In contrast Batman villains like the Joker and the Riddler, the Penguin has always been the kind of supervillain who seems to want an outcome that’s the opposite of chaos. Throughout the eight-episode run of the limited HBO series The Penguin, the titular gangster, Oz Cobb (Colin Farrell), has been striving for stability, rather than chaos. Yes, his brand of stability requires murder, betrayal and nonstop crime, but he’s not trying to burn the entire world down and inhale the smoke. If anything, the tale of The Penguin is much darker than any unhinged Joker story. In this season, we’ve seen how sociopath can manipulate the world, and those around him, to get exactly what he wants. It’s not that The Penguin is evil, it’s that, in this specific incarnation, he’s arguably the most realistic Batman villain.
In the final episode, “A Great or Little Thing,” several plot points come to their final conclusion, all of which result in a very different status quo for Gotham City than where we started. Here’s what it all means, and what it might mean for the future of this specific version of the Bat-franchise. Spoilers ahead.
How the Penguin takes control
While Episode 7 left the Oz and his mother Francis (Deirdre O'Connell) in the clutches of Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti), this episode finds Oz escaping, reteaming with Victor (Rhenzy Feliz), and orchestrating a daring comeback. Long story short, Sofia’s attempt to appropriate Oz’s alliance of disparate gangs backfires. In Episode 6, “Gold Summit,” Oz encourages various underdog gangs to stand with him against the Falcones and the Maronis. After Oz’s escape in the finale, Sofia offers these same gangs the option of taking over her mob business, in exchange for the delivery of the Penguin back to her.
Eventually, this appears like everything is going the way Sofia planned. The Triads bring Oz to Sofia at an airfield, but then, everyone turns on her. This was the Penguin’s plan all along. In the end, because of the events of “Gold Summit” — in which Vic encouraged the Triads’ deputies to stage a coup against their bosses — the Penguin had control of the smaller gangs. In a violent round of backstabbings, the Triads betrayed Sofia and stood with Oz.
Oz murders Victor
Easily the most shocking moment of the finale is when Oz turns on his protégé and confident, Victor. With parallels to the moment in The Sopranos in which Tony suffocated Christopher, Oz is clearly getting rid of Victor out of a bizarre sense of self-preservation. But, unlike Tony Soprano, Oz seems to feel less remorse here.
Taking out young Victor is a reminder to us that this is the same guy who let his brothers drown when he was a very young kid. In terms of the Penguin’s future, Oz taking out Victor isn’t just symbolic, however. By doing this, Oz is getting rid of the one person who knows all of his secrets. And with his mother in a complete comatose state, almost nobody in Gotham can say who Oz really is and what he’s like.
That said, there is one person left alive who knows everything...
Sofia is sent back to Arkham
After the Penguin turns the tables on Sofia, she thinks that he’s going to murder her, once and for all. But, it turns out that Oz has a bigger, savvier plan. Because Oz has aligned himself with Sebastian Hady, an unscrupulous Gotham city official, he promised to give the councilman a public enemy, one who could be blamed for all the chaos in the city up to that point. So, instead of shooting Sofia, Oz disappears and the Gotham PD rolls up to take her away.
Earlier, while telling Hady exactly what he wants to do, Oz also mentions that one day, he’d like to meet Bella Reál (Jayme Lawson). This is a reference to the mayor of Gotham City in The Batman, who ran on the campaign promise to get rid of corruption. But Oz telling Hardy that he wants to meet Reál indicates that he has aspirations of getting even more embedded into the city’s power structure than every before. In short, Oz is trying to make it seem like Sofia is the real, true, hardened mobster, while he’s just a misunderstood businessman.
Sofia returning to Arkham could set- up The Batman II, partly because she gets a letter from her half-sister Selina Kyle, better known as Catwoman. Zoë Kravitz is set to return as that character in The Batman II, but it’s unclear if Sofia will be back, too.
The Penguin ends with a glimpse of the Bat-signal in the distance, but whether or not Batman will be directly dealing with the fallout of everything Oz has done won’t be clear for a little while. That said, because The Batman II is set in this exact same city, the way in which this show has changed the criminal status quo will have to be addressed. The Penguin may be over, but Gotham City will never be the same.
