The Penguin was never going to be a redemption story. Showrunner Lauren LeFranc knew that when she signed on to helm the HBO spinoff of The Batman centered around Colin Farrell’s low-level mob enforcer, Oz Cobb. Oz was grasping, he was ambitious, and he was more than a little pathetic — but he was never an anti-hero, despite the obvious influences of anti-hero crime dramas like The Sopranos.
“That was really appealing to me that he was more of an underdog,” LeFranc tells Inverse. “I started to ask myself what that actually looked like and how we could empathize and connect with a guy like Oz. I've never wanted to pull punches. I don't want you necessarily to think that he's a good man and he's certainly no hero.”
“There is a rottenness within him.”
The Penguin has made no qualms about how low Oz Cobb can sink. The penultimate episode showed his terrible backstory, in which he intentionally left his brothers to drown as a child, while the finale showed that there was no limit to which Oz would go to protect himself — even letting Sofia Gigante (Cristin Milioti) almost harm his mother. “There is a rottenness within him,” LeFranc says. “He's a complicated, complex character, and I think the goal for me certainly is always to make sure that every character feels like a real person. They're not so extreme that we don't go into that elevated comic book territory too much that you believe this man is like this, that we see people like him in our world.”
With the bleak finale of The Penguin, which saw Oz finally become the powerful figure in Gotham that he always dreamed of being, the show finally realizes the Batman rogue in all his terrible, complex glory. He’s closer than ever to being the top-hat-wearing villain that we recognize, setting him up to be one of the main antagonistic forces for Batman in The Batman II.
Inverse sat down with LeFranc to talk about the finale, Oz’s unforgivable actions, Vic’s demise, and what the future holds for our beloved Sofia Gigante.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
When you signed on to make The Penguin, did you receive any instruction or guidance from Matt Reeves?
It was a rise-to-power story, so I knew that by the end of the eight episodes, Oz needed to achieve a level of power. By the end of our finale, it's not that he's necessarily like the kingpin of Gotham in the way that Carmine Falcone is, but it's more that he rises to the top in such a way that you understand that now he garners Batman's attention to lead into the film. Beyond that, we would have regular conversations about the look and feel of Gotham City and wanting to make sure that it felt of a piece, but that was primarily the conversations that we had. He knew, of course, I came in to pitch what I thought the show could be and all the emotional arcs and everyone's backstory. He was always on board with that. We were in lockstep in that regard. He really, beyond that, gave me a lot of creative freedom to find the right tone of the show and differentiate it a bit from The Batman.
On the flip side, were there any topics, subjects, storylines, or arcs that were off-limits?
There are certain characters definitely that were more hands-off. That was probably the biggest thing early on, navigating who I could bring into the show and who would be better to save for the second Batman film. That was probably the biggest confines, but really beyond that, there weren't that many. The truth is that ultimately, it was really nice that we got to spend more time with the characters that I evolved from the comics, and it helped us dig deeper into those characters rather than be overly focused on so many additional rogues gallery characters.
In the finale, Oz strikes a deal with Councilman Hady who, in the comics, becomes a corrupt mayor of Gotham. Was this implication that Hady is going to start his rise of power another tease to The Batman 2? Or was that just a fun comic book connection to make for you?
Obviously our version of Sebastian Hady is different than what the comics have done. He's a Councilman on our show, Oz does use him as a puppet for his own desires, as this political figure in the background. Oz dictating what Hady says and making a deal with him that seems like it would benefit both of them. Where that goes and what happens next, again, is up to Matt in The Batman 2.
We need to talk about Vic. After Vic pours his heart out to him, he kills him. Can I ask about how the scene came about?
I always knew Victor was going to have to die and die by Oz's hand, and I knew I wanted it to be intimate. That was always what I had mapped out since the very beginning before I even had a writers room. Then the writers were so great in terms of brainstorming the best way to end Victor's life that would be the most impactful. The thing that made so much sense, especially as time went on and we really got to dig deeper into Oz and his psychology, is that he doesn't kill Victor for any justifiable reason, that it's not that Victor did anything wrong by Oz. In fact, he's the most loyal person to Oz and he views Oz as family. But for Oz in that situation, I think he's realized more firmly than ever that he views his mother, and his love for her, as a weakness.
In that moment after the hospital, he almost lost it all because he cared for his mother. Then Victor being a kid who has cared for him as well, sees Oz in this vulnerable — in Oz's mind — weaker state. For Oz to rise to the top in his distorted mind, he can't have any other weaknesses and he needs to kill the kid who loves him and who he loves in a way too. With that, he tears his own heart out and becomes more of a full monster, and embraces the Penguin moniker from that point on.
“He tears his own heart out and becomes more of a full monster, and embraces the Penguin moniker from that point on.”
Sofia Falcone was easily the MVP of the series outside of Oz. Did her status as a supporting character in the comics make it easier for you to do with her as you wish with your interpretation?
When I first talked to Matt, I asked him [about] what he did in his film to pay homage to comics, but very lightly and loosely do what he wanted with them. There was never a straight-up adaptation. I wasn't interested in adapting any comic, literally. I really wanted to create my own canon, and I wanted to evolve characters and create characters, even if they have the same name as a comic book character that you've seen or that you've seen them depicted in certain ways. I just wanted to know that I had the freedom to play and to bring someone into the fold who I felt more of a connection with. Sofia is just a ripe example of that. For me, I felt like Sofia should exist in our show because her father dies in the film, and there's the Falcone family.
Now, there's three siblings in the comics. There's Mario, Alberto, and Sofia, and Mario does not exist in our universe. I just had a brother-sister relationship. I felt like that would be more intimate and potentially breed more interesting dynamics between the two of them if they were close. I grew up reading comic books and I love crime dramas, and I've never gotten to write them before. I also felt like there were things that are lacking in both comic books and crime dramas when it comes to female characters. As a kid growing up, I really would only imagine myself as some of the male characters because they had really interesting backstories and they were complicated and flawed and all these things that I didn't feel like the female characters really had in the same way. Of course, comics have really evolved in this great way, and it's getting better and better, but still.
I felt like there was such a ripe opportunity for me to be able to create the female character that I wished I had growing up, and that I am so happy now exists as a grown woman for myself, but for every person. She's just an interesting, complicated, violent, empathetic, emotional character with a wry sense of humor. That was my goal with her. Then really trying to make her human and spend the time to, she's sort of our origin story in a way in the show, and Oz is too, but you knew a little bit more about, a little bit more about the Penguin historically, and Matt established Oz in the film. So this was just an opportunity for me to introduce the world to sort of a different version of Sofia Falcone who's now Sofia Gigante.
Do you think that in the end, if she had been able to escape and leave Gotham, that she would change and be a better person?
I think she'd be struggling with that, but also the environment that you're in really dictates a lot of how you are. I think she realized in the end that she was playing at her father's game, that she was still embodying things that he wanted for her, which I think is a very normal human thing to connect to when you go back to your childhood home, you suddenly become a child again. For her, Gotham was a very limiting place in terms of what she could do and what she could become outside of these things dictated for her. She's been living so long imprisoned, whether quite literally in Arkham or in her own mind as a result of what other people want for her or think that she should want.
I'd like to believe that if she was able to leave, she could at least take a really deep breath. But I don't know, because Oz really is her downfall in that she cannot let go of the revenge and the desire to make him suffer. Because she cannot let go of that, she doesn't get to escape in the way that she wanted, and she doesn't get the freedom that she wanted.
“Sofia deserved some form of hope in the end, not just a tragedy.”
Your version of Arkham is so much more terrifying and repellent than in previous depictions, with the systemic abuse of patients by its doctors. Do you know if this version of Arkham is going to be something that's going to be a significant part of the Batman universe going forward?
We're in the same Gotham City that Matt established in his film. We're also in the same Arkham. Obviously we're seeing in Sofia's backstory, the women's ward, which we didn't see in the film, but you saw a bit of that hallway in the cells and the visitation room through the Riddler with Batman, and then the Joker in the end of Matt's first film. We're all of the same universe within Elseworlds, which is the universe that Matt has within DC. Everything is connected in that regard. It's not that you would see a very, very different version of Arkham if you were to see something in the future. It would look and feel the same just as our show has made sure that we looked and felt the same as what Matt established in the film.
The finale ends with Sofia getting a letter from Selina Kyle, revealing they’re half-sisters. What does that letter mean for Sofia’s future?
For Sofia's emotional arc within our show, it's so much about family and the family that betrayed her and wronged her, and her not really finding her place in the world and really struggling about that and feeling like she's alone. I wanted to give Sofia an inkling of hope in the end because it is a tragedy that she goes back to Arkham. It's a fate worse than death in her mind, and it's Oz's greatest form of punishment for her in that regard as well. For her to realize at the very, very end that maybe she does have family and maybe that person could understand her plight and understand her better than anyone else is something that felt right. Sofia deserved some form of hope in the end, not just a tragedy.
