‘The Penguin’ Finale Is Perfect, but It Hurts Like Hell
Fans of The Penguin, I am in mourning. It’s been a rough week. To cap it all off, my favourite character on TV betrayed me in the season finale. We knew it was coming. The Batman director Matt Reeves told everyone that The Penguin was the villain’s true origin story before the series even aired. Colin Farrell is already set to return for The Batman Part II. Most likely, he will appear opposite Robert Pattinson as one of the film’s main antagonists. It’s sad, because I’ve come to like Oz Cobb far more than Bruce Wayne. I might’ve even rooted for the villain. No disrespect to Battinson, but I really wanted to see Oz win this one. If you felt the same, the finale will change your mind completely.
Let’s get into it. We open this episode in a state of chaos. The Penguin’s rival, Sofia Falcone Gigante (Cristin Milioti), levelled an entire city intersection last week to crush the Batman villain for good. Oz survives the explosion, of course, as does his trusted sidekick, Victor (Rhenzy Feliz). While Vic attempts to curry favour with the gangs that toasted to Oz in episode 6, Sofia’s henchmen kidnap the Penguin. He wakes up in a random bar hogtied to a chair. Sofia and her crew are there, as well as Oz’s mother.
Francis Cobb (Deirdre O’Connell) is trapped under Dr. Rush’s (Theo Rossi) neon hypnotherapy. Trippy flashbacks ensue. Francis appears at her current age, but she’s reliving moments from her past—reflecting on how she suppressed the memory of Oz killing his own brothers. “My babies were drowning in those tunnels, and he didn’t say a goddamn thing,” she tells a vision of gangster Rex Calabrese (Louis Cancelmi). “I got the devil in my house. What the hell am I supposed to do?” Rex explains that killers like Oz are malleable. You can mold them to do your bidding. Somewhere along the line, I guess Oz grew tired of being the errand boy.
What he doesn’t know is that his mother tried to kill him once. She told Rex to get rid of the kid after she found out about the accident, but she couldn’t go through with it. Thankfully, her moment of weakness leads to more scenes with Baby Oz (Ryder Allen). The kid pulls off Colin Farrell impressions like he had the skill downloaded into his brain in the Matrix program. “I’m gonna take care of you, Ma,” he tells her. “No one else is gonna give you what you deserve….Top floor, in a penthouse, like you want. With a view of the whole freaking city. Expensive clothes. Jewellery. And if you don’t believe me? Well, you don’t gotta. I’m gonna prove it you, every damn day.”
Sofia’s Final Gambit
Back in the present, Sofia turns the Penguin’s own mother against him. “I know what you did,” Francis tells her son, under duress. “They were my babies. Your brothers.” She stabs the Penguin in the gut with a broken bottle and then suffers a stroke. Miraculously, Oz breaks out of his chair and carries his mother out of the bar. He makes it to the hospital and patches himself up. It’s gruesome. If you’re reading this as you watch the episode, I reckon you’re shielding your eyes.
While Oz fixes himself, Sofia attempts to broker a treaty with the gangs of Gotham. She offers them Hendrick’s gin—the logical step up from Oz’s shitty beer—and promises them that she will leave Gotham if they can deliver her the Penguin once again. “This isn’t real, right?” Triad member Link Tsai (Robert Lee Leng) says. “You want us to believe you’re going to walk away from all of it? Why would you do that?” He’s probably right, but we will never see that scenario play out.
Sofia burns down the Falcone mansion in a scene set to a Sleigh Bells cover of “Where Did You Sleep Last Night.” Then she heads out to meet Oz one last time. She believes that the Triads have captured him for her once again, but it’s a lie. Link shoots everyone and the roles reverse. Sofia is captured instead. The Penguin drives her again, just like old times. He explains how he pulled off a coup for every gang in Gotham. “You have no idea what it feels like, born into nothing,” he tells her. A Godfather-esque montage plays as every underboss brutally ends the lives of the leaders that they were loyal to just seconds ago. “People will do anything to push down that feeling.”
Sofia mocks him once last time. “I didn’t see you, but your mother, she did. She knew from the very beginning. You’re a monster.” Still, Oz can’t kill her. Sofia turns around and hears police sirens. Oz is gone. He convinced a corrupt councilman to pin all the crimes from the past seven episodes on her. The drugs, the murders, everything. Now a worse fate than death awaits her: Sofia is returning to Arkham.
Oz Wins
Still, Sofia does take everything from Oz. When he returns to the hospital, he finds out that his mother is comatose. It’s his worst nightmare. I have to respect the soon-to-be-Emmy-Award-winning performance Farrell gives—especially as Oz begs his mother to tell him that she’s proud of him—as the actor grants us an amazing line read when he complains to the nurse, “Whaddya mean she’s a fucking vegetable? Her fucking eyes are open. Look! She’s looking at fucking something!”
Oz promised his mother that he would pull the plug if her mind went before her body. Turns out that was a lie, too. So now that Oz has won Gotham, he follows through on his original promise. A penthouse, with views of the whole city. We flash-forward a bit. Francis lies there, absolutely still, as a tear runs down her cheek. “I know, it’s everything you wanted,” Oz says as he continues to wildly misread the situation. Then he waddles downstairs and dances with sex worker Eve Karlo (Carmen Ejogo). She’s dressed as his mother. (Gross.) Eve even acts like her, going so far as to tell him that she’s proud of him over and over again. (Double gross.)
The camera pans outside, revealing the moneymaker shot: the Bat-Signal. It’s one of the only times that The Penguin mentions the superhero, so I’ll let it slide—but I could have done without it. Especially since it’s the final shot! The Penguin also peppers in a little Catwoman tease when Sofia receives a letter at Arkham from “Selina Kyle.” I’ll excuse that one, too. From what audiences are used to slogging through in Marvel’s multiverse of Easter eggs, The Penguin was a blessing.
What About Vic?!?
Wait, aren’t we forgetting something? What happens to Victor?!? Apologies, dear reader. I can’t push Vic’s fate off any longer. In the most heartbreaking scene of the entire series, Oz proves that he truly is the cold-blooded murder that everyone says he is. “You know I couldn’t have done any of this without you,” Oz tells Victor as they stare off into the night sky. “You did good, kid.” Vic feels the love, too. He thanks Oz for taking a chance on him. “You’re like family to me,” he says. Without his trusty sidekick, the Penguin likely wouldn’t have risen to these heights. At the same time, that’s precisely why Victor can’t reach the criminal mountaintop.
He has seen too much. So Oz wraps him in a final embrace that crudely morphs into a stranglehold. The Penguin’s eyes fill with tears as Vic cries out in pain. “I’m sorry,” Oz says as he chokes him. “You’re a good man, with a good heart. It wasn’t for nothing.” He drops Victor’s lifeless body into the muck and steals his wallet. No one will ever know he was Victor Aguilar—instead, he’s just another casualty of Gotham. If Victor’s ID didn’t state that Gotham was in New Jersey, I wouldn’t have blurted out a bizarre laugh the first time I watched the scene. Maybe it was a coping mechanism. You need something after a scene like that to keep it together.
His death is the most gut-wrenching twist I’ve seen on TV in a long, long time. Oz Cobb broke my heart, plain and simple. I trusted him, and that’s on me. The pain will still be there when Battinson finally punches the living hell out of Oz in 2026’s The Batman Part II. Boy oh boy, does he deserve it now.
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