‘The Penguin’ Fans Have Truly Batsh*t Season Finale Theories
This Sunday marks the finale of HBO’s fantastic TV series The Penguin. Led by Colin Farrell and Cristin Milioti, the dark and campy take on the Batman villain has exceeded audience expectations. The penultimate episode hit a series high of 1.9 million viewers this past weekend, according to Deadline, as Batman loyalists tuned in to find out how the Gotham City crime drama set up its season finale. Naturally, everything will all come down to the final fight between Oz Cobb and Sofia Falcone on Sunday night.
Against all odds, the waddling villain has wormed his way to the top of Gotham’s criminal hierarchy. The entire Falcone family is dead—except Sofia, of course—alongside their longtime rivals, the Maronis. At the end of episode 7, the newly renamed Gigante crime boss has kidnapped Oz’s mother and declared herself the final obstacle in his path.
So who will survive? What lies ahead for the Penguin? To find our answers, we turned to fans and avid Reddit theorizers who spend every waking moment looking for clues. What they’ve predicted for the finale just might surprise you.
Oz Wins!
Oz winning the whole shebang isn’t the boldest of takes, especially since executive producer Matt Reeves has already revealed this one himself. Before The Penguin even aired, The Batman’s director stated that he intended for the series to bridge the first movie with the upcoming sequel, The Batman: Part II. As he explained in an interview with The Wrap, The Penguin would go further into the villain’s backstory to detail “why and how he becomes the kingpin.”
Reeves later said that after the finale, The Penguin would “hand back off to the next movie and have him enter that story.” Still, Oz Cobb’s role in The Batman Part II’s plot remains under wraps. Just like in the first film, it’s entirely possible that another villain is Battinson’s main antagonist.
Sofia Wins (Sort of)
For Sofia to exact her revenge, she must take everything Oz loves away from him. She likely won’t defeat Oz, but she can still make him suffer. As one Reddit commenter theorised, “Sophia saw the strong relationship between Oz and his Mother. I feel like rather than kill her, she’s just gonna make her hate him, and for Oz, that might be worse.”
Sofia and Dr. Rush’s hypnotism clearly worked on Oz’s mother in episode 7. It’s very possible that Sofia ends up using her against him in the finale. “Imagine she gets Dr. Rush to manipulate Oz into revealing what really happened to his brothers, all while his mother watches and learns the truth,” the theoriser continues. “It would undoubtedly make her hate him, and Oz would be broken knowing the one person’s approval he wants so desperately, he will never get again."
Oz Kills His Own Mother
If Sofia uses Oz’s mother against him (much like in the theory above), many viewers believe that he will end the show by murdering her. As a writer for TV Tropes pointed out, the finale episode is titled “A Great or Little Thing”—which is a quote from Oscar Wilde’s The Ballad of Reading Gaol. That novel also contains an even more famous quote: “Yet each man kills the thing he loves.”
If The Penguin is truly a tragedy, Oz needs to kill everything he loves to achieve his wicked dream. Right now the only thing he loves more than himself is his mother.
Victor Is Robin...or Worse
Since The Penguin is a Batman story, it’s possible that a new Robin is waiting around the corner at any moment. Joseph Gordon-Levitt journeyed to the Batcave in The Dark Knight Rises as a potential new Robin. So The Batman: Part II may hint at another Robin candidate in Victor Aguilar. After all, one of Batman’s most famous comic-book Robins, Jason Todd, was caught stealing rims from the Batmobile before he became the hero’s trusted sidekick. Victor has a similar origin story. Is The Penguin just playing with us?
Many TikTok users have also theorised that Victor may head down a darker path. There’s a Batman villain obsessed with murder named Victor Zsasz, who carves a scar into his body for every murder he commits. Outside of the fact that they share a first name, this theory feels a little too farfetched for Vic’s character on The Penguin. Oz may corrupt him, but has he done enough to turn Vic into a psychopath? We hope not.
Batman Finally Appears
Thanks to Reeves, this theory is dead in the water. Robert Pattinson’s Batman will not show up on The Penguin. Neither will a stunt double dressed as Batman. “He’s more of a specter in the city,” Reeves told Esquire in an interview about his future Bat-projects. “One of the things that was really exciting about the opportunity to do a show was to let it really focus on that rogues’-gallery character and change points of view.”
Don’t fear, Batman fans! The Caped Crusader will appear once again to face off with the Penguin in The Batman Part II, out in cinemas in 2026. Until then, audiences will find out exactly what befalls Oz Cobb at the end of The Penguin’s season finale.
You Might Also Like
