode 4 of The Penguin, “Cent’anni”, lurk below! Only look if you want to know!

The majority of “Cent’anni” consists of a flashback sequence to the origin story of Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti), explaining the tragic and unexpected circumstances that led to her being institutionalized in Arkham Asylum. More specifically, Sofia was framed for the string of murders committed by a serial killer known as “The Hangman”, who strangled a seemingly-random array of single women across Gotham City. Prior to Sofia being framed and incarcerated, she was actually approached by a Gotham Gazette journalist with evidence that the murders were being carried out by her father, Carmine Falcone (Mark Strong). The journalist in question was named Summer Gleeson (Nadine Malouf) — who very quickly becomes the next victim of “The Hangman.” While Summer’s role in the episode is relatively brief, it does continue a unique history for the DC character.

Who Is DC’s Summer Gleeson?

Created by Paul Dini and Bruce Timm, Summer Gleeson first made her debut in the 1992 Batman: The Animated Series episode “Heart of Ice.” Voiced by Mari Devon, Summer is initially introduced as a high-profile journalist who is set to give a humanitarian award to businessman Ferris Boyle. After a fight between Batman and Mister Freeze interrupted the event, Batman presented Summer with evidence of Boyle’s corruption. Summer then played a significant role in a number of Batman: The Animated Series episodes, regularly being targeted and kidnapped by members of Batman’s rogues gallery.

Summer subsequently carried over into the pages of DC’s comics, making her debut in 2002’s Batman: The Animated Series tie-in series Batman: Gotham Knights #33. While she has yet to make her debut in the main DC continuity, she most recently had minor roles in the Black Label series Harleen, and in Batman ’89, which spins off the lore of Tim Burton’s Batman moves.

What Is The Penguin About?

The Penguin is the next chapter in The Batman saga from Matt Reeves.The series stars Colin Farrell as Oz Cobb, Cristin Milioti as Sofia Falcone, Rhenzy Feliz as Victor Aguilar, Michael Kelly as Johnny Viti, Shohreh Aghdashloo as Nadia Maroni, Deirdre O’Connell as Francis Cobb, Clancy Brown as Salvatore Maroni, James Madio as Milos Grapa, Scott Cohen as Luca Falcone, Michael Zegen as Alberto Falcone, Carmen Ejogo as Eve Karlo, and Theo Rossi as Dr. Julian Rush.

New episodes of The Penguin premiere on both HBO and Max every Sunday night.

The post The Penguin Introduces a Classic Batman: The Animated Series Character to The Batman Universe appeared first on ComicBook.com.

Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Penguin episode 4, “Cent’anni.” “We work for him,” corrupt Gotham City cop William Kenzie (Peter McDonald) says in 2022’s The Batman movie. “Everybody does.” The mustachioed detective is referring to crime boss Carmine Falcone (John Turturro) — the true Hangman killer who strangled Iceberg Lounge waitress Annika Kosolov (Hana Hrzic) and had Kenzie cover up the missing girl’s death while moonlighting as a bouncer for Penguin’s (Colin Farrell) 44 Below. When he’s investigated by Batman (Robert Pattinson) and a vengeful Catwoman (Zoë Kravitz), the dirty narcotics detective lets the cat out of the bag about Falcone ratting out the Maroni Drops operation.

Kenzie tells Batman and Lieutenant Jim Gordon (Jeffrey Wright) about the corruption within the Thomas Wayne-founded Renewal Fund, the charitable fund that turned into a laundering operation after the deaths of the Waynes. Falcone orchestrated a play to take down his rival, Sal Maroni (Clancy Brown), who is incarcerated in Blackgate Penitentiary by the time of The Penguin.

Sunday’s “Cent’anni” episode takes place 10 years earlier, when Oz tips off Carmine (a recast Mark Strong) about his daughter Sofia’s (Cristin Milioti) clandestine meeting with Gotham Gazette reporter Summer Gleeson (Nadine Malouf). Carmine tells Sofia that he “spoke to Kenzie,” who informed him that Gleeson is working with the police on an open investigation into the murder of “some hooker at the club.”

Peter McDonald as Kenzie in The Penguin (left) and The Batman (right).

Later, when Oz drives Sofia home, she’s arrested by Kenzie and charged with the murders of Summer Gleeson, Yolanda Jones, Taylor Montgomery, and Nancy Hoffman — victims of her father. Carmine implicates Sofia as the serial killer behind the “Hangman killings” and has her institutionalized at Arkham State Hospital, where chief psychiatrist Dr. Ventris (T. Ryder Smith) — a nod to the little-known Batman villain Floyd Ventris, a.k.a. the reflection-obsessed Mirror Man — claims she’s unfit to stand trial.

Carmine has the Family — including Sofia’s uncle, Luca Falcone (Scott Cohen), her cousin Carla (Aleksa Palladino), and Carla’s brother Johnny Viti (Michael Kelly) — sign affidavits falsely claiming that she has a history of mental illness, so Sofia spends the next decade locked away in Arkham alongside lunatics like Magpie (Marié Botha).

In the present, following Falcone’s death at the hands of the Riddler (Paul Dano) in The Batman, Oz makes a power grab against the acting heads of the Maroni and Falcone crime Families: Nadia Maroni (Shohreh Aghdashloo) and Sofia Falcone, who takes her father’s place as the head of the Falcone Family.

New episodes of The Penguin premiere Sundays on HBO and Max.

The post The Batman Character Cameos in The Penguin Episode 4 appeared first on ComicBook.com.

We’re officially halfway through the first season of The Penguin, HBO’s no-holds-barred spinoff to 2022’s The Batman. In addition to continuing the story of its titular character, Oz Cobb / The Penguin (Colin Farrell), The Penguin has folded in a wide array of DC characters as allies, adversaries, or something in between. One of the biggest fan favorites thus far has been Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti), whose return to society after years of being kept in Arkham Asylum has provided an interesting foil to Oz. In the series’ most recent episode, The Penguin finally shed light on what forced Sofia to Arkham Asylum, and the answer was both unexpected and truly heartbreaking. Spoilers for Episode 4 of The Penguin, “Cent’anni”, lurk below! Only look if you want to know!

The majority of “Cent’anni” is set within a flashback prior to the events of the series, as well as The Batman. In this time period, we are able to see the early days of Oz and Sofia’s friendship, as she galavants around Gotham as a spoiled heiress, and he accompanies her as her driver. Rumors of a serial killer known as “The Hangman”, who strangles a seemingly-random array of lonely women to death, begin to surface around Gotham City. A journalist named Summer Gleeson brings one theory directly to Sofia — that her father, Carmine Falcone (Mark Strong), is secretly operating as The Hangman. Carmine confronts Sofia about this investigation directly, but before anything else can happen, he arranges to have her arrested and framed for The Hangman’s murders… including his newest victim, Summer.

Despite Sofia’s insistence that she did not commit any of the murders, Gotham’s corrupt legal system continues to frame her, citing scattered testimony about violent tendencies she might have had as a child. She tries to maintain her innocence even as she is thrown into the brutality of Arkham Asylum, where she is mandated to spend at least six months prior to her trial. The conditions at the asylum, as well as mental and physical abuse at the hands of its corrupt doctors, eventually pushes Sofia towards a violent tendency anyway. She is repeatedly given electroshock therapy and, when her trial is thrown out by a judge, the prospect of staying in Arkham permanently leads her to snap. She brutally kills her next door cellmate, Magpie, and fully embraces the label that Gotham has publicly given her.

How Does The Penguin‘s Sofia Falcone Origin Story Differ From the Comics?

This is a major subversion from Sofia’s standing in the pages of DC’s comics, particularly in Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale’s 1999 limited series Batman: Dark Victory. In it, Sofia is revealed to legitimately be The Hangman, who deliberately kills members of the Gotham City Police Department with connections to Harvey Dent / Two-Face. Sofia was able to keep up this ruse by faking paralysis in a wheelchair and a neck brace, but is eventually found out and shot to death by Two-Face anyway.

Despite these differences, The Penguin‘s take on Sofia’s backstory is unbelievably effective and poignant. Being framed by Carmine for the murders that he really committed adds a tragic layer, both to her arc with the Falcone family (as evident by the ending of “Cent’anni”), and in the overall corruption that her father had in the events of The Batman. The fact that she was mistreated enough to go down a violent path anyway is doubly heartbreaking — and sets her up as a major force to be reckoned with in the remaining episodes of The Penguin.

What Is The Penguin About?

The Penguin is the next chapter in The Batman saga from Matt Reeves.The series stars Colin Farrell as Oz Cobb, Cristin Milioti as Sofia Falcone, Rhenzy Feliz as Victor Aguilar, Michael Kelly as Johnny Viti, Shohreh Aghdashloo as Nadia Maroni, Deirdre O’Connell as Francis Cobb, Clancy Brown as Salvatore Maroni, James Madio as Milos Grapa, Scott Cohen as Luca Falcone, Michael Zegen as Alberto Falcone, Carmen Ejogo as Eve Karlo, and Theo Rossi as Dr. Julian Rush.

New episodes of The Penguin premiere on both HBO and Max every Sunday night.

The post The Penguin Reveals the Dark Backstory of Why Sofia Falcone Went to Arkham Asylum appeared first on ComicBook.com.

The Penguin Episode 4 “Cent’Anni” just hit viewers with a game-changing twist, in one of The Batman spinoff show’s darkest moments yet. All season long The Penguin has been building the tension between members of the Falcone family and/or crime organization, as they compete to claim leadership after Carmine Falcone’s death. While Sofia Falcone’s (Cristin Milioti) focus has been on Oz Cobb/Penguin (Colin Farrell), her own family finally proved to be just as big of a threat to her future – and something had to be done about it.

(MAJOR SPOILERS)

The Penguin Episode 4 spends a lot of time revealing the backstory of Sofia’s time in Arkham Asylum. It’s revealed that her father, Carmine Falcone (Mark Strong taking over the role from The Batman actor John Turturro), was the Hangman Killer who strangled dozens of women over the years (including Selina Kyle’s mom). When Gotham reporter Summer Gleeson began approaching Sofia about Carmine’s possible crimes as The Hangman, it triggered memories of Sofia’s mother’s death, and the scratches on Carmine’s face the night she was found hanging in their home. Oz snitches to Carmine about Sofia’s meetings with Gleeson; to keep himself in the clear, Carmine kills the reporter and frames Sofia as The Hangman – with her own family writing damning statements as character witnesses against her.

Things come full circle for Sofia when her uncle Luca (Scott Cohen) and underboss Johnny Viti (Michael Kelly) lay down the ultimatum that Sofia leave town, after her partnership with Oz and goes sideways, igniting a whole new round of conflict with the Maroni’s. Sofia plays coy, attending a family dinner in seeming support of her uncle, before she gives a speech about how her family (except for her brother Alberto) betrayed her – the only truly innocent one in the group. Sofia concedes that she doesn’t belong in the family and pledges that she’s starting a new life, ending the meal in a solemn toast.

Well, Sofia Falcone’s ideas of catharsis and rebirth have pretty dark and twisted meanings. That night, as her family sleeps, Sofia lures her niece Gia out for a sleepover in the greenhouse with the promise of the chocolate cake she was denied earlier. When Gia is sleeping, Sofia reroutes natural gas line for the mansion into the air vents, poisoning the air in the entire house, and killing off Luca, his wife Tina (Tess Soltau), cousin Carla (Aleksa Palladino), and a dozen Falcone soldiers. The only survivor is Johnny Viti – and only because Sofia left the window to his bedroom cracked open, by design. Viti wakes to his new nightmare to find Sofia holding him at gunpoint, demanding a parle.

Sofia Falcone has officially made her power move as the Queenpin of Gotham – and Penguin just got a whole lot more to worry about, as the powers of the underworld could quickly consolidate against him.

The Penguin airs new episodes Sunday Nights on HBO.

The post The Penguin Shocks With Several Major Deaths in Episode 4 appeared first on ComicBook.com.

The Penguin Episode 4 “Cent’Anni” finally revealed the dark backstory of Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti) and the events that led to her being committed to Arkham Asylum for ten years. While getting that pivotal piece of backstory, we also got a major connective thread to the events of The Batman, and how much darkness has surrounded the Falcone family all these years.

WARNING: SPOILERS FOLLOW!

The backstory of Sofia’s fall from grace centered around the pivotal moment when a Gotham City reporter named Summer Gleeson approached her with a damning theory: that Carmine Falcone is a serial murderer who has strangled dozens of women for decades – including Sofia’s mother. Even though she rejects Gleeson’s attempt to recruit her as a source, a seed of doubt starts to sprout in Sofia’s mind – something that her driver, Oz Cobb/Penguin (Colin Farrell) notices, and uses to his advantage.

When Oz told Carmine (Mark Strong) about Sofia’s wavering thoughts, it forced a confrontation between Sofia and her father – one where Carmine’s mask finally dropped for a second, and it was clear that he was, indeed, The Hangman. As retaliation for being seen, Carmine lashed out, murdering Summer Gleeson and framing Sofia for her murder and all the Hangman killings. Sofia was sent to Arkham and kept there, while Carmine was free to go on running the underworld and killing women.

The Penguin’s Hangman Killer Reveal Is a Big Deal For The Batman’s Story

One of the most pivotal subplots of Matt Reeves’ The Batman is the story of Selina Kyle (Zoe Kravitz) and her undercover operation within Carmine Falcone’s organization. Selina worked at the Iceberg Lounge in an attempt to gather intel on her father’s operations so that she could rob him – while also planning to kill him for the murders of her mother, Maria Kyle, and friend/roommate Annika Kosolov. Batman ultimately stops Sellina before she crosses the line of murdering Carmine – only for The Riddler to finally assassinate the mob boss.

The Penguin Episode 4 ties a connective thread to The Batman by revealing the true depravity of Carmine Falcone when it comes to women. He strangled the mothers of two of his daughters (that we know of), and sacrificed his favorite child and would-be successor (Sofia) as the patsy for those crimes. Carmine’s line of killings left both Sofia Falcone and Selina Kyle broken in deep ways that turned them into the brutal and cold women they became. It also drives home the horror that “The Hangman’s” final victim, Annika, was another person close to Selina.

Will The Daughters of Carmine Falcone Unite?

Selina leaves Gotham at the end of The Batman, but it seems inevitable that she will be one of few who truly understands that Sofia is not the real Hangman Killer. Together, Sofia and Catwoman would be a mix of old-school organized crime and new costumed villains that both Batman and Penguin have to worry about, by the time The Batman 2 arrives.

The Penguin airs Sunday nights on HBO and streams on Max.

The post The Penguin Makes A Dark Connection to The Batman With “The Hangman” Killer Reveal appeared first on ComicBook.com.

HBO’s hit DC series The Penguin is all about the villains lurking in Gotham City’s underbelly. Penguin (Colin Farrell) and Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti) have lead the story of warring crime families and a city largely closed off from the rest of the world. While those two are the biggest figures in the show’s plot, they’re far from the only Batman villains to appear on The Penguin. Sunday night’s fourth episode brought another, very surprising villain to life. WARNING: This article contains spoilers from the latest episode of The Penguin! Continue reading at your own risk…

The villain in question is Magpie, who plays a key role in Sofia Falcone’s tragic backstory. The majority of The Penguin‘s fourth episode is told in flashbacks, revealing that Sofia was sent to Arkham Asylum by her father when she posed a threat to his operations. Everything about her “psychotic break” and her murders as the Hangman was fabricated as part of the story to silence and discredit her. It’s during her time in Arkham that fans are introduced to The Penguin‘s version of Magpie, who is played by Marié Botha.

In this version of the Gotham City story, Magpie is a fellow inmate of Sofia’s while she’s locked away at Arkham. Unfortunately for Magpie, she crosses paths with Sofia at a really terrible time. The lies from her family and the experiments being done at Arkham — all while knowing she is completely innocent — do start to take their toll on Sofia after a while.

In the middle of the Arkham cafeteria, Sofia brutally murders Magpie, cutting her time on The Penguin incredibly short. The time she’s on-screen, however, should be a bright spot to fans of the character. From the look to her quirks, Botha and the team on The Penguin created a very faithful live-action version of Magpie.

Of course, this take on Magpie is far from the first time the character has appeared in live-action. This is actually Magpie’s third different live-action adaptation in the last decade, all of which have come on television. Rachel Matthews played Magpie in three episodes of The CW’s Batwoman series, which came on the heels of Sarah Schenkkan portraying the character in one episode of the final season of Gotham.

The character was created by John Byrne in 1986, first appearing in The Man of Steel #3. Unfortunately, due to the events of this week’s episode of The Penguin, we likely won’t be seeing any more from Magpie moving forward.

The main goal of Magpie in The Penguin was to further the story of Sofia Falcone. Ahead of the season, showrunner Lauren LeFranc talked about how the series planned to utilize Sofia’s tragic backstory.

“I thought about Rosemary Kennedy, the lost Kennedy daughter, who they put away in an asylum,” LeFranc explained. “It’s unclear how mentally ill she was or if she just did things that they felt were inappropriate and made the Kennedys look bad. Eventually, she got a lobotomy. It’s a very tragic story, but I thought about that about Carmine and Sofia. What if she came from Arkham State Hospital? Did she deserve to go to Arkham?”

The post The Penguin Episode 4 Introduces a Surprising DC Villain appeared first on ComicBook.com.

In the first episode of HBO’s The Penguin, you may have noticed something strange about the look of Carmine Falcone when a photo of him was shown on a news broadcast. The organized crime boss, who was killed in The Batman, was only briefly featured on-screen in The Penguin‘s premiere, but it was enough time for fans to see that it wasn’t John Turturro’s face on the news. The actor who played Carmine in The Batman was replaced and Sunday night’s new episode of the show finally gave the new-look Carmine a significant amount of time in the spotlight.

Even though Carmine Falcone died weeks prior to the events of The Penguin, his legacy looms large over the series, as much of it has to do with his remaining crime family. The fourth episode, which aired Sunday night, spent a ton of time telling the backstory of Sofia Falcone, so Carmine’s participation was required.

With Turturro not returning to play Carmine, the role went to fan-favorite actor Mark Strong. If your a comic fan, you probably remember him from his role as Merlin in the Kingsman movies, his turn as Dr. Sivana in Shazam!, or his portrayal of Sinestro in Green Lantern.

Strong took over the role of Carmine Falcone from John Turturro, who had some scheduling conflicts that kept him from working on The Penguin.

“Well, practically, John was just unavailable to us,” The Penguin show runner Lauren LeFrance told IGN. “He had scheduling conflicts, and we couldn’t make it work, but honestly I’m so thrilled that we brought Mark Strong on. I think he’s really good. Even though, maybe in the beginning when you first meet him, you might think, ‘Oh, obviously I’m so used to John Turturro,’ but I feel like the gravitas brings, it’s different. It’s very specific, and I hope, by the end of that episode, you’re just thinking, ‘That’s Carmine Falcone,’ and you’re engaged in what Mark brings to it.”

The two actors don’t exactly look alike, but it doesn’t matter too much for a supporting character who’s already dead within the continuity of Matt Reeves’ Batman universe. What’s important is that Strong is able to bring the chilling gravitas required to make Carmine Falcone feel like one of the most feared individuals in Gotham City, and boy does he have more than enough of that to go around.

In all honesty — no disrespect to John Turturro at all — Strong might actually be an even better fit for the character. He’s got a menacing side he can turn on that few others can match.

There might not be any more opportunities for Carmine Falcone to pop up in any future projects set within this version of Gotham City, but it would be hard to not make Strong the first call if the character is ever needed again.

The post The Penguin Recasts A Major Character From The Batman – Who Plays The New Carmine Falcone? appeared first on ComicBook.com.

The ComicBook Nation crew reviews the new cult-horror flick Terrifier 3, and discuss the pivotal new Marvel Cinematic Universe character revealed in Agatha All Along’s new episode! 

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PLUS: DC’s Absolute Batman launches its debut issue; the DC Universe has cast John Stewart/Green Lantern; James Wan’s mysterious new show Teacup has dropped and the Batman (1989) Universe will continue!

Terrifier 3 Review – Is it Really That Grotesque?

ComicBook Nation’s Evan Valentine went out and saw Terrifier 3 and had this to say about it:

Terrifier 3 is now in theaters and Art The Clown has given horror junkies his bloodiest, goriest, and downright most jaw-dropping misadventure yet. While the third entry of the series might not be as long in runtime as Part 2, it somehow crammed in far more grotesque moments as the killer clown attempts to share his version of the holiday season.

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The Penguin premiered its third episode this weekend, furthering the mythos of The Batman’s Oz Cobb (Colin Farrell) in some clever and unexpected ways. In the process, the series’ latest episode had an unexpected tie to the previous DC Extended Universe canon. Spoilers for Episode 3 of The Penguin lurk below! Only look if you want to know!

Episode 3 of The Penguin introduces the leader of the Tong crime family (played by François Chau), who Oz Cobb and Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti) are both trying to impress with their new street drug, Bliss. Chau’s supporting role in this episode of The Penguin has a weird symmetry to the previous DCEU, as he also portrayed a crime boss in the 2020 movie Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn). In that film, Chau portrayed Mr. Keo, a leader of Gotham’s Chinese triad who Roman Sionis / Black Mask (Ewan McGregor) is attempting to ally himself with. When the two become at odds, Roman and his sidekick Victor Zsasz (Chris Messina) kidnap Keo and his family at the Gotham docks and cut their faces off.

Will Batman Appear in The Penguin?

While speaking to SFX Magazine prior to the show’s debut, The Penguin showrunner Lauren LeFranc and The Batman director Matt Reeves confirmed that Robert Pattinson’s Bruce Wayne / Batman will not make any sort of cameo appearance in the series.

“I understand why people’s desire would be to have Batman, or to think that unless Batman’s in a show or a film then it doesn’t have the same punch,” LeFranc explained. “To me I think it packs a different punch. Matt’s films are through the lens of the Batman, so you’re high up, looking down on the city. It’s a different perspective. With Oz, you’re in the city streets, you’re in the grit and the muck and the grime. He’s looking up, wanting to claw his way to the top. So it’s a different experience. I think Gotham is an interesting enough city that it deserves to have more doors unlocked within it, and for us to walk through those and see what we think.”  

“I don’t feel like it’s missing something fundamental,” Reeves echoed. “I feel like it’s an extension of what is fundamentally there. We know this is the world of Batman. You’re going down a different alley. So the spectre of Batman is there. The spectre of the Riddler is there. The spectre of everything that happens in the last movie is there. It informs it. And it’s exactly where we begin.”

What Is The Penguin About?

The Penguin is the next chapter in The Batman saga from Matt Reeves.The series stars Colin Farrell as Oz Cobb, Cristin Milioti as Sofia Falcone, Rhenzy Feliz as Victor Aguilar, Michael Kelly as Johnny Viti, Shohreh Aghdashloo as Nadia Maroni, Deirdre O’Connell as Francis Cobb, Clancy Brown as Salvatore Maroni, James Madio as Milos Grapa, Scott Cohen as Luca Falcone, Michael Zegen as Alberto Falcone, Carmen Ejogo as Eve Karlo, and Theo Rossi as Dr. Julian Rush.

New episodes of The Penguin premiere on both HBO and Max every Sunday night.

The post The Penguin Episode 3 Has a Weird DCEU Connection appeared first on ComicBook.com.

The Penguin Episode 3 “Bliss” finally revealed the new drug that Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti) and her brother Alberto (Michael Zegen) were planning to unleash on the streets of Gotham City: Bliss. It was this new narcotic that would’ve allowed the Falcone kids to up-end their father’s hold on the drug “Drops,” with drug profits that they alone would control. Penguin (Colin Farrell) ruined that plan when he impulsively killed Alberto (Episode 1) – but after convincing Sofia that the killer was a traitor from her own camp (Episode 2), Oz actually got her to bring him in on the new venture.

WARNING: SPOILERS FOLLOW!!!

In The Penguin Episode 3, Sofia takes Oz to the secret warehouse where she is manufacturing the new drug, Bliss. Oz immediately notices deliveries coming into the facility – bags marked with the logo of Arkham State Hospital – revealing that it was Sofia who actually came up with the scheme for this new drug, during her years there. Inside the warehouse, Sofia also reveals that her new drug is made from a very rare and fragile mushroom, which has blood-red spores on top of it. These “Bleeding-Tooth” fungi spores produce a euphoric effect (hence Oz giving it the name, “Bliss”), which Sofia plans to sell as the ultimate party drug.

Later on in the episode, we see Penguin and his crew make their first play, selling Bliss to an entire club of ravers. The drug has the desired effect, with partygoers left in a literal state of bliss from taking the substance, allowing them to not only sell out of their supply but also convince a Triad gang leader to go into business with them. The drug game in Gotham has officially changed.

Is The Penguin Introducing Poison Ivy to The Batman Universe? 

There are several immediate questions about Bliss that Batman fans should consider. The biggest one is who knew about the euphoric effects of those mushrooms, and how to cultivate it into a consumable drug to pacify patients? 

In DC lore Poison Ivy’s alter-ego is “Dr. Pamela Isley,” a PhD botanist working in Gotham City. After suffering some brutal personal tragedy (depending on the version of the story) Isley is transformed into a being who can control plant life – but obviously, that superpowered version one be what we get in The Batman Universe. However, a version of Ivy who offers a naturalistic alternative to the pharmaceutical industry (and maybe pays the price?) seems much more likely. 

Trailers for The Penguin have teased flashback scenes of Sofia Falcone while at Arkham – could we be in for a cameo from Dr. Pam Isley? Establishing who helped Sofia learn about the mushrooms and develop the Bliss drug seems like necessary backstory – as well as a perfect pathway to getting a version of Poison Ivy that is more in line with Matt Reeves’ Batman Universe. With Gotham having been flooded by The Riddler, environmental issues would logically be at the forefront of Gotham City’s concerns – and a perfect reason for an environmental terrorist to strike. 

Bliss could just be one hand of Poison Ivy’s offerings; the other hand could hold pestilence and/or death, in the form of other rare plants. 

The Penguin airs on Sunday nights on HBO and streaming on Max. 

The post Did The Penguin Just Tease Batman Villain Poison Ivy? appeared first on ComicBook.com.

The Penguin has made a breakout star of Cristin Milioti’s Sofia Falcone, who has gotten an exciting re-invention within The Batman Universe Matt Reeves is building. In just two episodes Milioti has generated a dedicated fan base – with trailers for The Penguin teasing even bigger, darker, moments of her performance to come. However, like most TV shows or movies telling stories about gangsters, criminals, or other dangerous people, some fans may be taking things the wrong way. 

Case in point: The Batman’s official Twitter account (currently in support of The Penguin) finally had to step in and address the level of thirst there is for Sofia Falcone being shared online. When one Twitter user posted a picture of Milioti as Sofia with the caption “I can fix her,” The Penguin team dropped the perfect response:

“Good luck with that.” 

So far, Sofia Falcone has proven to be as cunning, ruthless, and unstable in temperament as her father, Carmine Falcone. We know that Carmine had Sofia committed to Arkham State Hospital for a decade and that Oz Cobb/Penguin (Colin Farrell) had a hand in putting her there. Episode 2’s introduction of Dr. Juilan Rush (Theo Rossi) also revealed that underneath her cold, calculating demeanor, Sofia has a volcanic level of rage and trauma she’s sitting on. In fact, Sofia has one body under her belt and another body dropped at her behest over two episodes, bringing her to a one-body-per-episode average so far. If that rate continues, Sofia Falcone will but Tony Soprano and other onscreen mobsters to shame. 

There’s always a level of fascination (and infatuation) with mobsters, gangsters, killers, and other characters operating in the shadowy side of life. The Sopranos creator David Chase and late Tony Soprano actor James Gandolfini were both candid in expressing their concerns about Tony being perceived in any kind of heroic light when the show sought to expose his psychotic and immoral nature. Sofia Falcone is walking a much finer line as a character – violent, yes (she is “The Hangman” killer), but an outcast even within a family of vipers, with all indication that she’s also a victim of some gross circumstance that put her in Arkham. 

That’s all to say: Sofia Falcone is not the lady DC fans want to put on the mantle of “Relationship goals.” It’ll only lead to toxicity and heartbreak. 

As for the marketing team behind The Penguin: well played. They’re working at Wendy’s levels of social media trolling. 

The Penguin airs new episodes Sunday nights on HBO, and streams on Max. 

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Thanks to the current release of HBO’s The Penguin, Colin Farrell has been back on our television screens — and it looks like he isn’t leaving anytime soon. On Wednesday, it was announced that Apple TV+ has renewed Sugar for a forthcoming second season. The series, which stars Farrell as Detective John Sugar, premiered its first season earlier this year to great critical acclaim.

“Since its premiere, audiences have been gripped by the mysteries and twists of ‘Sugar,’ with an incredible performance by Colin Farrell at the center,” Matt Cherniss, head of programming for Apple TV+, echoed. “Colin, Simon Kinberg, Audrey Chon and the entire team behind this series have brilliantly blended genres to create a compelling, can’t-miss series that keeps viewers guessing, and we cannot wait to see where Detective John Sugar finds himself in season two.”

What Is Sugar About?

Sugar follows John Sugar, a private investigator recruited by a wealthy movie producer to investigate the disappearance of his granddaughter. In addition to Farrell, Season 1 of the series starred Kirby, Amy Ryan, Dennis Boutsikaris, Nate Corddry, Alex Hernandez, and James Cromwell.

“It has been incredibly exciting to see audiences around the world embrace Sugar, and we are thrilled to return for a second season,” executive producers Audrey Chon and Simon Kinberg said in a statement. “We’re so grateful to our partners at Apple for their support, our showrunner Sam Catlin, the brilliant Colin Farrell, and of course, our viewers. We can’t wait to get John Sugar back on the case.”

What Will Sugar Season 2 Be About?

According to Apple TV+, season two of Sugar will see Sugar find himself back in Los Angeles taking on another missing person’s case, as he continues to look for answers surrounding his missing sister. As fans who have seen the first season of the series know, that will surely build upon the surprising twist that Sugar is secretly a space alien.

“I think it would be an opportunity to continue Sugar to figure out where he fits into planet Earth because he was here on a mission in season 1 and he was part of a community of people like him in season 1,” Kinberg told Den of Geek in a recent interview. “Now he does not have a stated mission from his community, he has the mystery of wanting to figure out his family. He does not have a mystery to solve nor a larger question about the human species to solve for his own species. The second season would really go from “Who are these people and who are we in relation to them” to something a bit more personal, like “How do I find my place, my home, and my people down here?” While the mystery for him would be more personal and we’d want to find a new mystery for him to solve as a detective, it would be an even more intimate season because he’d really be alone. He’d have no, at least what he thought to be, protectors down here.”

Will The Penguin Get a Season 2?

At the moment, The Penguin has not been renewed for a sophomore season, with many assuming that Farrell will instead reprise his role in 2026’s The Batman Part II and further installments of the saga.

“I don’t know, man,” Farrell said of Season 2 in a recent interview. “Don’t get me wrong — I loved it — but it got in on me a little bit. By the end of it, I was bitching and moaning to anyone who would listen to me that I f—ing wanted it to be finished. I tried to remind them that I had ‘grumpy gratitude.'”

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The Penguin Episode 2 gave viewers their first real taste of what a full-fledged action scene looks like in the show. (SPOILERS!) At the start of the latest episode “Inside Man”, Oz Cobb/Penguin (Colin Farrell)  double-crosses the Falcone mob family by informing their rivals in the Maroni mob when and where to find the drug stockpile the Falcones are trying to relocate to another town.

 Oz gets himself caught up when The Falcone underboss Johnny Viti (Michael Kelly) orders him to ride on the truck that’s getting hit; the Maroni heist goes down and Oz is forced to fight for his life while still keeping his cover with the Falcones. The result is a bloody shootout on the backstreets of Gotham City, which proves that The Penguin will not slouch when it comes to major action set pieces.

Reactions to the Penguin seem to indicate that the violence and action have been impressing viewers (if not shocking them). However, during HBO’s “The Penguin – Inside Episode 2” featurette, Visual Effects Supervisor Johnny Han revealed that the team working on Penguin actually developed a new type of prop gun to use on set – one that could offer the actors the physical interaction they needed, give the directors and VFX teams something convincing to build on, and keep everyone on set safer than the prop guns that used to be used in such sequences: 

“So for ‘FEMA heist’ our team developed these flash guns where they look like regular guns but they have an enormously bright camera flash that could be triggered by the actors so that they could wield it and feel that flash of light as they pull the trigger,” Han explained. “We felt this was a really unique approach to doing gunfire because for safety it helps us not use real guns on set.”

Hollywood’s use of prop guns in film and TV productions once again gained infamy after the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins while filming the western movie Rust in 2021. A prop gun that had supposedly been cleared for use on set actually discharged a live round while actor Alec Baldwin was pointing the weapon down at a camera that Hutchins was holding, while filming a scene. It was the same sort of accident that also claimed the life of actor Brandon Lee while filming The Crow in 1993.  

The legal consequences and public backlash to the Rush shooting re-opened the discourse on using real guns in film and TV productions, with many stunt and VFX teams exploring new possibilities for filming shootouts. That said, there have been criticisms from both performers and fans that using rubber guns and adding muzzle flashes and noise as post-production VFX simply cannot compare to the realism of prop guns and blanks. The team behind The Penguin may be onto something with weighted prop guns that actually produce muzzle flash lighting effects. 

The Penguin is now airing Sunday nights at 9 ET on HBO, and is streaming on Max. 

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Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Penguin episode 2, “Inside Man.” “‘When faced with a seemingly insurmountable problem, your only option is to act swiftly — some might even say, irrationally. Removing the most dangerous elements first… and methodically attacking each subsequent challenge in a separate, deliberate manner.'” 

In Batman: The Long Halloween — the 13-issue comic book by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale that influenced 2022’s The Batman movie — the Dark Knight recites the words of his surgeon father while methodically attacking the costumed rogues assembled to kill the “untouchable” crime lord of Gotham City: Carmine “The Roman” Falcone. Batman is able to subdue Solomon Grundy, the Joker, Poison Ivy, Penguin, Mad Hatter, and Scarecrow, but Falcone is ultimately shot dead by the newly-disfigured “freak” Two-Face.

The series follows the triumvirate of Batman, Captain Jim Gordon, and crusading District Attorney Harvey Dent as they unravel the mystery of Holiday, a serial killer committing murders coinciding with holidays. The Holiday Killer marks the calendar with members of the Falcone Family, starting with The Roman’s nephew, Johnny Viti, on Halloween night; so begins “the long Halloween.” These holiday-themed slayings include Falcone’s bodyguard, Milos Grappa; Falcone’s sister, Carla Viti; and Falcone’s son, Alberto Falcone.

Alberto is the victim in 1997’s Batman: The Long Halloween #4, set on New Year’s Eve. However, Alberto is eventually revealed as Holiday when he assassinates Sal “The Boss” Maroni, Falcone’s chief rival for control of Gotham, after the mob boss hurls acid in Dent’s face. Alberto faked his death and — in another twist — is not the only Holiday killer.

The Penguin‘s “Inside Man” episode pays homage to Alberto’s comic counterpart at Berto’s (Michael Zegen) memorial service, where old footage of her brother on New Year’s sends Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti) out of the room. She then encounters her cousin, Carla (Boardwalk Empire‘s Aleksa Palladino), and issues a warning about her young niece, Gia: “Make sure you keep her protected. A young woman in this Family… it might not end well for her.” 

Like her comic book counterpart, Sofia was a serial killer known as Hangman; but in the comics, it’s Sofia herself who kills Alberto in The Long Halloween sequel series Batman: Dark Victory. In remixing The Long Halloween, it’s Oz Cobb (Colin Farrell) who is taking an almost surgical-like approach to methodically dismantling the Falcones.

One week after the Riddler (Paul Dano)killed Carmine Falcone(John Turturro) and blew up Gotham’s seawall, turningparts of Gothaminto a no man’s land in The Batman,Oz impulsively shoots and kills the heir to the Falcone empire after he mocks his aspirations to be remembered like the gangster Rex Calabrese. 

Oz then implicates the mob boss Sal Maroni (Clancy Brown) in Berto’s death as he makes a move on the Drops drug operation in Gotham, and plans to blackmail underboss Johnny Viti (Michael Kelly) over his affair with the wife of the new Don, Luca Falcone (Scott Cohen). A wrinkle to this plot is a captured Maroni capo who can expose him, so Oz murders Ervad (Fajer Al-Kaisi), abandons his scheme to frame Johnny for Berto’s death, and makes Sofia believe her brother has been avenged when Don Luca guns down alleged rat Callisto (Berto Colon). Finally, Oz forms an alliance with Sofia as she goes to take what is rightfully hers: her father’s place as head of the Family. 

By manipulating the Falcones against the Maronis and eliminating the Family one by one, Oz tells Victor (Rhenzy Feliz): “We’re one step closer to the top.”

New episodes of The Penguin premiere Sundays on HBO and Max.

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The Penguin picks up after the events of The Riddler’s devastation of Gotham in The Batman, and that’s a continuing theme into The Penguin’s second episode. The Riddler’s actions and the harm they caused to the city have some ties to a classic Batman story from the comics, and that story is actually mentioned out loud during the new episode as well. That story is the 1999 event No Man’s Land, though there are some ties to other Batman comic stores that lead into that as well, and here’s how it works its way into the show. Spoilers for The Penguin episode 2 are incoming from here on out.

They Lost Everything

Oz invites some of his crew, including Vic, to his place for a get-together. He also invites Eve Karlo and her girls over, including Rox, and then introduces Vic to Rox before stepping away. Oz heads to his room to look over some of the documents he found in Carmine Falcone’s safe.

After he steps away, Vic and Rox start talking and she asks him where he’s from. Vic says “I’m from Crown Point,” and Rox then talks about her cousin who lived over there and how bad things got after what The Riddler did. Rox says “Yeah my cousin lived over there, she said it’s like a no man’s land now or something. I mean, they lost everything.” That No Man’s Land part probably made a few longtime Batman fans smile, but if you aren’t familiar with that story, don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.

The Cataclysm

To understand No Man’s Land, we first have to take a trip back to 1996. That’s when the storyline known as Contagion is released, sticking Batman and Gotham in the midst of a mutated strain of the Ebola virus called the Apocalypse Virus. This was enacted by the Order of St. Dumas (Azrael’s old crew), and though a cure was found for that strand eventually, it is once again mutated and spreading in the next storyline titled Legacy.

This leads Batman into direct conflict with Ra’s al Ghul, who is then in control of the virus and enacting plans to spread it. Batman and the rest of the Bat Family manage to stop Ra’s and the League of Shadows and find a vaccine for the virus as well, but they aren’t able to stop several suicide bombers from attacking the GCPD headquarters.

 That leads us to 1998 when a Batman storyline called Cataclysm took place. Gotham City hasn’t experienced an earthquake in some time, but that all changes when an earthquake registering 7.6 on the Richter scale hits and absolutely devastates the city and everyone in it. While some buildings built by Wayne still stand, many of the skyscrapers and buildings crumble due to the shock, and then as gas mains explode the fires start to overtake parts of the city.

Alfred almost dies after Wayne Manor collapses and Batman is closed off in the Batcave, unable to get out. He does eventually make it out and various members of the Bat Family come to help once they finally are able to get into the city, but it’s absolute chaos, and over 100,000 people are dead due to the devastation. Combined with the events of Contagion and Legacy, Cataclysm leads the Government to do something drastic with Gotham, and that brings us to 1999.

No Man’s Land

After the earthquake and the previous events in Gotham, the United States cuts Gotham off completely, literally and figuratively. Bridges are destroyed connecting Gotham to other cities, and the military prevents anyone from getting in. Even superheroes like Superman are told to stay out, though in some cases it’s by Batman and not the government. Things get worse when the various villains start fighting for control, each claiming different areas of the city.

Then there’s the fact that Batman tries to help from the outside first, but it doesn’t work, and things have only gotten worse during his time away. No Man’s Land deals with a lot of unexpected alliances being made due to the conditions of the city, and others like The Joker and The Penguin cause chaos either directly or indirectly to make things even worse.

 It’s actually Lex Luthor who ends up helping rebuild the city and mending its relationship to the United States, though as with anything Lex, it’s all the more beneficial for him than anyone else. The storyline officially ended in Batman: Shadow of the Bat #94, though it had a number of tie-ins across all of the Batman titles.

What did you think of No Man’s Land, and would you like to see more elements of that storyline featured in The Batman? You can talk all things comics and DC with me on Threads and Twitter @mattaguilarcb!

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The second episode of The Penguin debuted on HBO and Max on Sunday, and a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it reference may have teased another DC character’s debut. Spoilers for the second episode of The Penguin lurk below! Only look if you want to know! Part of the episode concerns criminal dealings in one of Gotham’s lesser-known neighborhoods, as Oz Cobb (Colin Farrell) tries to steal drugs for the benefit of Salvatore Maroni’s (Clancy Brown) massive drug empire. More specifically, the ordeal takes place in a neighborhood named Robbinsville — a section of the city that has only sporadically factored into the comics and several episodes of Fox’s Gotham television show. 

While the spelling of Robbinsville is named after Batman and Detective Comics comic creator Frank Robbins, the moniker also raises a unique possibility — that it could have a connection to a young Dick Grayson potentially becoming Robin at a later point in The Batman saga. Depending on how the franchise’s creative team might approach introducing the young ward into the life of Bruce Wayne / Batman (Robert Pattinson), it could use the neighborhood of Robbinsville as partial inspiration for the “Robin” code name, depending on Dick’s connection to the city.

Will Dick Grayson Appear in The Batman Part II?

At the moment, there is no confirmation that Dick Grayson will play a role in 2026’s The Batman Part II or other parts of the onscreen saga — but that hasn’t stopped fans from speculating on the topic. 2022’s The Batman already had a prevailing theory that the son of deceased mayor Don Mitchell Jr. would eventually become Robin, after he wore a red ninja costume in the film’s opening scene, and shared a few knowing moments of eye contact with Batman throughout the film.

“Interesting. Um, no,” Reeves told CinemaBlend at the time. “But do you know what? It’s a cool idea. It wasn’t the intention! But actually… why would I say that? Why would I… because it’s a cool idea.” 

What Is The Penguin About?

The Penguin is the next chapter in The Batman saga from Matt Reeves.The series stars Colin Farrell as Oz Cobb, Cristin Milioti as Sofia Falcone, Rhenzy Feliz as Victor Aguilar, Michael Kelly as Johnny Viti, Shohreh Aghdashloo as Nadia Maroni, Deirdre O’Connell as Francis Cobb, Clancy Brown as Salvatore Maroni, James Madio as Milos Grapa, Scott Cohen as Luca Falcone, Michael Zegen as Alberto Falcone, Carmen Ejogo as Eve Karlo, and Theo Rossi as Dr. Julian Rush.

New episodes of The Penguin premiere on both HBO and Max every Sunday night.

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The Penguin Episode 2 “Inside Man” saw Oz Cobb/Penguin (Colin Farrell) go from the frying pan into the fire. After convincing the relentless Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti) that Sal Maroni killed her brother instead of him, Oz found himself having to both re-prove his worth to the Falcones, while also delivering on the promises he made to the Maronis. However, just when it looked like Oz would finally get squeezed between a rock and a hard place, he once again managed to wriggle his way clear. Not only did Oz keep himself in the clear, he actually made an ally of the one person who had the least reason to trust him. 

(WARNING MAJOR SPOILERS FOLLOW!) 

Even with some bloody hiccups, Oz successfully acted as the “inside man” during the Falcones’ attempt to relocate their drops operation, allowing Maroni’s crew to ambush the shipment and hijack the product. Even though Oz came out of the heist clean, Sofia knew that there had to be a rat in the crew, but couldn’t get traction with the new would-be don, her Uncle Luca Falcone (Scott Cohen), or underboss Johnny Viti (Michael Kelly). Sofia took matters into her own hands, bribing a corrupt junkie cop to locate surviving members of the Maroni crew. Instead, Sofia got an injured Maroni goon dumped on the doorstep of her brother’s funeral and tried to get information about the mole out of him. 

Oz and his sidekick Victor (Rhenzy Feliz) scrambled to frame Viti for the betrayal, going so far as to coerce the goon into lying for them. However, when Vic drops the ball, Oz has to pivot to killing the goon and framing Sofia’s main bodyguard as the mole. In the aftermath, Sofia is left feeling like she’s on the outs with the male-dominated family and turns her attention back to what she and her brother Alberto were working on a new drug that will supersede the drops industry. Since she’s short on muscle, Sofia turns to Oz (of all people!) to be her new ally. 

It’s been noted by critics and fans alike that The Penguin is at its best when Colin Farrell and Cristin Milioti are paired onscreen together – and the ending of Episode 2 tees up Episode 3 to be an entire showcase of the actors bantering and playing off one another. While it seems like it will be fun, this team-up comes with the proverbial ‘sword of Damocles’ hanging over it, since Oz and Sofia’s volatile history – plus the fact that he did kill her brother and is sabotaging her family – inevitably need to be revealed. 

The Penguin airs new episodes Sunday nights on HBO and streams on Max. 

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The Penguin Episode 2 introduces us to a new character in the series – one whose name you will NOT find in the pages of DC comic books. Sons of Anarchy and Marvel’s Luke Cage star Theo Rossi makes his debut as Dr. Julian Rush, a doctor/therapist from Arkham State Hospital, who has a connection to Sofia Falcone going back to her time in the asylum. However, fans saw Julian Rush’s introductory scene and immediately became suspicious that, despite the name change, we are seeing the rise of a fan-favorite villain from Batman lore. 

(WARNING: Penguin Spoilers Follow!) 

When we meet Dr. Julian Rush, he’s putting Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti) through a unique form of ‘treatment,’ using three bars of oscillating red light to put Sofia in a trance. Sofia imagines herself back in Arkham, with Rush there guiding her to “Go inside” her imaginary cell. The dream state shifts to Sofia talking to her brother Alberto through prison glass and speakers, until she notices that his pinky finger has been cut off (as it was on his corpse in real life), and the entire scene melts down into a dark nightmare. Sofia sees Alberto get shot from behind by an unknown assailant, sees his actual corpse, and gets stuck in that loop until Rush brings her out of it.

 Sofia is clearly affected, as she’s left in a hysterical state by the exercise; there’s also something off about the level of intimacy Rush displays as he grabs and holds Sofia, using a series of verbal cues to bring her back to reality, and calm her. The scene ends with Rush professing his desire to help Sofia – which she seems nonchalant about. 

Is Penguin’s Julian Rush Really Doctor Hugo Strange? 

The conclusion a lot of Batman fans are jumping to is that “Dr. Julian Rush” will be revealed to be some kind of alias – or outright renaming – of Batman villain Hugo Strange. There’s a fair amount of logic to the theory: Hugo Strange is characterized as being a twisted psychiatrist, at times working at Arkham or some other kind of Gotham hospital or facility; he loves prying dark secrets out of patients through unorthodox, illegal, or even dangerous methods. (He’s also been depicted as a scientist who engineers “Monster Men” – but The Batman Universe probably wouldn’t go in that direction.)

Theo Rossi has played memorable villain roles in his career and would be an interesting and unexpected choice for a Hugo Strange character in The Batman Universe. Then again, director Matt Reeves and co. have been coming from far left field with the franchise’s casting (see: Colin Farrell as Penguin), so maybe it wouldn’t be that surprising at all. We also know that Reeves has made a point of changing the on-the-nose naming of Batman villains, with The Riddler’s Edward Nigma (E. Nigma) name being switched to “Edward Nashton,” and Penguin’s Oswald Cobblepot name getting changed to “Oswald ‘Oz’ Cobb.” A name like “Hugo Strange” presents similar problems – not to mention referring to the character as “Dr. Strange.” That’s all to say: it wouldn’t be crazy to get Hugo Strange by a different name, in this particular universe. 

The Penguin airs on Sunday nights on HBO, and streams on Max. 

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DC’s The Penguin TV series has premiered on HBO and continues the story of Gotham City that began in The Batman (2022) movie. As we’ve stated in our reviews and podcasts of The Penguin, this spinoff series highlights corners of Gotham, its underworld history, and mob world characters who didn’t get as much time in the spotlight during The Batman. With Colin Farrell’s Penguin now center stage, the issue of the name change from “Oswald Cobblepot” to “Oswald ‘Oz’ Cobb” has become much more prominent within the DC fandom. 

The Penguin Director Explains Why Oz’s Name Was Changed 

The Penguin director and executive producer Craig Zobel has said that the name change was part of Matt Reeves’ overall vision for The Batman Universe being populated with villains that have ‘more realistic’ names. 

“We all kind of felt Cobblepot wasn’t a real person’s name. Like how The Riddler was “Edward Nigma – E. Nigma?” It was kind of a silly name back in the day – and that was ok for comic books for kids,” Zobel told Hollywood Handle. “In some ways, I think the goal was trying to find a more grounded and rooted name. I also know that’s upset some fans and I hope they can forgive us and still like the show. I think it’s not a huge sin [laughs].”

The tweets about Penguin are heavy with debate about the name change – take this one for example: “It’s so weird to change Penguin’s name to Oswald Cobb. Sure Cobbelpot is a bit silly, but plenty of people have silly names in real life. It just lacks self awareness, I mean the guys street name is Penguin, is that realistic?”

Is Oz Cobb’s Name An Easter Egg For The Batman 2? 

There’s a popular theory floating around that Matt Reeves didn’t just land on the name “Oz Cobb” randomly. In DC’s Batman comic book lore, there is a William Cobb from Gotham, who became one of the elite assassins (or “Talons”) of the clandestine Court of Owls. 

William Cobb was a middle-class boy who tried to be a street performer to help earn money for his family by juggling and ended up at Haly’s Circus, which was also a recruiting ground for the Court of Owls to find new Talons. William was recruited and trained as a Talon, successfully assassinating scores of targets; when his illicit love affair with the daughter of one of Gotham’s wealthy elitist families fell apart, he stole their baby and delivered it to the circus master, who renamed the baby “Grayson” – making William Cobb the ancestor of Dick Grayson/Robin/Nightwing. 

Like The Penguin’s twisted homage to the Batman and Robin partnership, there’s speculation that The Batman 2 will flip the Cobb bloodline to being Oz’s instead of Dick’s. The Court of Owls is still heavily speculated for the sequel film, based on the idea that Gotham’s flooding would be an event upsets the Illuminati-style group’s long-term schemes and machinations – and/or exposes their ‘city within the city’ to Batman and other players (Penguin). Secrets and information are some fo the Court’s most powerful weapons to maintain control – and when they fail, there are the Talons to do some killing for them. 

DC lore has had “Oswald Cobblepot” related to Gotham’s oldest and most powerful families in certain tellings; The Batman Universe could really flip things on their head if Oz Cobb discovers, at some point, that his deep-seated belief that he deserves more and should be in a higher place in Gotham’s power hierarchy turns out to be more than a psychotic delusion of grandeur. 

Craig Zobel couldn’t completely dismiss the theory of Penguin’s name change intentionally setting up the Court of Owls: “I can’t 100% answer that, because I don’t know everything in Matt Reeves’ mind.” So perhaps there is a longer game at play here…

Based on everything we saw in The Penguin’s premiere episode, The Batman Universe definitely has its long game on point. 

The Penguin is now streaming on Max and airing Sunday nights at 9pm ET on HBO. 

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The early success of The Penguin may lead to even more spinoffs in The Batman Universe. Last week saw the release of The Penguin, with Colin Farrell reprising his role as Oz Cobb from 2022’s The Batman. There’s already a sequel to The Batman in development, but something that should be interesting to fans of the Dark Knight is how Warner Bros. appears to be expanding that universe on the big and small screen. The Penguin has appearances and nods to various Batman villains from the comics, and according to one of the show’s producers, any one of them has the potential to take the lead on another project down the line.

ComicBook spoke to The Penguin executive producer Dylan Clark ahead of the show’s premiere. We asked if there were any restrictions when it came to characters appearing on the streaming screen compared to the big screen, and Clark’s response is good news for the future of The Batman Universe.

“You know, it comes out of the movie space, Batman’s point of view, Bruce’s point of view,” Clark said. “And when he puts on his suit for the first time, he creates a shockwave through the city. The Riddler decides to become the Riddler. During that moment, the Penguin starts to figure out who he is because of the Batman. Selina Kyle in our movie is just Selina Kyle. We know she’s going to become the Catwoman at some point. So once we figured out that, we really want to just focus on Batman and the movie space. The streaming cable space was was a no brainer for some of the bigger characters. Casey [Bloys, HBO CEO] was the first person that said, I need a marquee character.”

Clark then revealed how there are already ideas to base more spinoffs on the characters from The Batman aside from Penguin. “And Matt [Reeves] said, ‘Hey, I have this really good idea for Colin for the second movie.‘ And Casey said, ‘I want that.’ You can’t just have have these characters be in the movie space. So it was a natural transition that way, and I think we have some great ideas to explore more characters from our movie space to do this same thing with Casey and Sarah [Aubrey, Max original programming chief].”

What is The Penguin about?

Starring Colin Farrell as Oz Cobb (aka “The Penguin”), the DC Studios series continues filmmaker Matt Reeves’ The Batman epic crime saga that began with Warner Bros. Pictures’ global blockbuster The Batman. Developed by showrunner Lauren LeFranc, the series centers on the character played by Farrell in the film. 

The series stars Colin Farrell (Oz Cobb), Cristin Milioti (Sofia Falcone), Rhenzy Feliz (Victor Aguilar), Michael Kelly (Johnny Viti), Shohreh Aghdashloo (Nadia Maroni), Deirdre O’Connell (Francis Cobb), Clancy Brown (Salvatore Maroni), James Madio (Milos Grapa), Scott Cohen (Luca Falcone), Michael Zegen (Alberto Falcone), Carmen Ejogo (Eve Karlo), and Theo Rossi (Dr. Julian Rush).

The Penguin premiered Thursday, September 19th at 9 p.m. ET/PT, with subsequent new episodes of the eight-episode series on HBO and Max airing on Sundays.

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Spoilers for The Penguin episode 1 follow! Within minutes The Penguin makes two things clear: the TV series is starting just days after the events of The Batman, and it’s also fully entrenched in the grimy, noir, crime-driven tone that was integral to the Matt Reeves movie. We see this in the opening scene as Colin Farrell’s Oz Cobb digs up blackmail material from a hidden safe in Carmine Falcone’s office, and immediately afterward when he shoots the heir apparent to the empire, Alberto Falcone, five times in the chest. Not long after that, though, The Penguin makes another thing clear: it’s really funny.  

It’s easy to forget that Matt Reeves’s The Batman, with its David Fincher and John Carpenter influences, was also quite humorous, but given the incredibly dour tone of the film, some levity was required (especially since it clocked in at 3 hours). The Penguin knows that it can’t immediately eschew all of the humor from this world and embraces the fact that it has to at least be a little playful and, in fact, tell some jokes. Immediately after Oz kills Alberto he laughs, feeling the power of his actions and thinking that his moves are really going to take him places, but that’s when it hits him. What he just did was incredibly short-sighted and brings us to the first real joke of the series. Oz has a sudden realization and laments, “Aww, fu–” as the opening titles begin.

The instances of The Penguin ranging from comical to outright hilarious ramp up as the title appears on screen. Oz dresses himself in a garbage bag to get rid of the body, but decides after a few steps that instead of carrying it, who cares? So he tosses the deceased down the stairs and the body tumbles into a heap. Even after firing his gun at would-be thieves trying to steal his car’s rims, the humor continues when Oz recruits Victor to help him get rid of the body. He makes small talk about the air freshener he keeps in his car, or about mixing Slush Puppies together in a “suicide” so you get all the flavors. Oz even smashes Alberto Falcone’s cell phone in comical fashion, like a toddler destroying a toy.

A major strength of The Penguin series is that the humor in the series isn’t just a means of providing some relief for the larger dramatic tension; it’s also character building. After Oz threatens Victor into working for him in the first episode, it becomes clear that he doesn’t even have any idea what he’s even doing. Though he has ambitions of being a major crime boss and having the seat at the head of the table, Oz is clueless. He knows that he needs to sell a violent promise to keep Victor on his side, dropping the half-hearted threat of “You’re gonna do whatever I say or else I’m, uh… gonna murder you and anyone you care about…” (“Murder” said with that thick Atlantic accent so that it comes out “moi-duh”.) The threat works, but his unenthusiastic delivery is like a slam dunk as both a joke and a building block of this version of the Penguin becoming a crime kingpin.

Even after they manage to secure an alibi for the evening and get things in place for the body to be disposed of, The Penguin hits us with the funniest line of dialogue of the series. While eating, Oz laments: “I asked for extra pickles, and they give me two? So what, a normal amount of pickles is one? It makes no go**amn sense.” When Victor offers him some of the pickles from his sandwich to make up for it, Oz roasts him. “Do I want one of your pickles? That your dirty little mouth touched?” If a life of crime doesn’t work out, this version of the Penguin could take to the comedy clubs.

The Penguin‘s humor isn’t limited to just his scenes with Victor (though we do get the hilarious moment of Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5” blasting from the radio). For example, in the midst of one scene, Oz tries to escape Sofia’s men during a rain-soaked chase. Though it may seem like there is no comedy present in the moment, the series finds a way. As it appears Oz has abandoned his car and gotten away, The Penguin reveals that he hid in the trunk of his own car to trick his pursuers, and it works briefly. Then while struggling against one of the goons, Oz pushes him away. As the man stumbles, he’s run over by a bus full of schoolchildren, and Oz waves at the kids as the body crumples in the undercarriage. 

Even though The Penguin radiates its crime-drama roots at every turn, the series is making the case for its existence by channeling the fact that these characters live on a spectrum. It’s not just that they can thrive in a world where guns and grit are the status quo of powerful people, but also that sometimes there are laughs to be found. If the remaining seven episodes are just as funny at the first, The Penguin will set a surprising standard for what a comic book show is capable of doing, as it not only expands on the film it spun out of but displays an array of tones that work together seamlessly. 

The post The Penguin Is At Its Best When It’s Being Funny appeared first on ComicBook.com.

The ComicBook Nation crew review Transformers One, and it’s Peak Geek TV time again with Agatha All Along, The Penguin and Zack Snyder’s anime Twilight of the Gods all premiering this week!

PLUS: The Clue movie reboot may have a director; the Transformers & G.I. Joe movie gets an update; Zack Snyder’s 300 TV series is happening – and Netflix’s One Piece Season 2 drops some major casting surprises!

Transformers One Review

Here’s what ComicBook Nation’s Anime Initiative host Evan Valentine had to say about his 4-star review of Transformers One: 

I would be remiss by not calling this the best Transformers film since the 1980s animated film. If this is the future of the Transformers franchise, then Autobot and Decepticons fans have a bright future to look forward to indeed.

The Penguin Review

ComicBook’s Jenna Anderson had the following to say in her 4.5 out of 5 star review of The Penguin: 

Across its eight episodes, The Penguin redefines what verisimilitude can mean in the world of comic book adaptations. The grittiness, violence, and double-crossing that fans would expect from the title are abundantly present, but balanced with a truly heartfelt take on loss, rebirth, and personal agency. The series is not only one of the better crime dramas in recent memory, it is one of the best examples of how to branch out decades of beloved lore.The Penguin is simply a show about people trying to thrive in a world much bigger and weirder than they can even comprehend – a subject that would be universal nonetheless, but transforms into something special with its engrossing performances.

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The post Transformers One Review & Peak Geek TV Part 3 appeared first on ComicBook.com.

While James Gunn works on building out the new DCU, the version of Gotham City that Matt Reeves created in The Batman will continue to live separate from the bigger DC franchise as its own little Elseworlds entity. That gives the team behind HBO’s The Penguin room to get creative with the popular characters that dwell in Gotham. Known rogues like Sofia and Alberto Falcone are a part of the series, but there are likely more beloved Batman baddies waiting in the wings, though none of them have yet to be revealed. The premiere of The Penguin, which dropped Thursday on Max, seems to be teeing up the arrival of one such villain: Victor Zsasz.

WARNING: This article contains MAJOR SPOILERS for the first episode of The Penguin! Continue reading at your own risk…

In the first episode of The Penguin, which takes place in Gotham City about three weeks after the events of The Batman, Oz (Colin Farrell) finds himself in a part of town called Crown Heights. When he catches a group of young men trying to steal the rims from his car, he scares shoots at them and causes them to run away, though he’s able to catch one.

Played by Rhenzy Feliz, the name of this young guy is Victor Aguilar. The last names might not match up, but the rest of the premiere episode plants some seeds that hint at Victor and Oz having a similar relationship to the Oz and Penguin in the comics (as well as on Gotham).

The entire origin story of Victor Zsasz involves him gambling away everything he owns and losing it all to Penguin. This creates a massive debt and eventually drives Zsasz a bit insane, as he realizes there is no meaning to life and chooses instead to become a serial killer.

Now, it only takes one episode of The Penguin to realize that the Victor on the show is nothing like the Zsasz that we know. However, the relationship to Oz is key to theorizing where he might go next. After being caught by Oz, Victor surrenders and agrees to help Penguin get rid of a body that he was hiding. Oz contemplates killing Victor, but he instead chooses to take the young man under his wing, utilizing him as a driver and showing him the ropes of his budding criminal empire.

Victor is much more pure of heart than Oz, and he seems like a genuinely good kid. But he’s also desperate and alone, and it seems like Oz will use that to create a loyal soldier over time. By slowly stripping away the good elements of Victor, forcing him to think more like a career Gotham criminal, Penguin could be creating a brand new monster in his own image.

There is still a lot of The Penguin left over the next several weeks, and anything could happen, but we know some big Batman villains are bound to show up. Consider Victor Zsasz officially on the radar as the series unfolds.

The post Is The Penguin Giving Victor Zsasz a Brand New Origin? appeared first on ComicBook.com.

The Penguin debuted on Max and HBO this week, bringing the next chapter of the story begun in 2020’s The Batman to life, but while the spinoff series is set to lead directly into The Batman Part II, it isn’t the only spinoff series that was planned. At one point, there was talk of a Gotham Police Department series and a series centered around Arkham Asylum, though neither of them moved forward. However, according to The Batman filmmaker Matt Reeves, more stories aren’t out of the question; things have just evolved. Speaking with EW, Reeves said that what they’re talking about now are “evolved versions” of those original ideas.

“The things that we’re talking about [now] are evolved versions of those things,” Reeves said. “It’s not like that just didn’t work. It was like, we need to evolve this. I would describe it less as something that didn’t work and more as something that is still along a path toward arriving at its destination.”

As for The Penguin‘s destination, it will connect directly to The Batman Part II. Reeves has previously said that the eight-episode limited series sets up the next film as the entry point to The Batman sequel that is “absolutely connected to where we leave things in the series.

“There are details that actually connect right into the way the next movie begins, and the way that Oz enters the world as we hand the baton back to Batman, and Batman is on another case,” Reeves said.

However, even with The Penguin leading to The Batman Part II, don’t expect to see Robert Pattinson appear in the series. Reeves has previously confirmed that the actor will not appear in the series.

“Rob is not going to be in the show. I’d rather take the band aid off now. We did talk about all that, but we felt the best way to do this was to go on a grand exploration of a guy grabbing for power in this moment,” Reeves said.

The Penguin stars Colin Farrell as Oz Cobb, Cristin Milioti as Sofia Falcone, Michael Zegen as Alberto Falcone, and Clancy Brown as Salvatore Maroni.

The Penguin debuted September 19th on HBO and Max. It will air Sundays on HBO starting September 29th. The Batman Part II is set to open in theaters in 2026.

The post The Batman Filmmaker Teases “Evolved” Plans For Future Spinoffs appeared first on ComicBook.com.

The series premiere of The Penguin makes its debut on HBO and Max this weekend, showcasing a whole new corner of The Batman‘s universe — and drawing a unique tie to Catwoman. Spoilers for the first episode of The Penguin below! Only look if you want to know! The opening scene of The Penguin shows Oz Cobb (Colin Farrell) in a tense meeting with Alberto Falcone (Michael Zegen), who has already assumed the leadership role of the Falcone crime family following his father Carmine Falcone’s (John Turturro) passing. Oz tells Alberto a story that reframed his personal outlook on the reputation crime can have on a city, revealing the legend of a local mobster who was in his childhood neighborhood, Rex Calabrese. Although we do not see Rex in the episode, the reference to him is interesting in the context of the larger DC mythos, as some comic canon confirms him to be the father of Selina Kyle / Catwoman.

Who Is DC’s Rex Calabrese?

Created by James Tynion IV, Scott Snyder, Ray Fawkes, John Layman, Tim Seeley, and Jason Fabok in 2014’s Batman Eternal #14, Rex Calabrese was a well-known mobster known as Leo Leone / “The Lion”, who was exiled from the Falcone gang and ended up in prison. He eventually becomes a cellmate of Jim Gordon’s, and is frequently shown as an adversary of Oz’s in the criminal underworld. 

More importantly, it is also established that Rex abandoned his daughter Selina when she was nine years old, leading her to grow up as an orphan through the foster care system. Amid Rex’s power grab, he reconnects with Selina and tries to motivate her to become a criminal queenpin of her own. While we know that this exact lore will not fold into The Penguin, as The Batman already extensively confirmed that Zoe Kravitz’s Selina is Carmine’s illegitimate daughter, it is still an intriguing connection between the franchise’s two characters.

What Is The Penguin About?

The Penguin is the next chapter in The Batman saga from Matt Reeves.The series stars Colin Farrell as Oz Cobb, Cristin Milioti as Sofia Falcone, Rhenzy Feliz as Victor Aguilar, Michael Kelly as Johnny Viti, Shohreh Aghdashloo as Nadia Maroni, Deirdre O’Connell as Francis Cobb, Clancy Brown as Salvatore Maroni, James Madio as Milos Grapa, Scott Cohen as Luca Falcone, Michael Zegen as Alberto Falcone, Carmen Ejogo as Eve Karlo, and Theo Rossi as Dr. Julian Rush.

The Penguin premiered on Max on Thursday, September 19th, followed by an HBO premiere on Sunday, September 22nd, with new episodes debuting on both HBO and Max beginning on September 29th.

The post The Penguin’s Rex Calabrese Has a Major Catwoman Connection appeared first on ComicBook.com.

The Penguin introduces its key players throughout the first episode, and one of the early scene stealers is Cristin Milioti’s Sofia Falcone. Sofia instantly shakes up both Oz and the family when she returns after some time away in Arkham, and soon fans learn about a key tether between this version of the character and the comics, particularly an all-time classic in Batman: The Long Halloween. To help catch you up, we’re breaking down Sofia’s comic origins, how she got her infamous “Hangman” nickname, and how it all ties back into the series.

Point of Origin

While the Falcone crime family has been around for quite some time, with Carmine Falcone making his first appearance back in Batman #405 in 1987, Sofia wasn’t introduced until 1997 in Batman: The Long Halloween #6. Sofia is the daughter of Carmine and Louisa and is the sibling of Mario and Alberto. We first meet her after Carmine gets her freed from prison, as Carmine is looking to shore up the family after a string of killings.

Those killings have all targeted Gotham’s crime families, and they are being made by a mysterious killer only known as Holiday. Holiday would kill a number of Carmine’s organization, including Alberto, though we find out later that was a ruse, as Alberto is revealed to be the actual Holiday killer. After Holiday’s capture, Two-Face leads a group of villains to Carmine’s home and kills him, setting the stage for Sofia’s next transformation.

The Hangman

Sofia witnessed Carmine’s death and tried to attack Two-Face, but ended up getting in a fight with Catwoman instead. Sofia would fall from a window and suffer multiple injuries, and though she would still manage to survive, she was believed to have been paralyzed. That’s what everyone thinks mind you, as secretly Sofia had learned to walk again, and it will throw everyone off her trail later.

Things take a turn when Carmine’s body is stolen and she is sent his ring finger, which leads her to become The Hangman and kill anyone affiliated with Harvey Dent and frame him for their deaths. She hangs her victims and then leaves case files as messages, and since everything still thinks she is paralyzed from the injury, no one suspects her to be the killer.

She is immensely successful at taking out her targets and even manages to protect her brother Alberto, delivering a vicious beatdown to Calendar Man after he tries to shoot Alberto. After saving him though she ends up killing Alberto herself and then heads out to finally kill Two-Face. This leads to a final showdown with Batman, but in the fray, Two-Face shoots and kills her.

Comics to TV

In the show, Sofia has just left Arkham Asylum and is returning to her family’s operations and things in the city. There is also mention of why she was in Arkham, as she was known as The Hangman and killed people, so there are several direct ties from the comics to the show right there. One thing that won’t be carrying over though is Alberto’s role in her story, as he was killed by Oz in the season’s very first episode.

There’s complicated history between Sofia and Oz, made more complicated due to how much she loved her brother Alberto. As for her father, she has already made peace with his death in the show, but as in the comics, she has made it her mission to get vengeance for her family, just for Alberto instead of Carmine. As for her killing again under her old persona, perhaps that is still on the table, especially now that the Maroni’s are being involved by Oz. That said, she shows in episode one that she isn’t afraid to get vicious with her methods, as Oz learns before the episode’s end.

What have you thought of The Penguin so far, and what do you want to see next for Sofia? You can talk all things Penguin and DC with me on Threads and Twitter @mattaguilarcb!

The post Penguin: Sofia Falcone’s ‘Hangman’ Backstory (& Comic Origins) Explained appeared first on ComicBook.com.

The Penguin wasted no time in shaking up the status quo, and that one event goes on to define a huge part of the season for both Oz and the rest of the criminal underworld. The first episode is titled After Hours, and though it begins with the immediate fallout and devastation from Riddler’s grand plan in The Batman, the show then shifts to Oz, and pretty soon after a major DC villain is taken completely off the board. Spoilers are incoming for The Penguin’s first episode, so if you haven’t watched it yet you’ve been warned. Alright, with that said, let’s dive in.

An Unexpected Twist

After the Riddler’s actions are given some spotlight, Oz is back in the driver’s seat and heads to Carmine Falcone’s house to break into a vault behind the wall. He takes a folder of blackmail documents but then is confronted by Carmine’s son Alberto Falcone, who just pretty much caught Oz red-handed trying to steal from his dead father.

Oz attempts to weasel his way out of it and successfully brings Alberto around enough to talk him off the ledge and get him to a point where they start drinking and talking. The conversation is going fine until Oz shares a story about a gangster in his neighborhood when he was young, a gangster that he and the rest of the people in the neighborhood looked up to. He even reveals that they threw him a parade in honor of him after his death.

Alberto is at first angry at the insinuation that he should aim to be like this person, but then he sees that this isn’t what Oz is trying to get him to do, but more what Oz would want for himself. Alberto starts to laugh at Oz and insult him, but he pushes things too far, as Oz then pulls out his gun and shoots him multiple times right there. Alberto falls dead and at first Oz chuckles at shutting him up, though he then realizes exactly what he’s done, charting the course for the rest of the series.

Why It Matters

There are two big reasons that this development matters, both in terms of the show itself and how it changes a few theories fans had thanks to the comics. Regarding the show, the impact is pretty obvious and incredibly substantial. With Carmine dead, Alberto was the new head of the Falcone crime family, and now Oz has just shot and killed the new head of organized crime in Gotham City. That’s pretty big, and if the wrong people find out Oz killed him, Oz will soon follow him to his grave.

The Long Halloween and Dark Victory

As for the comics, Alberto is tied to an all-time Batman classic, which is Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale’s The Long Halloween and its sequel Dark Victory. In that story, Carmine is very much alive, and it’s actually Alberto who does most of the killing, as he continues to assassinate members of the Falcone and Maroni crime families as the mysterious killer known as Holiday.

Alberto’s string of murders creates tension between the two families, which then leads Falcone to hire villains like Poison Ivy to help defend his organization. Eventually, Alberto kills Salvatore Maroni and is captured by Batman, ending his killing spree, but Alberto is back on the streets in Dark Victory after some time in Arkham.

Alberto is still dangerous in Dark Victory, but he’s actually at the center of other people’s grand plans, particularly Calendar Man and Scarecrow. Alberto is made to see and hear the ghost of his dead father, who was shot by Two-Face in the previous story. That continues to drive him further into insanity, but he is able to see through it eventually. That said, it doesn’t actually help in the long run, as he is eventually smothered by his Sofia after suffering wounds in a previous fight with Calendar Man. So, any theories of Alberto having a part to play that would tie into his role in Long Halloween or Dark Victory have pretty much been dashed.

What have you thought of The Penguin so far? You can talk all things The Penguin and DC with me on Threads and Twitter @mattaguilarcb!

The post The Penguin Just Eliminated a Major DC Villain appeared first on ComicBook.com.

DC’s The Batman universe has expanded with HBO’s much anticpated Penguin series, and the series wasted no time hitting the ground running with a major turning point happening in the show’s first 15 minutes. In fact, many of the elements seen in the show’s introductory episode set the tone for the rest of the series, highlighting several aspects of Oz Cobb that will be at the core of even more decisions to come. ComicBook had the chance to speak to Executive Producer and director of episodes 1 through 3 Craig Zobel all about Oz’s big decision and how it’s emblematic of Oz’s best and worst traits throughout the series.

Working His Way To The Top

The Penguin stole the show throughout his limited time in The Batman, but in the series, Zobel and the rest of the team had the chance to make the iconic villain the main feature, expanding on several elements of the character only teased in the film. “What was so fun was that you get a sense of him in the movie, but you kind of don’t know very much about his backstory or anything like that. And what was fun about this was exploring and seeing what Lauren LeFranc did with the writing in terms of telling the story of this guy who isn’t the Penguin that we’ve seen before at all,” Zobel said. “In the movie, he wears kind of flashy clothes and has a purple car, but that’s because he’s, like, peacocking almost.

“He’s sort of strutting, trying to show that he’s a person who has money and power and stuff because he’s actually a person that came from a very working-class background and is trying to pull himself up,” Zobel said. “And he’s a mid-level guy in the crime family, not the top, and it was fun to kind of start him there and send him hopefully to the top by the end. It was sort of what the goal or the hope of the show is.”

Back Against The Wall

The show’s very first episode puts two of Oz’s key traits on display. The first is his unpredictable nature and the violent edge that accompanies it. As we see in the show, that leads to some difficult and challenging situations for Oz, and quite a few of them are self-inflicted. That said, that leads to the other core element, which is the fact that Oz tends to be at his lethal best when his back is against a wall, and that just happens to be around 80% of the time.

“This new thing that isn’t as much explored in the movie is like, Oz is a character who probably does his best work getting out of a problematic situation, right? And so there’s actually some part of his personality that… he can’t resist shoving himself into problematic situations, pushing himself into a corner so that he has to get himself out of that corner,” Zobel said. “He has like an impulse that just happens, that doesn’t come from a conscious place. Some element of his personality has him do brash things, and those brash things kind of put him into a place where then he has to problem-solve his way out of it. It was fun. It’s a thing you see in the first episode, and then you recognize kind of repeatedly throughout the course of the series.”

Expanding The World  

While you will get even more out of the series if you’ve also watched The Batman, Zobel and the team wanted to create a show that could capture your interest whether you’ve seen the film or not. For those who have watched the film, they will see just how Riddler’s actions in the film affected Gotham in the days immediately after and beyond.

“I think that the goal was to make something that you didn’t have to know, really, the story of the film in order to still enjoy. Hopefully, this could be a mob show that you could just watch, but if you did know the Matt Reeves world that he had created, this would be a big primer and kind of constantly have little winks and nods toward where we’re going in the bigger picture,” Zobel said. “It was also fun because when you watch superhero movies, the climax of the movie has something big and destructive happen and it was fun to be like, well, what was two days after that, what was happening? It was a cool place to set a story.”

The Penguin’s first episode is now streaming on Max, and will air on HBO this Sunday.

What did you think of The Penguin’s premiere episode? You can talk all things Penguin and DC with me on Threads and Twitter @mattaguilarcb!

The post The Penguin Director on How Shocking Premiere Moment Sets Tone for the Season (Exclusive) appeared first on ComicBook.com.

The Penguin premiered on HBO and Max, and after Episode 1 was over, DC and HBO released a new trailer previewing what will happen in the weeks ahead of the show – which you can watch below! Like the previous trailer for The Penguin, this “Weeks Ahead” trailer begins with an actual clip of a scene between Oswald Cobb/Penguin (Colin Farrell) and his mother Francis Cobb (Deirdre O’Connell), in which Oz is being coerced into swearing some kind of vow to his mother. After that, we get another great mix of voiceover narration, sound bites, and a sizzle reel of footage all hinting at a twisted mix of mental/verbal chess games and an all-out, gun-busting war that will be fought for control of Gotham City’s underworld. 

Some of the highlights from the new sizzle reel of footage include shots of what looks to be a young Oswald (hinting at some kind of flashback portion of a future episode); street kid Vic (Rhenzy Feliz) walking the razor’s edge both internally and externally as he tries to play “Robin” to Oz’s “Batman” (source of traumas yet unknown); Oz and Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti) continuing their excellent mind/word games, while Oz seems to pull a blade and attack underboss Johnny Viit. Other scenes hint at Sofia getting her own larger arc looking back at Arkham; Francis Cobb slowly but surely revealing her dragon-lady true face – oh, and the bullets, bombs, and blood that will be exchanged as the different gangland factions inevitably come to some violent collisions. 

So far, reactions to The Penguin premiere have been overwhelmingly positive, with most viewers putting the show on the tier of HBO’s The Sopranos with its crime drama/family drama intrigue and examination of truly savage psychopathic characters. There’s even Emmys talk already been thrown around for the likes of Farrell, Milioti, and O’Connell – and this new trailer is only making it seem like that early talk is going to be fully warranted by the time this show ends. 

In ComicBook’s review of The Penguin, critic Jenna Anderson writes: “The Penguin redefines what verisimilitude can mean in the world of comic book adaptations… The series is not only one of the better crime dramas in recent memory, it is one of the best examples of how to branch out decades of beloved lore.”

The Penguin: New Episode Release Schedule

Here’s the release schedule for the rest of The Penguin season 1. New episodes will air on HBO and be released to stream on Max at the same time.

• Sunday, Sept. 29th: Episode 2 – “Inside Man” 
• Sunday, Oct. 6th: Episode 3 – “Bliss” 
• Sunday, Oct. 13th: Episode 4 – “Cent’Anni” 
• Sunday, Oct. 20th: Episode 5 – “Homecoming”
• Sunday, Oct. 27th: Episode 6 – “Gold Summit” 
• Sunday, Nov. 3rd: Episode 7 – “Top Hat” 
• Sunday, Nov. 10th: Episode 8 (Finale) – “Great or Little Thing” 

The Penguin Cast Explained

The Penguin stars Colin Farrell as Oswald “Oz” Cobb/Penguin, Cristin Milioti as Sofia Falcone, Rhenzy Feliz as Victor Aguilar, Michael Kelly as Johnny Viti, Shohreh Aghdashloo as Nadia Maroni, Deirdre O’Connell as Francis Cobb, Clancy Brown as Salvatore Maroni, James Madio as Milos Grapa, Scott Cohen as Luca Falcone, Michael Zegen as Alberto Falcone, Carmen Ejogo as Eve Karlo and Theo Rossi as Dr. Julian Rush.

The premiere episode was written by Craig Zobel (The Hunt, American Gods) and director by Lauren LeFranc, who also serves as creator and showrunner of the series. 

The post The Penguin ‘Weeks Ahead’ Trailer Has Thrilling Teases for Future Episodes appeared first on ComicBook.com.

The Penguin TV series picks up right where The Batman movie leaves off – with Gotham City crippled from a terroristic attack by The Riddler. It shouldn’t be surprising then that as Oswald “Oz” Cobb (Colin Farrell) begins his campaign to seize power in the underworld, Gotham is still caught up in the Riddler’s maze. The Penguin premiere has a moment that a lot of fans may have missed, where it’s conveyed to fans just how much impact The Riddler is still having on Gotham’s social order. 

Early on in The Penguin Episode 1, “After Hours,” Oz and his assistant/hostage Victor Aguilar (Rhenzy Feliz) take a train out of Gotham City to the suburbs, to visit Oz’s mom Francis (Deirdre O’Connell). While riding the train, Oz is approached by a young kid handing out flyers, which read “Gotham’s True Face.” There is a QR code on the flyer, and if you access the code you’ll get taken back to “rataalada.com,” the viral marketing site used to promote The Batman, which also functioned as Riddler’s platform for revealing his master plan to the public and committing his horrific executions of Gotham’s corrupt mayor, district attorney, and police commissioner. Even Edward Nashton is now locked away in Arkham, The Penguin reveals that his followers are still very much active and determined to continue the villain’s “revolution”: 

Cl0ckbreak3r: What’s been put in motion can’t be stopped.

xxREIGNITINxx: Arkham’s releasing patients and Blackgate is a mess… no one’s really a prisoner in there. Not even our old pal Sal Maroni.

HOLDTHELINE81: People say they want the truth but they shield their eyes when we shine the light.

DETERMINATOR: Let’s make sure they’re not blinded again to the corruption, the killings, the Falcone power grab…

HOLDTHELINE81: We start in the streets. Tonight at 9pm. Meet at the metro outside Crown Point.

Cl0ckbreak3r: Done and done. The revolution is just getting started.

This message reflects a very interesting fracture in Gotham City’s social order, right now. Both the followers of The Riddler and city officials like Mayoral Elect Bella Reál are committing to ending Gotham’s longstanding era of corruption and mob control. The two factions just have very different approaches and standards about how to do it. The new government officials want to affect positive social change through benevolent policy; the Riddler’s followers want to use chaos and coercion to drag the mobsters into the light. 

Neither approach is good for Oz Cobb and the Falcone Crime Syndicate, as The Batman made it clear that the mob’s place in Gotham is shrinking by the day. 

The Penguin is now airing on HBO and streaming on Max. 

The post The Penguin Premiere Contains A Secret Message From The Riddler appeared first on ComicBook.com.

HBO’s The Penguin may bring back a lot of familiar faces from The Batman, but it’s digging deep into the coffers of DC lore for other characters. Two of the new additions include Michael Zegen as Alberto Falcone and Cristin Milioti as Sofia Falcone, but there’s another elusive crime figure from DC Comics that appears in The Penguin, mob boss Salvatore Maroni. Longtime readers will no doubt now the name well, but newcomers should know that Salvatore Maroni isn’t just a throwaway character brought into the show, he’s a name that carries major weight in Batman lore. 

DC’s Salvatore Maroni Comics History

Unlike Alberto Falcone and Cristin Milioti as Sofia Falcone, who made their DC Comics debut the classic 1996 series Batman: The Long Halloween, Salvatore Maroni’s debut predates them by decades. In fact, Salvatore Maroni was created by none other than Batman’s own co-creators, Bill Finger and Bob Kane, with his first appearance happening in Detective Comics #66 way back in 1942, pre-dating the likes of The Riddler, Mister Freeze, and Poison Ivy. Despite this, his appearances are few and far between in the pages of DC’s comics, appearing in just over 50 total issues across his eighty years of existence.

Though largely just a mafioso figure in DC Comics, Salvatore Maroni is most notable for being the figure responsible for disfiguring Harvey Dent and turning him into Two-Face with this act initially occurring in Maroni’s first issue (back when the man he attacked was named Harvey Kent). This major element of Maroni’s place in Batman lore has been recycled a few times as well, and is even shown happening again in the pages of Batman: The Long Halloween, a series where his death is also depicted. In recent years, with DC’s big New 52 reboot, Maroni has only had sparse appearances in DC comics and has largely become an antagonist for Nightwing rather than Batman. As such his operations are mostly in Bludhaven rather than Gotham City.

DC’s Salvatore Maroni in Live-Action

Unlike notable Batman villains like The Joker, who appear about as often as The Caped Crusader himself on the big screen, Salvatore Maroni’s appearances in films and television are limited, but have grown in recent years. The character made his big screen debut in 1995’s Batman Forever where he was played by actor Dennis Paladino (uncredited) for a scene where he was referred to as just “Boss Maroni” (a name attached to the character in his early comic book days). More notably, Eric Roberts played the part of Sal Maroni in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, appearing on screen in a few scenes, including a notable one with Heath Ledger’s Joker. On television, Dexter star David Zayas played the part of Salvatore Maroni for eleven episodes on FOX’s series Gotham. 

Salvatore Maroni in The Batman Universe

As fans may recall, the world of The Batman arrived with a pre-established universe and cast. Even though Salvatore Maroni doesn’t appear in the 2021 movie, his presence is felt throughout the movie (technically an uncredited extra plays him in a newspaper photograph). Not only is it revealed that The Batman‘s version of Maroni tried to use his vast criminal wealth tobribe Thomas Wayne during his mayoral run, but when Wayne refused his advances Maroni dug up dirt on Martha Wayne to derail his campaign. This lead to Thomas Wayne panicking and hiring Carmine Falcone to “handle” that situation. Falcone even speculates in a scene with Bruce Wayne that Salvatore Maroni had his parents killed. 

In short, almost everything that happens in The Batman ties back to Salvatore Maroni in some way, which makes the fact that he’s just an unnamed extra on a newspaper all the more bizarre. That said, The Penguin has fixed this side of The Batman lore by giving Salvatore Maroni a voice and a face. In The Penguin, Salvatore Maroni is played by fan-favorite character actor Clancy Brown. Based on what we already know about the character from the trailers and The Batman itself, Salvatore Maroni remains behind bars, but it’s clear that he’s at least on speaking terms with Colin Farrell’s Oz Cobb. 

As revealed in the first episode of The Penguin, Oz pays a visit to Sal at Blackgate Penitentiary, revealing that he’s done with the Falcone’s and wants to work with the Maroni family. He lays out a full plan for him to swoop in and take over a major piece of the Falcone drug business, he calls it “the opportunity of a lifetime” for Maroni and offers to be his double agent inside to “tear down their empire.” What becomes clear throughout the episode though is that Oz’s ambitions are even bigger than this, but Sal Maroni knows this too, so he doesn’t even believe Oz when he gives him this offer.

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The Penguin is expanding the world of The Batman movie – and that includes a much deeper look into the dark world of the Falcone crime empire. As always with the mob, the word “family” takes on double meaning when we’re talking about the Falcones: Carmine Falcone has both a family bloodline and organized crime syndicate that get violently intertwined in The Penguin – best to keep it all straight. 

The Penguin: The Falcone Family Tree Explained

In short form, here’s the bloodline breakdown: 

• Carmine Falcone – The Don of the Falcone mob and patriarch of the Falcone family. Killed by The Riddler in The Batman. 
• Mrs. Falcone – Carmine’s wife and mother to his children Sofia and Alberto. Additional details currently unknown. 
• Sofia Falcone – Carmine’s daughter, convicted of being the serial killer “The Hangman” and locked away in Arkham for years. 
• Alberto Falcone – Carmine’s son and next in line to inherit the Falcone Crime Syndicate after his father. 
• Luca Falcone – One of Carmine’s blood relatives, and one of the potential candidates to lead the family. 
• Selina Kyle – Carmine Falcone’s illegitimate daughter with Maria Kyle, a waitress at his 44 Below club. 
  

And here are “family” members in the Falcone Crime Syndicate 

• Johnny Viti – Carmine Falcone’s underboss, and another potential candidate to be the new don.
• Milos Grapa – Carmine’s personal bodyguard and mob enforcer. 
• Oswald “Oz” Cobb/Penguin – Capo in the Falcone mob and manager of the drops drug trade for the family. Looking to seize power with Carmine now gone.   
  

Carmine Falcone

Carmine Falcone rose to be the underworld ruler of Gotham, with an empire that ran from the top of city hall to the darkest alleys of Gotham’s streets. For years, the Falcone Crime Syndicate was at war with the stronger and more established Maroni crime family, led by Carmine’s rival, Sal Maroni. However, Carmine finally turned the tables: he had Oz get close to Sal and get information on his drug imports – information that Falcone fed to corrupt officials and cops, who arranged a sting operation that brought down the Maroni syndicate and put Sal in prison for life.  

However, Carmine’s machinations as both a mob boss and secret federal informant created the path to his demise: his war with Maroni is suspected to have gotten Thomas and Martha Wayne killed, creating The Batman; his affair with a waitress (he later killed) created Catwoman, and his manipulation of the Gotham Renewal fund created The Riddler, the serial killer who ultimately assassinated Falcone. 

With his death, Carmine has also started Oz Cobb on the dark path to make “Penguin” the next big boss of Gotham, but there are quite a few wolves in the pack to go through… 

Sofia Falcone

Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti) is Carmine Falcone’s daughter but has been absent from the family business for many years, after being locked away in Arkham State Hospital. According to headlines, Sofia was a serial killer  who murdered many women by strangulation, earning her the nickname “The Hangman.” With the death of her father, Sofia returns looking to set her family’s business in order. 

Oswald ‘Oz’ Cobb

Oswald Cobb (Colin Farrell) is known on the streets as “The Penguin” due to his malformed leg and the wobbling limp it causes. Oz was one of Carmine Falcone’s top capos (lieutenants) in the syndicate; he started off as a driver and errand boy, and eventually worked and killed his way to being head of drug distribution for the Falcone mob. Oz also courted many key relationships with powerful figures from the underworld and political world, while owning the Iceberg Lounge, one of the Falcones’ most successful nightclub business fronts. 

The Penguin chronicles Oz’s bid to outwit his fellow gangsters, play sides against one another, lie, steal, and cheat his way to the throne of being Gotham’s new crime boss. 

Milos Grapa

Milos Grapa (James Madio) was Carmine Falcone’s bodyguard and an enforcer for the Falcone Crime Syndicate. He is likely to be the last person you see if he ever comes to pay you a visit… 

Alberto Falcone

Alberto Falcone (Michael Zegen) is Carmine’s son and Sofia’s brother. He’s in line to takeover the Falcone Crime Syndicate from his late father, but has his own troubles to manage…

Johnny Viti

Johnny Viti (Michael Kelly) was Carmine Falcone’s underboss for years, making him the second most powerful figure in the Falcone Crime Syndicate. Although he’s not technically part of the Falcone Family by blood, Johnny is still one of the most obvious candidates to replace Carmine as the new boss of Gotham.  

Luca Falcone

Luca Falcone (Scott Cohen) is an unspecified blood relative of Carmine Falcone. With Carmine’s death, Luca steps up to help maintain control of the family business. 

Selina Kyle

The Batman introduced a version of Selina Kyle (Zoë Kravitz) who is Carmine Falcone’s illegitimate daughter – born from the mob boss’s affair with one of his waitresses (Maria Kyle) working in the Iceberg Lounge/44 Below club. Carmine killed Selina’s mother when she was seven years old; during The Batman, she carries out a plan to kill her father and take revenge. Batman stops her from committing murder, and after The Riddler kills Carmine, she leaves Gotham. 

That all said, Selina is part of the Falcone bloodline – though it’s unclear how many members of the family know it. 

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Cristin Milioti wants to see her character on The Penguin cross paths with another character from Batman’s rogues gallery. Tonight is the premiere of The Penguin on HBO and Max, with the series starring Academy Award nominated actor Colin Farrell reprising his role as Oz Cobb from The Batman. Joining the cast is Cristin Milioti, who plays Sofia Falcone, the daughter of renowned (and deceased) gangster Carmine Falcone. With Carmine gone, it leaves a vaccuum in the Gotham underworld that characters like Sofia and Penguin hope to capitalize on. While Milioti’s Sofia Falcone gets to share a good amount of screentime with Farrell’s Penguin, there’s another Batman villain she’d like to interact with as well.

ComicBook spoke to Cristin Milioti ahead of The Penguin premiere, and we talked to her about Sofia Falcone’s time as an inmate in Arkham Asylum. Sofia is a freshly released from Arkham when we meet her in The Penguin, but spending time in the infamous penitentiary means Sofia may have met other villains who have a bone to pick with Batman. Does Milioti think Sofia interacted with these infamous inmates? Let’s find out.

Cristin Milioti wants her Penguin character to interact with Joker

We asked Cristin Milioti her thoughts about filling Sofia Falcone’s backstory at Arkham Asylum, and if she envisions Sofia interacting with some of the more high profile inmates. Her answer is short and succinct, but it opens the floodgates to a mountain of future possibilities.

“I mean, I’d love to meet the Joker,” she said.

As far as we know, the Joker doesn’t make an appearance on The Penguin, but the Clown Prince of Crime does exist in Matt Reeves’ The Batman Universe. Dark Knight fans that checked out the deleted scenes from The Batman saw Barry Keoghan as Joker, though it was only a short scene. This leaves the door open for Keoghan’s Joker to return in The Batman – Part II, and depending on how things shake out for Milioti’s Sofia Falcone on The Penguin, she could also be part of the cast for The Batman sequel.

Taking things even further, Colin Farrell’s Penguin has already been confirmed for The Batman – Part II. Now you’re talking about some major players all jockeying for position and screentime in one Batman film. There are several events from the comics that The Batman sequel could look to adapt, but it certainly looks like the film won’t be lacking for villains and threats.

What is The Penguin about?

Starring Colin Farrell as Oz Cobb (aka “The Penguin”), the DC Studios series continues filmmaker Matt Reeves’ The Batman epic crime saga that began with Warner Bros. Pictures’ global blockbuster The Batman. Developed by showrunner Lauren LeFranc, the series centers on the character played by Farrell in the film. 

The series stars Colin Farrell (Oz Cobb), Cristin Milioti (Sofia Falcone), Rhenzy Feliz (Victor Aguilar), Michael Kelly (Johnny Viti), Shohreh Aghdashloo (Nadia Maroni), Deirdre O’Connell (Francis Cobb), Clancy Brown (Salvatore Maroni), James Madio (Milos Grapa), Scott Cohen (Luca Falcone), Michael Zegen (Alberto Falcone), Carmen Ejogo (Eve Karlo), and Theo Rossi (Dr. Julian Rush).

The Penguin premieres Thursday, September 19th at 9 p.m. ET/PT, with subsequent new episodes of the eight-episode series on HBO and Max airing on Sundays.

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HBO squawked at the thought of Matt Reeves’ Batman Epic Crime Saga unfolding exclusively on the big screen. Even before The Batman movie starring Robert Pattinson as the Dark Knight premiered in theaters in 2022, WarnerMedia’s HBO Max streaming service greenlit two television spinoffs: The Penguin, about Oz Cobb’s (Colin Farrell) rise to power after the movie, and a series focused on a corrupt cop within the Gotham City Police Department, set one year before the movie. Gotham P.D. was eventually retooled into the since-scrapped Arkham Asylum series, but elements of that crime drama made their way into Penguin (premiering Sept. 19th on HBO and Max).

“The streaming-cable space was was a no-brainer for some of the bigger characters. Casey [Bloys, Chairman and CEO, HBO and Max Content] was the first person that said, ‘I need a marquee character,'” The Batman and The Penguin producer Dylan Clark tells ComicBook. “And Matt said, ‘You know, I have this really good idea for Colin for the second movie.’ And Casey said, ‘I want that. You can’t just have these characters be in the movie space.'”

Reeves has since confirmed that Farrell will reprise his role in The Batman Part II, and that The Penguin bridges the gap between the first movie and its 2026 sequel.

“It was a natural transition that way, and I think we have some great ideas to explore more characters from our movie space to do this same thing with Casey and Sarah [Aubrey, Max original programming chief],” Clark adds. 

The eight-episode HBO Original limited series focuses on the escalating gang war and power vacuum that emerges on the streets of Gotham after the death of crime lord Carmine Falcone (John Turturro) in The Batman. Oz’s power grab puts him up against Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti) and Alberto Falcone (Michael Zegen), heirs to the Falcone Crime Family empire, syndicate underboss Johnny Viti (Michael Kelly), and rival mobster Sal Maroni (Clancy Brown).

The Penguin — the next chapter in The Batman‘s Epic Crime Saga spanning film, television, and tie-in comic books — stars Colin Farrell and Cristin Miliotialongside Rhenzy Feliz, Michael Kelly, Shohreh Aghdashloo, DeirdreO’Connell, Clancy Brown, James Madio, Scott Cohen, Michael Zegen, CarmenEjogo, and Theo Rossi. The series premieres Thursday, Sept. 19th, on HBO and Max before moving to Sunday nights on HBO starting with episode 2 on Sept. 29th.

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The Penguin is premiering on HBO and Max, and will expand upon the story and world of The Batman (2022) movie. In The Penguin, viewers (whether they watched The Batman or not) will get deep into the mind and machinations of Oswald “Oz” Cobb, a mid-level gangster in Gotham City’s infamous Falcone Crime Syndicate, who runs the drug trade of the narcotic known as “drops.” The events of The Batman have left Gotham City’s poorer neighborhoods in ruins, and mob boss Carmine Falcone dead. Oz is just one of several gangsters looking to seize more power in Carmine’s absence. The only problem is that Oz has a major rival in Carmine’s daughter Sofia Falcone, who comes home from years imprisoned in Arkham Hospital, looking for the inheritance she feels is due. 

At the time of its premiere, The Penguin is already receiving higher critical praise than The Batman, with some already putting it on the same top tiers as HBO’s other famous mob drama series The Sopranos and Boardwalk Empire. A lot of the praise for Penguin has come via the performances of the principal cast – talented character actors who are likely about to get a whole lot more famous. 

The Penguin Cast Explained: Who Are The Actors?

Colin Farrell is Oswald ‘Oz’ Cobb (Penguin)

The actor starring as Oswald “Oz” Cobb is Oscar nominee Colin Farrell, the Irish actor best known for films like Minority Report, Daredevil (2003), In Bruges, Total Recall (2012), and most recently the Oscar-nominated film The Banshees of Inisherin, which earned Farrell his second Golden Globe, after In Bruges (both films he made with writer/director Martin McDonagh). 

Farrell played Oz in a supporting role in The Batman, earning so much acclaim that Warner Bros. and The Batman director Matt Reeves deemed him worthy of carrying his own spinoff series. Farrell is all but unrecognizable, wearing extensive layers of makeup and body prosthetics to transform into Oz. 

Colin Farrell is 

Cristin Milioti is Sofia Falcone (The Hangman)

Sofia Falcone is played by Cristin Milioti, a character actress best known for playing the titular mother in the final season of How I Met Your Mother. Milioti has had notable roles in The Wolf of Wall Street (playing Jordan Belfort’s first wife, Teresa Petrillo), Fargo Season 2, 30 Rock, Netflix’s Black Mirror, Marvel’s Hit-Monkey, The Venture Bros. (as “Night Nurse Cindy”), the time-loop dramedy Palm Springs, and the TV limited series The Resort. 

Ironically enough, one of Milioti’s earliest bit roles was making several appearances on HBO’s The Sopranos, where she played Catherine Sacrimoni, the daughter of New York mob boss Johnny Sacrimoni. In that sense, playing Sofia Falcone in The Penguin is a full-circle moment for Milioti. 

As The Penguin begins, Sofia is released from Arkham after being locked up for years for a string of serial killings that earned her the nickname “The Hangman.” She returns looking to make sure her family’s criminal interests stay in the family. 

Rhenzy Feliz is Victor Aguilar

Oz Cobb’s sidekick in crime is Victor Aguilar, who is played by Dominican-American actor Rhenzy Feliz. Feliz is best known for his starring role in Marvel’s Runaways TV series on Hulu, where he played genius Alex Wilder for the show’s two-season run (2017-2019). Simultaneously with his Runaways breakout, Feliz had a recurring role as Aaron in Season 6 of MTV’s Teen Wolf and also voiced the character of Camilo Madrigal in Disney’s animated film Encanto (2021). 

When The Penguin begins, Victor is a kid living in the ruins of Gotham’s streets, who is brought under Penguin’s wing and aids in his bid to seize power. 

Clancy Brown is Sal Maroni

Clancy Brown is one of the most popular character actors working today – screen roles or voice roles in pretty much every franchise that’s out there. He’s been Mr. Krabs in SpongeBob SquarePants; “The Harbinger” in John Wick 4; a governor (Ryder Azadi), Inquisitor, Convict, and Darth Maul’s brother in various Star Wars projects; Waylon Jeffcoat in Showtime’s Billions; Lyndon B. Johnson in Netflix’s The Crown, and is the iconic voice of Lex Luthor in Superman: The Animated Series and many other DC animated projects. To name but a few of his screen credits…

Salvatore Maroni’s arrest played a pivotal part in The Batman’s story – but the gangster himself was only briefly glimpsed in TV footage. In The Penguin, Maroni is still in jail, but in him, Oz sees new opportunity to partner against the Falcones. Unfortunately, Oz was also key in helping Carmine Falcone set Maroni up for his great fall, so there’s some ugly history to put aside, first. 

Deirdre O’Connell is Francis Cobb

Oz Cobb’s mother Francis Cobb is played by Deirdre O’Connell, a character actress with a long list of roles. She played Foggy Nelson’s mother Anna Nelson in the Marvel-Netflix Daredevil series; Athena Bailey in the hit drama series The Affair; Patricia Tillerson in Amazon’s Outer Range; with bit roles in Nurse Jackie, The Closer, Law & Order, Law & Order Criminal Intent, and Law & Order: SVU, HBO’s Six Feet Under and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. 

In The Penguin, Francis Cobb is aging and has limited control of her mental facilities – but it’s clear from trailers that she has a formative influence over Oz’s career as a gangster. 

Michael Zegen is Alberto Falcone

Michael Zegen plays Alberto Falcone, the son of Carmine Falcone and brother of Sofia Falcone. Like his onscreen sister Cristin Milioti, Zegan ironically got an early opportunity to play a “partygoer” in an episode of The Sopranos. That led to a major role as “Damien Keefe” in Dennis Leary and FX’s Rescue Me TV series, and then some years working with HBO on the Millenials dramedy How to Make It in America, and the mob drama Boardwalk Empire, where he played a recurring role as infamous 20th century gangster Ben “Bugsy” Siegel. Zegen has also had a small arc on AMC’s The Walking Dead, and starred as the estranged husband of the titular Marvelous Mrs. Maisel during the hit Amazon series’ run. 

When The Penguin begins, Alberto Falcone is another player vying to takeover his late father’s empire. 

Michael Kelly is Johnny Viti

Michael Kelly plays Johnny Viti, the underboss of the Falcone Crime Syndicate. Kelly is a longtime character actor best known for his role as Washington fixer “Doug Stamper” in Netflix’s House of Cards. Other notable roles include playing “CJ” in Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead remake; a role in the sports biopic Invincible starring Mark Wahlberg; playing Daily Planet reporter Steve Lombard in Snyder’s Superman reboot Man of Steel and more recently playing the pivotal role as a liaison between Transformers and G.I. Joe in the button scene for Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. 

When The Penguin starts, Johnny Viiti is in a precarious position in the line of mob succession, trying flaunt his years of experience as underboss, while Carmine Falcone’s blood relatives all come staking a claim. 

Carmen Ejogo is Eve Karlo

Carmen Ejogo plays “Eve Karlo” in The Penguin and is best known for her roles in horror-thriller films like Alien: Covenant, It Comes at Night, Alex Cross (2012), and The Purge: Anarchy, as well as Oscar-worthy biopics like Roman J. Israel Esq. and Selma. A lot of fans will also recognize her as the President of the Wizarding World, Seraphina Picquery, introduced in the Harry Potter prequel Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.

In The Penguin, Eve Karlo is a lady of the night who has a long-standing relationship with Oz Cobb. DC fans have noted that “Karlo” is the last name of classic Batman villain Basil Karlo, aka the original Clayface.  

The Penguin airs on HBO and streams on Max. 

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Gotham’s pawns are slowly falling into place. 2022’s The Batman introduced audiences to a new live-action world centered around the Caped Crusader, picking up with Robert Pattinson’s titular vigilante in his second year under the cowl. Just as Batman is learning finding his footing in Gotham City, simultaneously so is his rogue’s gallery. Director Matt Reeves left off with The Riddler (Paul Dano) forming an unholy alliance with The Joker (Barry Keoghan) inside Arkham Asylum, Jim Gordon (Jeffrey Wright) still a couple of ranks below police commissioner, and The Penguin (Colin Farrell) seeking ascension within Gotham’s criminal underground after the death of Carmine Falcone (John Turturro), the latter of which is set to be explored in HBO’s The Penguin miniseries.

The Penguin: Colin Farrell’s Oz “Not Thinking” About Batman

Gotham’s Gentleman of Crime is not bothered by Gotham City’s new protector.

Speaking to ComicBook at The Penguin world premiere in New York City, star Colin Farrell noted that The Batman’s overarching presence within Gotham did not impact his performance as Oz Cobb in the standalone series.

“He’s not thinking about The Bat at all,” Farrell said. “I’m sure maybe there’s a scene we did, a night where he’s wondering is that guy gonna turn up, but there’s so much s–t happening to him already that the immediate present is something that he’s struggling with greatly.”

Farrell’s Oz and Robert Pattinson’s Dark Knight shared the screen three times in The Batman (2022). The two future adversaries first meet in the Iceberg Lounge, a nightclub for Gotham’s dirtiest, and then come to blows during a car chase. Batman and Jeffrey Wright’s Jim Gordon interrogate Oz after running him off the road, ultimately ending with Oz helping the two solve the “el rata alada” riddle.

“As much as I had some version of a tet-a-tet with him in the film, he’s not what he is becoming evermore, and will possibly, I assume, become more of in the second film,” Farrell continued. “Oz has other things on his mind, [that being] the immediate present as experienced by how he’s tainted by his past. He’s very, very focused on the now. He has to be because he’s someone who’s got so many plates juggling, so many plates in the air. They’re all spinning out of control and he’s trying to keep his s–t together. He’s trying to create this ideal of filling the power vacuum that Carmine Falcone’s death has created.”

The Penguin premieres on Max on Thursday, September 19th.

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Crime is for the birds. In The Penguin, it’s for gangster Oz Cobb (Colin Farrell), who is clawing his way to power as the new kingpin of Gotham City after the death of mob boss Carmine Falcone in the 2022 movie The Batman. The eight-episode spinoff series (premiering Sept. 19th on HBO and Max) bridges the gap between Matt Reeves’ The Batman and The Batman Part II, where Farrell’s proto-Penguin will become the Batman villain that fans recognize from the DC Comics mythology.

While The Penguin isn’t an adaptation of any specific story, the series pulls elements and characters from Oswald Cobblepot’s 83-year history in the comics. Oz’s origin story involves characters from such seminal comics as Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli’s Batman: Year One or Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale’s seminal Batman: The Long Halloween and Batman: Dark Victory — characters like Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti), Alberto Falcone (Michael Zegen), Johnny Viti (Michael Kelly), and Sal Maroni (Clancy Brown).

Another influence: 1932’s Scarface, about a gangster’s rise to power. The focus on Oz’s background and his mother, Francis (Deirdre O’Connell), “is what differentiates him from previous versions of the Penguin in the comics, where he used to come from a wealthy, well-known family,” series creator and showrunner Lauren LeFranc told Empire. “Matt had already made him an underdog in that he wasnumber two to Carmine Falcone in the film, but we didn’t know anythingabout his family. So it was important to me that he comes from nothing,and he’s really aching to get more status and be seen as moreimportant.”

Below, check out these Penguin comics that are free to read just in time for The Batman spinoff:

Penguin: Pain & Prejudice

Oswald Cobblepot’s pathological obsession with money and power is the focus of 2011’s Penguin: Pain & Prejudice from writer Gregg Hurwitz (Batman: The Dark Knight) and artist Szymon Kudranski (Detective Comics). The five-issue limited series examines Oswald’s beginnings as a beak-nosed, bullied child nicknamed “beautiful boy” by his mother, “freak” by his father, and “Penguin” by his brothers over his affinity for birds — a moniker he would embrace for the short-statured animal’s vicious attacks when provoked.

On one flipper, he’s a dutiful son to his overprotective, catatonic mother, Esther; on the other, the ice-cold crime lord murders his bully brothers and systematically destroys the lives of any man who dares insult him. Penguin commits a series of high-profile jewelry heists to spoil his mother and, after her death, his beloved fiancée, a blind woman named Cassandra. 

As Batman rattles cages throughout Gotham, he foils the villain’s attempted bombing of a school with a mechanical penguin. After the Penguin terrorizes Gotham’s children with a series of violent robot bird attacks, Oswald snaps and kills Cassandra when he mistakenly believes she was making fun of him. Batman apprehends Penguin and puts him behind bars — where he’s mocked by the guards from his “bird cage” in prison.

 Penguin: Pain & Prejudice #1 is currently available to read for free on DC Universe Infinite.

Batman – One Bad Day: Penguin

Part of Batman: One Bad Day — a series of 64-page one-shot comics featuring Batman villains Riddler, Two-Face, Mr. Freeze, Catwoman, Clayface, and Ra’s al Ghul — the Penguin’s bad day is by writer John Ridley (The Other History of the DC Universe) and artist Giuseppe Camuncoli (The Joker). Left destitute after the Umbrella Man seizes his criminal empire and the Iceberg Lounge, unleashing chaos on the streets, the Penguin assembles a motley crew to take back Gotham City’s underworld. 

“As innocent as children can are, they can be equally cruel. The abuse that I suffered just because I was born different. The name-calling, the bullying… the harm is, you get so tired of suffering, you want the rest of the world to suffer with you,” the Penguin tells an associate, confessing that it was childhood mockery that caused him to become a criminal. “My purpose in life became to be admired and respected. And if not those two… then feared.”

Batman – One Bad Day: Penguin is available to read in full for free on DC Universe Infinite.

The Penguin (2023)

Written by Tom King (Batman/Catwoman) and drawn by Rafael de Latorre (Marvel’s Daredevil), the 12-issue limited series sees the former Penguin (referred to as “Mr. Cobb”) retire to Metropolis after faking his death and framing the Dark Knight for his murder in Chip Zdarsky’s current comic run on Batman. “Revenge is for the birds,” says the former kingpin, but when he’s recruited by the U.S. government to take back the streets he once ran, Penguin faces off with the assassin known as The Help, the femme fatale Lisa St. Claire, the Riddler, and his own children: Aiden and Addison Cobblepot.

The Penguin #6-#7 flash back to when Oswald was an “unimportant man” working as a bartender at the Iceberg Lounge and serving the club’s owner: mob boss Carmine Falcone. Resenting the Falcone Crime Family’s mockery, Oswald sells the Roman’s empire out to a nascent Batman as informant “scrapping for scraps.” Batman determines the desperate Oswald “wants respect and needs money,” and working with the caped crusader to bring down Falcone’s operations makes the small Oswald important.

Batman makes an arrangement with Oswald: give up Falcone and he’ll let him run the Iceberg Lounge on the condition that he rats out his criminal clientele. While running the remnants of the old Falcone empire out of the Iceberg Lounge, Oswald Cobblepot became a well-dressed rogue with a “theme and scheme” like the Joker or the Riddler. With his top hat, umbrella, and monocle, there would be a new villain to ruffle the Batman’s feathers: the Penguin.

The Penguin #1 is free to read on DC Universe Infinite.

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The Caped Crusader’s rogues gallery expands. 2022’s The Batman pitted Robert Pattinson’s titular vigilante against Paul Dano’s The Riddler while simultaneously bringing ascending adversaries Catwoman (Zoe Kravitz) and The Penguin (Colin Farrell) into the fold. Just before the credits rolled, director Matt Reeves snuck Batman’s most famed foe into the picture, as Barry Keoghan subtly showed face as The Joker, offering his hand in friendship to Riddler. It remains to be seen as to how active The Batman Epic Crime Saga’s Joker has been up until his imprisonment in Arkham Asylum, but the man behind the makeup is already familiar with his new franchise’s larger ensemble.

Colin Farrell and Barry Keoghan’s Batman Saga Parallels

While fans await a Penguin and Joker scene on screen, the Irishmen behind the roles have already chatted about their shared franchise.

Speaking to ComicBook at The Penguin world premiere in New York City, star Colin Farrell noted that he and Barry Keoghan “had a giggle” about where they fall in The Batman Epic Crime Saga.

“The two of us had a giggle about it,” Farrell said. “He’s The Joker and I’m The Penguin, and we’re both from the north side of Dublin. It’s bizarre and lovely and it’s the kind of thing that makes you a bit giddy. You just have a laugh about it, you realize your good fortune.”

While 17 years apart, Farrell and Keoghan’s acting careers have run somewhat parallel to one another in recent memory. The two Dublin natives first shared the screen together in The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017) and then again in The Banshees of Inisherin (2022), the latter of which they both received Academy Award nominations for.

Farrell and Keoghan suiting up as Batman adversaries continue a pattern of Irishmen standing opposite Bruce Wayne on the big screen. Within Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight trilogy, Cork’s Cillian Murphy portrayed Jonathan Crane (Scarecrow) in all the movies while Northern Ireland’s Liam Neeson showed face as Ra’s Al Ghul in Batman Begins and The Dark Knight Rises.

There’s no word on when Keoghan’s Joker will make his presence properly felt within The Batman Epic Crime Saga. Director Matt Reeves shared a deleted scene of the character being interrogated by Batman on social media shortly after The Batman hit theaters, leaving a small hint that the Clown Prince of Crime secured a means to escape his Arkham imprisonment.

“I can’t say much. We’ll see where that goes. It was an incredible experience,” Keoghan said in a recent interview when asked about his Joker’s future. “Yeah, I can’t say.”

The Penguin premieres on Max on Thursday, September 19th.

The post The Batman Epic Crime Saga: Colin Farrell and Barry Keoghan “Had a Giggle” About Their Villainous Roles (Exclusive) appeared first on ComicBook.com.

For generations, the word “verisimilitude” has hung over the world of comic book adaptations. Richard Donner famously used the concept as a guiding principle for 1978’s Superman movie, arguing that the high-flying and brightly colored protagonist needed to be rooted in a version of reality to effectively translate onscreen. It’s hard to deny that Donner succeeded in that venture, as his film essentially defined the genre, but the concept has become a sort of buzzword in the decades since. Verisimilitude is thrown around in countless arguments about superhero projects that are too dark and gritty, not dark and gritty enough, or stuck in a limbo between the two. This debate crossed my mind frequently while watching HBO’s The Penguin, the newest television extension of the DC mythos. Across its eight-episode season, The Penguin reframes that age-old argument in a beautiful new evolution, delivering one of the most unflinchingly human and entertaining interpolations of a comic in recent memory.

Set shortly after the events of the 2022 film The Batman, The Penguin follows the continued adventures of Oz Cobb (Colin Farrell) as he scrambles for power amid the criminal underworld of the now-shattered Gotham City. As Oz navigates his new reputation, his new criminal schemes, and his home life, he also begins to form an unlikely bond with teenager Victor Aguilar (Rhenzy Feliz). Intersecting with Oz’s quest is Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti), a notorious serial killer who grew up as the once-pampered daughter of Oz’s former boss, and who is trying to forge her own path forward after being released from a mental institution. 

That description not only scratches the surface of what The Penguin has to offer, but it doesn’t even dwell on the DC lore that surrounds the series. Yes, there are countless comic stories delving into the Falcone family’s chokehold over Gotham City, as well as Oz’s own rise to power within that structure. Yes, Sofia’s institutionalization occurred in the infamous Arkham Asylum. Yes, Oz’s romantic partner, sex worker Eve Karlo (Carmen Ejogo), shares a surname with the Batman villain Clayface. But those comic connections are far from the most compelling or surprising things that The Penguin has to offer, even as fans sniff around for clues about The Batman‘s cinematic sequel, 2026’s The Batman Part II. Any reference to DC canon, from the inclusion of a comic character to a random offhanded reference, flavors the experience of The Penguin instead of being a whole meal. Even the specific flavors that fans have already turned their noses at — namely, shortening Oz’s name from his comic-accurate moniker of Oswald Cobblepot — prove to be inconsequential in context. 

That shouldn’t necessarily be a miracle when we’re decades into the world of modern comic book television shows, but it feels like one, especially as The Penguin offers a fundamentally entertaining experience at every single turn. The show subscribes to virtually every single trope fans could expect from a crime drama, delivering brutal violence, countless backroom deals, and a larger sense of grounded stakes. But under the guidance of showrunner Lauren LeFranc, it never gives itself an opportunity to be defined by those tropes, allowing space for a true sense of sincerity. This is abundantly apparent with Oz, whose unique earnestness is on display in his closest relationship, and whose dark aspirations are juxtaposed with awkward quirks and legitimately funny one-liners. It is also astronomically clear with Sofia, whose biting wit and impossibly tragic backstory create a perfect foil to Oz. (Without getting into spoilers, the chapter of The Penguin that dives into that backstory might just be one of the best television episodes of the year, if not in recent memory.) The heartfelt nature of The Penguin not only keeps the series’ story moving, but it proves to be a perfect complement to the larger-than-life vigilantism viewers saw in The Batman. Granted, some fans might grow disappointed by how scattered the moments of high-octane action are, but The Penguin‘s weekly release model should allow space for countless sequences (both big and small) to get the weight that they deserve.

Farrell’s unrecognizable performance as Oz remains as transformative and quirky as it was in The Batman, while evolving into so much more than the countless internet memes and confused social media posts might have suggested the first time around. The series is a character study for Oz in every single sense of the word, building him into a multifaceted, sympathetic protagonist that audiences want to root for, even at his absolute worst. On its own, Farrell’s performance would be enough to singlehandedly carry a show of this venture, which makes it all the more outstanding that The Penguin boasts an equally revelatory performance from Milioti. The actress steals every single scene she is in, as we watch Sofia fall in and out of Oz’s circle and spiral towards her own path of being a criminal mastermind. It’s not only a portrayal fully worthy of Sofia’s bizarre and dark DC history, but easily a career-defining performance from Milioti, whose decades of work on the screen and the stage has been criminally overlooked. Outside of the two leads, The Penguin is still filled with compelling performances, with Feliz’s sweet and overwhelmed take on Victor and Clancy Brown’s excellent take on mob boss Salvatore Maroni being definite highlights.

On an aesthetic level, The Penguin carries the torch of The Batman without ever overdoing certain elements. The team behind Farrell’s prosthetic makeup deserves every award imaginable, delivering a practical alchemy that helps cement Oz as his own unique, scarred entity. The series’ New York sets seamlessly emulate the franchise’s Gotham amalgam of London and Chicago, with subtle expansions in new neighborhoods and set pieces. Cinematographer Darran Tiernan also carries over the gritty dimension of The Batman, while weaving in the occasional vibrant colors that would have seemed out of place in the series’ predecessor. Composer Mick Giacchino, the son of The Batman composer Michael Giacchino, creates a sonic identity that stands on its own without ever feeling too out of place, when juxtaposed with the previous score or with the series’ slew of needle drops (including the best use of Dolly Parton in recent pop culture memory).

Across its eight episodes, The Penguin redefines what verisimilitude can mean in the world of comic book adaptations. The grittiness, violence, and double-crossing that fans would expect from the title are abundantly present, but balanced with a truly heartfelt take on loss, rebirth, and personal agency. The series is not only one of the better crime dramas in recent memory, it is one of the best examples of how to branch out decades of beloved lore.The Penguin is simply a show about people trying to thrive in a world much bigger and weirder than they can even comprehend — a subject that would be universal nonetheless, but transforms into something special with its engrossing performances. 

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

The Penguin will premiere on Max on Thursday, September 19th, followed by an HBO premiere on Sunday, September 22nd, with new episodes debuting on both HBO and Max beginning on September 29th.

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The Batman Universe continues this week with the release of The Penguin, and there are multiple ways that fans can watch it! Starring Colin Farrell as Oswald “Oz” Cobb (reprising his role from The Batman movie), The Penguin takes place weeks after the ending of the film: Gotham City has been rocked by The Riddler’s terrorist attack, with much of the city underwater. Gotham’s underworld is similarly drowning in the aftermath of Riddler’s campaign: mob kingpin Carmine Falcone is dead, and Oz is already seeing the streets looking to him, “The Penguin,” to fill the void.

Of course, Carmine’s children Sofia (Cristin Milioti) and Alberto (Michael Zegen) Falcone are next in line to inherit the throne – as well as the rival Maroni crime family and a dozen other gangsters, all weighing their chances. 

When Does The Penguin TV Series Premiere? 

Warners Bros. and DC are giving The Penguin a two-part premiere event. The Penguin Episode 1 will first premiere on Max streaming on Thursday, September 19th at 9pm ET on HBO, and will make it available to stream on Max as well. 

After that initial premiere, The Penguin will be re-aired on Sunday, September 22nd in the traditional HBO Sunday primetime slot of 9pm ET. HBO has also said the premiere will air “multiple times” over the weekend between Thursday and Sunday, so check your schedules. 

How to Watch The Penguin

There are only two ways to watch The Penguin: One is through premium cable television, the other is via streaming. Here are your options:  

1. Have a subscription to HBO through your TV provider. 
2. Have a Max subscription (or Max add-on to your Hulu subscription). 

The Penguin: New Episodes Release Schedule & How to Watch

If you like the premiere episode of The Penguin, here’s the release schedule for the rest of the season. New episodes will air on HBO and be released to stream on Max at the same time.

• Sunday, Sept. 29th: Episode 2
• Sunday, Oct. 6th: Episode 3
• Sunday, Oct. 13th: Episode 4
• Sunday, Oct. 20th: Episode 5
• Sunday, Oct. 27th: Episode 6
• Sunday, Nov. 3rd: Episode 7
• Sunday, Nov. 10th: Episode 8 (Finale)

The Penguin Cast & Characters Explained

The Penguin stars Colin Farrell as Oswald “Oz” Cobb/Penguin, Cristin Milioti as Sofia Falcone, Rhenzy Feliz as Victor Aguilar, Michael Kelly as Johnny Viti, Shohreh Aghdashloo as Nadia Maroni, Deirdre O’Connell as Francis Cobb, Clancy Brown as Salvatore Maroni, James Madio as Milos Grapa, Scott Cohen as Luca Falcone, Michael Zegen as Alberto Falcone, Carmen Ejogo as Eve Karlo and Theo Rossi as Dr. Julian Rush.

The premiere episode was written by Craig Zobel (The Hunt, American Gods) and director by Lauren LeFranc, who also serves as creator and showrunner of the series. 

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