Turns out, the new boss of the Falcone crime family is a party boy

If you loved Matt Reeves’ The Batman, HBO’s new spinoff series, The Penguin, with Colin Farrell returning as Oswald “Oz” Cobb is right up your dark alley. What’s more, this series is going to bring us some choice characters from Batman’s rogues’ gallery, like Alberto Falcone.

Who is Alberto Falcone?

Created by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale, the character of Alberto Falcone is the youngest son of Gotham city crime lord, Carmine Falcone, and first appears in Batman: The Long Halloween #1. The Falcone crime family borrows a lot from The Godfather’s Corleones, and in that vein, you could think of Alberto as the Fredo Corleone of the family.

Even though his father wishes for him to live a normal life, Alberto wishes to follow in his father’s footsteps and join the family business, something which his elder siblings, Mario and Sofia, were allowed to do. However, as with all father-son relationships, there’s a failure to communicate true feelings effectively, and Alberto develops a strained relationship with his father, who actually loves him a lot. He is also insecure about his position in the family, and jealous of his siblings.

In Batman: The Long Halloween, when a series of murders of Gotham City criminals are claimed by a vigilante named “The Holiday Killer,” it is eventually revealed to be Alberto Falcone when he steps out of his carefully constructed cover (he faked his own death at the hands of the Holiday Killer) to kill mob boss Salvatore Maroni, and is arrested by Jim Gordon, and beaten up by Batman. Even as his father tries to save him, Alberto is proud of having upstaged his father in notoriety and refuses his help. He is convicted of his crimes and sentenced to time in Arkham Asylum, but eventually released.

Alberto has a complicated relationship with his sister Sofia, especially after he is tricked into killing her to usurp control of the crime family. However, eventually, it is at Sofia’s hands in the comics that Alberto Falcone meets his end.

Who plays Alberto Falcone in The Penguin?

In The Penguin, we will see The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel actor Michael Zegen play Alberto Falcone. This isn’t Zegen’s first rodeo playing a mobster on screen; in multiple seasons of the period crime drama Boardwalk Empire, he played American mobster Bugsy Siegel. 

Is Alberto Falcone in The Penguin the same as in the comics?

There have been multiple renditions of Alberto Falcone from the comics to movies to video games. In The Penguin, Alberto Falcone is your typical rich spoilt brat, a hedonistic socialite and drug user, who is often seen outside nightclubs like The Iceberg, which was run by Oz Cobb.

Hours before the premiere of the first episode of The Penguin, “After Hours,” a Gotham Gazette newspaper was released, revealing details of events that transpired in the week after the events of The Batman. And one of the clippings talks about Alberto Falcone, the “Falcone Party Boy,” taking over as the new head of the Falcone crime family, now that his father Carmine Falcone is dead.

From the trailer, it looks like The Penguin will be about Alberto, Sofia, and Oz, fighting for control of the Falcone crime empire, even as others like Salvatore Maroni circle the edges, waiting for a chance at taking the power back.

It will be interesting to see what Zegen brings to his Alberto Falcone. The Penguin premieres on September 19, 2024, and will continue to release each of its eight episodes weekly, until November 10, 2024, on HBO.