The Ending Of Colin Farrell’s The Penguin, Defined: Appeal Is A Verb

Main spoilers for “The Penguin” comply with.

“The Penguin” is an eight-episode character examine of the titular Batman rogue. However this specific exploration of the legendary villain tries onerous to get you to root for Oz Cobb (Colin Farrell), earlier than in the end rebuking us all for doing so. In his e book, “The Present of Worry: Survival Indicators that Defend us from Violence,” safety specialist Gavin De Becker writes:

“Appeal is one other overrated potential. Word that I known as it a capability, not an inherent characteristic of 1’s character. Appeal is sort of all the time a directed instrument, which, like rapport constructing, has motive. To attraction is to compel, to regulate by attract or attraction. Consider attraction as a verb, not a trait.”

This temporary excerpt acts as an excellent information for understanding “The Penguin,” not solely within the sense that it describes Oz Cobb’s most vital attribute, however as a result of it will get to the center of the trick this present is pulling. From the very starting of the collection, Oz is simply as charmingly sleazy as he was in Matt Reeves’ unbelievable superhero film “The Batman,” projecting the identical Tony Soprano meets Robert De Niro in “Goodfellas” power as he did within the movie. However the present delves deeper in an try to make Oz greater than only a pastiche of notable figures from mob film and TV historical past. “The Penguin” is generally profitable in doing so, presenting a personality that’s without delay an endearing underdog and a ruthless megalomaniac, inflicting the viewers to oscillate between sympathy and revulsion.

The tip of “The Penguin,” nevertheless, is a stark warning in opposition to our personal capability to be charmed by figures like Oz, who on his mission to regulate Gotham’s prison underworld, appears at instances to signify an antihero of kinds. If there’s something the “Penguin” finale desires us to know, although, it is that Oz is the precise reverse of any sort of hero, and that we should always all be doing a greater job of remembering that attraction is a verb.

When “The Penguin” begins, we see Oz Cobb looking over Gotham from the late Carmine Falcone’s hideout above the Iceberg Lounge. This mob footsoldier might see his future from that vantage level, surveying a flooded Gotham and envisioning his ascent to prison kingpin within the ensuing energy vacuum. Because the present goes on, we be taught that, removed from the supervillain of the comics, this formidable criminal got here from humble beginnings, rising up in a lower-middle-class neighborhood and idolizing an area gangster by the identify of Rex Calabrese — a nod to a Batman villain from the comics.

All through “The Penguin,” we see Oz battle for prison supremacy, however this battle is not gained by violence alone. Oz’s ascendency is propelled by his attraction. From the very starting, we see how the person was in a position to speak himself into, or out of something, not solely convincing Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti) that somebody aside from himself killed her brother, Alberto (Michael Zegen), however that she ought to workforce up with him to usher in a brand new period of drug dependency in Gotham. Oz additionally manages to play the Falcone and Maroni crime households in opposition to each other, convincing either side he is working for them, when actually he is solely ever been working for himself.

However by far Oz’s biggest trick in “The Penguin” is charming the viewers. All through the eight episodes, Colin Farrell’s villain not solely charms us together with his Joisy intonation and humble backstory, he speaks actual reality that ought to resonate with anybody who cares even an iota about social points. In episode three of “The Penguin,” as an illustration, not solely did we get to see the human price of The Riddler’s plan from “The Batman,” we additionally received to see how younger Victor Aguilar (Rhenzy Feliz) is drawn into the fold of Oz’s prison enterprise — and the way he in the end serves as a stark warning concerning the risks of letting a charmer akin to Oz get into your head.

The eighth and last episode of “The Penguin” begins with a flashback, by which Francis Cobb (Deirdre O’Connell) talks to native gangster Rex Calabrese about how she is aware of her son, Oz, trapped his two brothers underground to drown. She plans to have Rex kill her son, however in the end decides in opposition to it after he implores her not to surrender on him.

Within the current day, Oz and Francis are held captive by Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti), who prods Oz to lastly admit the reality about his brothers’ deaths. However even when his mom’s security is threatened, he cannot be trustworthy, in what is without doubt one of the episode’s first reminders of simply how twisted Oz actually is. His mom turns into enraged and assaults her son, yelling, “I get up day by day sick that I am your mom. You are the satan. You are the goddamn satan.” After all, to date the present has concurrently humanized Oz and revealed him to be a ruthless prison, however the cries of his mom right here foreshadow absolutely the ethical abomination to come back — one which removes all doubt about Oz’s true nature.

After Francis experiences what’s later revealed to be a stroke, Oz pulls a John Wick, single-handedly taking out Sofia’s henchmen and fleeing. He heads to the Gotham courthouse the place he meets councilman Sebastian Hady — the identical councilman who turned the facility again on in Crown Level. At their assembly, Oz spins the councilman a narrative about how Sofia has been behind all of the mayhem in Gotham of late, promising to ship the daughter of Carmine Falcone to Hady to assist additional his political profession. Hady, who within the comics is definitely Gotham’s corrupt mayor, accepts Oz’s supply in trade for permitting the enterprising prison entry to town’s higher echelons of energy. 

This alliance between the 2 suggests we’ll be seeing extra of Hady sooner or later, maybe as a character in “The Batman: Half 2” who challenges upstanding mayor Bella Reál (Jayme Lawson) for management of Gotham.

Within the finale, by the point Oz is captured and delivered to Sofia, he is satisfied just about all of Gotham’s underworld to comply with his lead in trade for an even bigger slice of the organized crime pie, making Penguin the brand new prison king of Gotham. He takes Sofia captive and drives her to a distant location on town’s waterfront. As an alternative of killing her, although, Oz leaves Sofia alive so the police can take her into custody and his new pal councilman Hady can declare the credit score for cleansing up Gotham’s streets by capturing the top of the Falcone crime household.

Earlier than Gotham’s best arrive, Sofia tells Oz that she is aware of who he actually is. “You had been proper,” she says. “I did not see you. However she did. She knew from the very starting. You might have all the time been a monster.” She is, in fact, referring to Francis, who knew her son was “the satan” when he was only a youngster. At this level, Oz has dedicated so many heinous acts, the viewers ought to be rooting in opposition to him. However even after all of the homicide and deceit, there’s nonetheless a shred of sympathy for the formidable underdog at play. It is after this, nevertheless, that the episode delivers the actual coup de grâce.

Along with his mom in a vegetative state, Oz sits alongside Vic by the Gotham waterfront. There, Vic tells his mentor, “You are like household to me,” earlier than Oz commits his most brutal, indefensible act but. He brings Vic shut, telling him “I can not deliver you with me this time,” earlier than strangling the teenager to dying. “That is the factor about household,” Oz says as Vic struggles. “It is a energy. It drives you. However f**okay if it do not make you weak too. I can not have that no extra.” The homicide of Vic is the second the place even probably the most forgiving of viewers ought to lastly see Oz for the satan he actually is.

Only a good child from humble beginnings, Victor’s tragic backstory is proven intimately throughout a flashback in episode three, by which his household is killed because of Riddler’s flooding of Gotham. Previous to that, Victor had been encouraging his father to be extra formidable and reside the life he deserves. Victor’s dad, nevertheless, stays humble, and encourages his son to comply with swimsuit.

As episode three progresses we see Oz interact in certainly one of his protracted sweet-talking efforts as he and Victor dine at a elaborate restaurant. Chatting with Victor about his mechanic father, Oz says, “The world ain’t arrange for the trustworthy man to succeed. Mechanic’s an excellent job. That ought to be the American dream proper there. Y’know, a ravishing story with a cheerful ending. However that ain’t the best way the world works, Vic. America’s a hustle.” Right here, Penguin is utilizing parts of the reality to attraction Vic. He isn’t solely telling him what he thinks he desires to listen to, he is choosing up on the very actual injustice of inequality and utilizing it to get inside Vic — and by extension the viewers’s — head. What’s extra, Oz chastises a waiter for ending Vic’s sentence after the teenager struggles together with his speech obstacle, telling him, “Hey, do not try this. The person was talking.” It is certainly one of many moments that seemingly demonstrates Oz’s funding in being a real mentor for his younger protégé, serving to to slowly persuade us he is able to selflessness on the subject of these in whom he sees himself. “You bought battle in ya, Vic,” he says. “You gotta let it out.”

Later within the episode, Oz expands on what is actually his guiding philosophy. Cornering Vic in a membership lavatory he says:

“You wanna know what’s shameful, Vic? Working your entire goddam life, having nothing to indicate for it. You continue to assume there’s good and dangerous, proper and mistaken? There ain’t. There’s simply this. Survival, safety, pleasure. They do not give out awards for dying within the tasks.”

There could not be a greater distillation of Penguin’s ethical relativism than this, and but each Vic and us because the viewers discover sufficient reality in Oz’s rhetoric that we aren’t totally repulsed by it. Oz is true. Vic’s dad ought to have had extra. Morality is not all the time black and white, and America is a hustle. However what’s so devastatingly efficient about “The Penguin” is the best way by which the finale unveils the true vacuity of this sort of speak, and the true monster that lurked beneath all of it alongside.

Apart from the plain “Godfather” references, “The Penguin” has drawn many comparisons to “The Sopranos.” Colin Farrell’s ungainly mobster is clearly partly impressed by the late James Gandolfini’s Tony Soprano, and the present’s chronicling of Oz’s rise by the prison underworld is harking back to its fellow HBO predecessor. Extra crucially, although, Oz has Tony Soprano’s charisma, which implies that as “The Penguin” performs out, we discover ourselves figuring out with the character in a lot the identical manner as Tony Soprano got here to signify a sort of beloved anti-hero, and in a bigger sense, the best way by which organized crime has been lionized in movie historical past.

Even when Oz commits really heinous acts, akin to burning the spouse and son of Sal Maroni (Clancy Brown) alive, we do not totally recoil. Firstly, by that time the present has painted an in depth sufficient portrait of Oz that we really feel we perceive him, even whereas his actions are horrific. However secondly, Sal and his household are additionally criminals. When Oz commits these atrocities, it is in opposition to different folks simply as corrupt and egocentric as him. Granted, as soon as we discover out that Oz drowned his personal brothers in an underground drainage chamber, he begins to look increasingly more just like the true monster he’s. However even then there’s an implication that the brothers had been neglectful of their youthful sibling. It is at this level that we actually begin to query who the actual Oz is perhaps. As Francis Cobb (Deirdre O’Connell) places it to Rex Calabrese after she finds out that Oz killed his brothers, “I received the satan in my home,” however by some means we nonetheless cannot fairly totally see it for ourselves. He is a self-interested prison with poor morals who’s performed some really terrible issues. However none of it up till this level was any worse than, say, the violence perpetrated by Joe Pesci’s vicious mobsters in “Goodfellas” and “On line casino.”

There’s one thing so unbelievably depraved about Oz’s killing of Vic, nevertheless, that the veneer of attraction and likeability instantly vanishes. Vic isn’t a rival prison. He isn’t a morally bankrupt member of Gotham’s underworld in any manner. He is an excellent child who suffered a horrible tragedy that led him to a lifetime of petty crime, earlier than being led astray by the very man that may wind up killing him. On this second, it is as if showrunner Lauren LeFranc is slapping us out of our Oz-induced haze, displaying us the unadulterated evil on the coronary heart of the character and performing as a direct repudiation of the person’s competition that there ain’t “good and dangerous, proper and mistaken.” Some issues, it appears, are certainly black and white, and the entire time Oz has been spouting his ethical relativism, he is been a strolling commercial of the existence of plain evil in black and white.

Earlier than “The Penguin” wraps up, we see Sofia in Arkham Asylum, the place physician Julian Rush (Theo Rossi) delivers her a letter from her half-sister Selina Kyle. In “The Batman” we noticed Zoe Kravitz’s Selina be taught that she was the illegitimate daughter of Carmine Falcone, who she deliberate to kill. In “The Penguin,” Sofia learns the terrible reality about her father being a serial assassin of girls, together with her personal mom. With the 2 girls now in touch, and with a shared hatred for his or her prison father and his empire, there’ll little question be some type of future team-up, probably in Matt Reeves’ subsequent movie.

The episode ends with Oz stepping out of a plum Rolls Royce — a major improve from his plum Maserati that was totaled earlier within the season. This signifies his ascendence to the highest of organized crime in Gotham. Oz, now within the full comedian e book Penguin getup full with bow tie and high hat, arrives at his penthouse residence the place his mom lays immobile in entrance of a window overlooking town — very similar to Oz did at the start of the collection. A single tear runs down the facet of Francis’ face, signifying an inside reckoning along with her option to maintain Oz alive and the tragic results of her actions.

In the primary room of Oz’s penthouse, Eve (Carmen Ejogo) awaits. She and Oz dance collectively, with Eve telling her companion “Gotham’s yours sweetheart, nothing’s standing in your manner now.” The digital camera then pulls again from the penthouse window to disclose the Bat sign within the sky over Gotham, answering Eve’s assertion with a transparent reminder that Robert Pattinson’s Batman — who in any other case would not seem in “The Penguin” — very a lot stands in Oz’s manner, thereby setting issues up completely for “The Batman: Half 2.”

From the very starting, “The Penguin” dares you to empathize with its protagonist — to see attraction as a noun and never a verb — even because it depicts his megalomania, self curiosity, and psychopathy at each flip. Lauren LeFranc’s character examine is an unvarnished take a look at Oz Cobb, however even LeFranc cannot cease the character himself from charming us all and feigning depth of feeling. By the top of “The Penguin,” nevertheless, LeFranc and her writers subject an emphatic indictment of their protagonist, forcing each certainly one of us who dared to root for Farrell’s underdog to reckon with our personal capability for overlooking wrongdoing within the face of potent attraction.

However Vic’s homicide serves as greater than a affirmation of the Penguin being flat out evil. Given the collection’ apparent influences and its place within the lineage of mob motion pictures and TV reveals, this second serves as a bigger repudiation of the concept of the mobster as an antihero. In reality, there’s one thing much more profoundly wide-ranging at play right here. In our present second, serial killers are being given the status drama therapy, with reveals akin to “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” and its follow-up “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story” upsetting controversy for his or her obvious glorification of killers. Extra usually, true crime is as in style as ever, and our collective fascination with serial killers poses actual moral points. When you assume “The Penguin” is unconcerned with any of that, there is a purpose why when Physician Julian Rush delivers the letters to Sofia, he says “Principally the standard — Rants, poems, marriage proposals.” The present is keenly conscious of our capability to venerate really horrible folks.

With that in thoughts, one can not help however really feel as if the gradual disintegration of Oz Cobb’s charming veneer, and its abrupt destruction within the season finale, are saying one thing about our proclivity for glorifying dangerous guys. In that sense, “The Penguin” seems like greater than only a “character examine.” It seems like greater than only a superhero spin-off with ambitions to be taken severely as a criminal offense drama. It seems like an eight-episode disavowal of the dangerous man as hero trope and our fascination with immoral figures. The ultimate episode leaves no uncertainty round who Oz Cobb is. He is a monster, a “satan,” and the one factor worse than this realization is the conclusion that, for giant components of his journey, we had been rooting for the satan to win.