‘The Penguin’ is Gotham at its finest

When Matt Reeves gave us The Batman, it was the Gotham I longed for. Bruce Wayne was actually the greatest detective, and his Rogues Gallery was filled with the criminal underground benefitting from a corrupt system. What The Penguin does is spotlight what Gotham looks like through their eyes.

Colin Farrell returns as Oz Cobb, known in his mafia circles as “The Penguin.” Italian-coding the Penguin isn’t exactly a new idea, since Danny DeVito played him in Batman Returns, but The Penguin throws us into the Italian crime families of Gotham. It really is The Sopranos of the DC universe, and I love every single second of it.

Oz works for the Falcone family, but when Carmine Falcone died in The Batman, it left the family without their don. Alberto Falcone (Michael Zegen) thinks he is taking the role, but his sister, Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti), is released from Arkham right on time to throw the family into disarray.

A great majority of the show is Oz trying to cover for something he does in the very first episode. While the crime families are all about protecting their own and the family, Oz is in it all for himself, and we see his slow rise as the Kingpin of Gotham that we all know him to be. Farrell’s performance in The Batman left so many of us wanting more. The Penguin gives him that time to shine.

It is dark and the Gotham that we know and love, but the show really does lean into the New York comparisons of the city—partly because of Farrell’s accent choice but also because of the city’s own past connection to the mob. What you can’t expect in the show is much connection to the Dark Knight’s world. This is Oz Cobb’s story.

Sofia Falcone is the boss to watch out for

The Falcone daughters do no let people run them over. Sofia’s story is one of strength and Milioti plays her in such a way that you understand her motivations at every turn. She is driven by anger over her father’s death, betrayal at people around her, and she uses it all to help her find her own power in her family.

Sofia Falcone and Selina Kyle are both the daughters of Carmine but neither of them has the evil or the power hunger of Carmine in them. Instead, they both have the same thirst for revenge driving them. They’re their mother’s daughters and each of them have moments (in The Batman for Selina and in the show for Sofia) that make you feel for Carmine’s children.

For all of Oz’s quest for power, Sofia’s name has it. The Falcone name gives her that sense of importance but she wants to have it on her own terms, and it makes her a fascinating character to see in Gotham. The legacy of families and their names in Gotham holds a lot of trauma for characters. Bruce Wayne has to deal with Thomas’ legacy his entire life, and Sofia is no different. But how she comes out of Arkham and takes her life back over makes her a character I want to spend more time with.

She could have just been that typical mob boss daughter trope and that was it, but Milioti really lets Sofia have agency in her choices and is my favorite character on the entire show.

Betrayal is sweet

Most of The Penguin is about everyone looking out for themselves. Especially when it comes to Oz. So the show is filled with betrayals that showrunner Lauren Franc masterfully weaves into Gotham’s landscape. It would be so easy to have the Penguin just be a caricature, but the show let’s the mob genre lead the story and color Gotham in a different light.

At the start of the show, Oz betrays the Falcone family, and from there on out, he has to keep trying to cover for himself and it means betraying everyone in his path to do it. The only bit of loyalty that Oz really has is for Victor (Rhenzy Feliz). Victor ends up caught up in Oz’s world after his own mistake and instead of killing the kid or leaving him in the streets, Oz takes him under his metaphorical wing and it is a nice balance between them.

Oz knows this world; Victor is new to it. He can help him grow and thrive in the Gotham underbelly, but they are also kindred spirits in a way. Oz has a clubbed foot that his mother didn’t have the money to fix when he was a child, while Victor has a stutter that gets worse when he is in these stressful situations with Oz. The two know how it feels to be pitied. How people look at them.

That gives them a trust that Oz literally shares with no one else on the show. Given the chance, he’d betray them all if it meant success.

Revenge is sweeter

Sofia’s entire motivation in the latter half of the season is driven by revenge. As to not spoil, all I will say is that I found her extremely refreshing as a Scorpio. But it does create an incredible counterpoint to Oz’s betrayal. It is one thing to see someone constantly throwing others under the bus, and I think that The Penguin could have been great if that’s all it was, too.

But what makes The Penguin that much better is the fact that Sofia’s motivations are rooted in her revenge. We are seeing two sides of the same coin playing out throughout the series. That allows The Penguin to also not be just another mob story we’ve seen time and time again.

This is the rise of the Kingpin of Gotham.

Vic and Oz are the heart of the series

Victor lost his entire family in The Batman, so when Oz finds him, he’s a lost kid. That allows the two to really be there for each other. Oz isn’t exactly what I would call an “ideal father figure” but he is what Vic needs and in turn, Vic teaches Oz to be more patient about things.

Seeing a softer side to Oz really helps to make The Penguin feel like a more human story than other Gotham tales in the past. He’s not a goofy guy in a top hat with an umbrella who really loves his monocle. But he still has the desire to rule and destroy Gotham in the way that that version of Oswald had.

To see him open up to Vic and protect him, help this kid grow in Gotham, was surprising and made the show so much stronger.

Farrell’s Tony Soprano-esque Oz is everything I wanted him to be

From the first trailer for The Penguin, I made comparisons to The Sopranos. It is with great pleasure that I report that the show is exactly what I wanted it to be and so much more. Oz truly is Tony coded, right down to his own weird relationship with his mother, played by Deirdre O’Connell. But more than just a carbon copy of the mafia boss with an anxiety disorder, Farrell’s Oz uses his humor to warm people to him and build his own team.

One of the reasons I wanted more of Farrell in The Batman was because he had a fun energy despite the fact that he was working with the mafia. He was funny, charming, and you’d understand why people kept him around. The Penguin uses that to its advantage.

There are little moments where I recognized the connection back to things in The Batman with Farrell’s Oz. He speaks Spanish (famously, he corrects Bruce’s Spanish in The Batman). But he’s also beating a man up at some point and when he lets him go, he gives him advice on how to back his car up.

It all serves to humanize Oz and make him that kind of mob boss that you can understand why people follow him. That, to me, is what the draw was to Tony Soprano and seeing Farrell channel that same energy in The Penguin made me wish for other series like this for our Gotham villains.

The perfect way to see Gotham

Gotham has been featured in multiple ways, not just in Batman stories but also in shows like Gotham. The difference is that we are mostly seeing Gotham through the eyes of the “good” guys. The Penguin shows us what the villains of Batman’s world experience.

It is a different kind of world and I think that Matt Reeves’ creation of Gotham really lends itself to this kind storytelling. I don’t think we needed to see Gotham through the eyes of someone like Paul Dano’s Riddler but I do like seeing this darker side to Gotham. Why can’t we have a heist show with Selina Kyle (Zoë Kravitz) or maybe even a show Arkham from the perspective Barry Keoghan’s Joker?

The point is that the possibilities are endless and the brilliance of The Penguin makes me itch for more stories like this. LeFranc really did something special with this series and I just want to see so much more from these characters.