Note: This story contains spoilers from “The Penguin” Episode 8.
Oz Cobb is finally The Penguin.
The finale of HBO’s “The Penguin” saw Oz (Colin Farrell) transform into the monster that’s always been inside him. The show completed it’s promise to take a deep dive into the seedier parts of the already seedy Gotham City — and it did so without showing or bringing up the Batman once.
“Matt [Reeves] and I always talked about in the beginning — and that he felt and I agree — really passionately that he establishes in his movie that it’s a big city,” showrunner Lauren LeFranc told TheWrap. “Gotham’s a big city, and the Batman cannot be everywhere at once.”
She continued, “I think the ultimate goal is to not detract from the characters in our show and the emotional arcs that are happening. If you start to get a little consumed with ‘everybody should be talking about what this man who is off camera is doing’ and who is not going to show up on our show, that could take away from the story that we’re trying to tell.”
In an age of cameos and easter eggs, the choice not to include the Caped Crusader was the right one. Instead, viewers watched Oz claw his way from the wreckage of Carmine Falcone’s death and The Riddler’s attack at the end of “The Batman” and rising to be a new kingpin in Gotham.
Unfortunately, doing that forced Oz to make some violent choices regarding those closest to him. Victor (Rhenzy Feliz) had been with Oz since the start of the show and the two grew close. The Penguin’s young ward made the simple mistake of admitting Oz was like family to him. After Sofia (Cristina Milioti) used his mother to get to him, Oz knows that connections are a weakness. Sitting on a park bench after all is said and done, Oz reaches over and chokes the life out of Victor rather than live with the weakness of more connection.
LeFranc said that’s when you see Oz “transform into a monster” and “embrace the moniker” of The Penguin for the first time in his life.
Below, LeFranc further breaks down Victor’s death, Sofia getting put back in Arkham but hearing from her half-sister Selina Kyle, and finding the perfect balance of creepiness for Oz and his mom’s relationship.
TheWrap: Looking broadly really quick, what were the challenges in making the show feel meaningful in the world and to Oz’s character progression without being 100% vital story for people who may just be seeing the two Batman films?
Lauren LeFranc: It’s challenging and exciting to inherit The Penguin, to inherit being in the Gotham City that Matt established. I think what’s challenging is that, yes, you’re hypothetically trying to appease many different types of people. But to me, that’s not really how I approached the story.
I wasn’t trying to think about making sure the fans feel 100% satisfied, or thinking about trying to necessarily garner people who haven’t seen those films. I’m very aware of that. I want to do right by the fans, and I want to bring in an audience that maybe thinks I would never want to watch a show called “The Penguin.” That’s definitely something that was underneath it all.
The pitch that I gave to Matt early on stayed for every single character in terms of how we broke the story. Of course then I had amazing writers who helped elevate different ideas and came in with their own ideas and making sure that our plotting felt connected emotionally to the characters. So to me, that’s how I think you get a wider audience and how you get people excited and keep them engaged.
Did you have any conversations with Matt [Reeves] about getting certain pieces in place for “The Batman” sequel or was it more of a “tell your story and we’ll figure it out?”
It’s more the latter, but we definitely had conversations about where Oz would be. I knew he had to achieve a level of power, certainly enough power that The Batman would give him notice. Whereas in the first film, Batman thinks he’s a joke, like so many people. The whole trajectory in our show showcases that Oz, by the end, really becomes a version of the kingpin. Not Carmine level – he has a penthouse but he’s around Crown Point in the east side of Gotham. He’s not in the wealthiest part. And then within that just making sure that we’re aligning all of Gotham City, the world, the stress of the city properly to launch into the film.
When we talked before the premiere, you said Victor was the heart of the show. What message were you wanting to send with his fate?
None of our characters are particularly great people. I think Victor is the most innocent and the one that we can more emotionally connect with without being worried for our own selves. I always knew he needed to die and I always knew he needed to die by Oz’s hand. That’s because, really, this is an examination of Oz Cobb, and for you to understand him — and to sort of understand the darkness within him — it felt necessary that he take Victor’s life. I say that meaning that Oz didn’t need to do that like it wasn’t actually necessary. In that moment, Victor did not betray him. He did nothing wrong. In fact, the thing that he did “wrong” in Oz’s eyes is that he loves him and that he cares about him and Oz actually cares about Victor.
I think by the end Oz sees that as a really big problem because he loves his mother so deeply and Sofia took advantage of that love, and then it became sort of a weakness in his eyes. Victor saw him at his most vulnerable and for Oz to achieve the power that he thinks he needs, he can’t have that level of humanity. He can’t have that heart with him anymore. So he stifles his own heart. He kills it.
The death is very intimate. What conversations did you have with Colin and Rhenzy about shooting Victor’s end?
That was definitely the goal. I knew it needed to be an intimate death. I also wanted it to be a long death. It was really important for me that it felt like the audience could be shouting at their screen “just let go! “stop, let up,” and that we have maybe inklings of hope that Oz will stop doing this and he doesn’t, and that is made more painful. Colin and Rhenzy always knew from the very beginning what would happen in the end. My first meeting with Rhenzy I told him he was going to die – which is probably a rough first meeting – and Colin knew. They both cared so deeply and both completely understood why this was happening.
Colin and I talked a lot about the emotion behind it, about the why behind it. And then he had a lot of opinions about how the strangling would go. We worked with our director, Jennifer Getzinger, and spoke a lot about how they’re seated. I wanted it to be reflective of buddies and the premiere when the two guys are scrappy outside and have been through a lot of hell together, and to have this sort of mirror that moment. So I hoped that it would feel emblematic of that and you’d feel like Victor’s kind of make it only to have that ripped out from you.
Oz and his mom historically have a creepy relationship. When you were writing the flashback episode and the finale was there a “creep threshold” you were trying to meet or not exceed?
I would be more the person to say we can always go creepier. I really like their strange dynamic. I mean it’s meant to be weird, and it’s meant to be a little uncomfortable and, honestly, slightly Oedipal. It was largely based on the idea that if he lost his two brothers and Francis lost her two sons, that she would put all of her love and attention and anger into one person and that creates a very strange, complicated dynamic between the two of them.
And Oz, we establish in seven and in the flashback, he just wants his mother’s attention. He wants her full attention and in a very distorted way. So for me, I’m always looking for ways to make something feel a little bit more unusual or a little bit more peculiar, or something that feels a little bit more surprising than the traditional thing you maybe are used to seeing.
For Sofia, her story ends where it began — with her back in Arkham. She’s definitely a different person than when she got out a few months back. How did you want viewers to feel about her ending? Is it a loss, or, because of her changes while she was out, are things going to be different?
I knew that she needed to go back to Arkham. I didn’t want her to die but I wanted to really do what felt right for Oz as a character, in terms of the power he had over her. I think he chose a fate for her that’s worse than death. He knows how much she hates Arkham and what that did to her. And that she doesn’t fully, even still, grasp the woman that was fully created in there and the strength that she has. He doesn’t discount her like the other men through the show — and he does fear her, though he’d never admit it to anybody — but he knows Arkham would be something that could potentially break her.
There’s a level for both of them that they enjoy each other’s suffering, and that sort of leads to Sofia’s downfall. If she didn’t need to see Oz suffer she might have been free. And she really gets in her own way in that regard and largely because Oz is this crutch that she just cannot let go of.
In the end, I did want to leave Sofia with a level of hope. I mean, our show is a tragedy and her end, I think, should feel tragic. But when she receives the letter from Selina Kyle — you know the fact that her entire arc in our show has been so much about how she doesn’t feel a connection to her family, and how her family has betrayed her, and she has no one, and she feels all alone — at the end, we realize that she isn’t completely alone, and that she actually does have family out there that she didn’t know about, and maybe there could be some hope for a future connection.
Was the letter always the plan for that moment? I know you’ve said in past there was never a plan for Batman to pop into the show but did you consider Zoë [Kravitz] for this final scene with Sofia?
We didn’t want to get in the way of Sofia’s end. That’s something we were all conscious of but it was really important for me to acknowledge in our show that they are half sisters, because anyone who is a fan and saw the first movie knows that they are, so that felt very valid, and informed so deeply Sofia’s arc about her family. We know how Catwoman is portrayed in the first film and how Sofia is in our show — there is an inherent similarity between them, though they’re very different in so many ways. Almost like “A Tale of Two Cities” in that regard.
Where is Oz at mentally as the credits on the season roll? He’s killed the only person in Gotham that cared for him and his mother admitted to knowing what a monster he’s been all his life.
I think he’s decided to embrace this moniker in a way that in the beginning of the show he felt very uncomfortable by. I think there’s a moment when he kills Victor and when he drops his body that you see Colin transform into a monster. There’s a definitive moment I think if you go back and look at that scene, and it’s incredible. It speaks volumes about how Colin is just such an amazing actor and always so surprising and elevates everything he does.
But in the end, I think Oz has always been someone who believes that everything he’s saying in the moment is true, and he creates worlds and illusions for himself to merit his actions. He does it sometimes very briefly in impulsive moments, and then sometimes more methodically, and in the end the fact that he didn’t get from his mother what he’s always desired isn’t good enough for him. So he has to create this strange fantasy live in this delusion of his own making, and pay Eve to dress as his mother and force her to tell him he she’s proud of him.
So mentally, emotionally, Oz is embracing his own delusion. I think, for the audience, I hope they more deeply understand him psychologically and realize that there is a deeply broken man inside. He is violent and problematic and and very emotional. And that’s really the man that will carry into the next film.
All episodes of “The Penguin” are now streaming on Max.
