Come see Gotham’s newest baddie at Vulture Festival, November 16 and 17 in Los Angeles, where we’ll be talking to Cristin Milioti.
It was all for the penthouse view. An ivory tower to climb, conquer, and breathe the rarefied air of the Falcones, Bruce Wayne, Bella Reál, and every other Gotham City elite, cop, or criminal. In conversation with Andy Serkis for Interview magazine, The Batman director Matt Reeves described Oz Cobb’s rise as a “dark American dream story.†At a young age, Oswald correctly identified a world of haves and have-nots, responding in kind with the type of atomized sociopathy that the American dream emboldens — even to the point of locking your own brothers in a watery grave. “His life is one of being rejected, and part of his ambition is driven by seeking some acceptance,†says Reeves. “He is underestimated. He’s mocked. Everyone perceives him to a degree as a joke, but he has all of these deep-seated ambitions within him from his brokenness.†In its final chapter, The Penguin holds a mirror to the Oz Cobb lurking inside every American: a sad, deformed child with no viable path in life except the false one leading back to the comfort of the womb.
The Penguin finale opens with a Dr. Rush–induced flashback where Francis relives the moment she decided to end the life of her last living son. Tough beat, by the way, that Rex Calabrese — the guy Oz based his whole populist branding and work ethic around — was the guy who not only suggested Oz be “taken care of†but offered to pull the trigger himself. Once again, we return to that fateful scene at Monroe’s, where little Oswald promises his mother the world, only this time, we get a clear view of Rex Calabrese lurking in the background in death-dealer mode. I’m sure this isn’t the first time I’ve had to eat crow for speaking too soon, but I have to acknowledge how wrong I was to identify Francis Cobb as something of a two-dimensional mafia-mom stereotype in the first episode, given the magnitude of a Trojan horse catalyst for this “making of a monster†story she became. Deirdre O’Connell takes over flashback-Francis duties from Emily Meade, putting a riveting cap on this lynchpin performance when she awakes in the present, fresh from the moment she made a deal with herself to raise the devil.
It’s all gagged shouts and desperate threats from Oz when he wakes up at the same dilapidated, present-day Monroe’s, tied to a chair at the center of Sofia’s makeshift kangaroo court/family-therapy sesh. “After a string of gothic looks, episode seven introduces a sudden pop of color: a red flash under the collar of her coat during the bomb sequence,†Gavia Baker-Whitelaw observed last week of Sofia’s “Gigante transformation.†“According to [costume designer Helen] Huang, this expanded palette leads into the intense drama of the finale when Sofia and Oz will face higher stakes than ever before.†Sure enough, Sofia commands the room like the fully formed comic supervillain inside a ’70s crime thriller she is, wearing that same red scarf and black dress, delivering a great little analogous tale from her childhood about seeing a baby bird throw its own brother out of the nest, only to be rewarded with more food from his mother. Does Oz think the mother bird knew what her baby bird did?, Sofia taunts. Francis cuts through the pomp and circumstance: “I know what you did to Jack and Benny! I’ve always known.â€
Oz would rather let Sofia chop his mother’s pinkie off with a cigar cutter than admit what Francis already knows, so she finally lets it fly: She’s always known what little Oz did to Jack and Benny. “You’re a disappointment. You’re a waste of space. I wake up every goddamn day sick that I’m your mother.†As if to finish the job she’d started with Rex all those years ago, she breaks the closest available bottle and jabs it into Oz’s stomach, then falls out of consciousness and into the embrace of her sons’ fading, ghostly images. But her babies will go unavenged. Oz manages to break free from his chair and shoot his way out of the place with his mother in his arms, and the shock of what he’s just been told will ultimately push him further down the path of Gotham’s new-and-improved costumed psycho-kingpin.
Victor meets Oz at the hospital, where he’s taken Francis, delivering more bad news as Oz patches himself up in a supply closet. Zhao and the rest of their coalition are bailing. Victor tried to rally them with an Oz-brand impassioned populist call to action, but there was no convincing them to stick their necks out further for the Penguin when all they care about is the product. Oz is about ready to throw in the towel when Victor reminds him of the power he grabbed when he gave people jobs and got electricity moving again in Crown Point — a move bigger than bliss or drops or any other comic-book-ass-sounding fake-drug operation of the week. Elsewhere, Sofia unknowingly sets her own trap — offering up her entire remaining operation to whoever from the triads and other gangs will bring her Oz first. Zhao’s right hand, Link, tired of being overlooked by his boss and the established criminal leaders at the table, makes the call to Victor to tip Oz off while Oz does what he does best — attend to every available pressure point, especially at City Hall.
The voters will want answers for the explosion in Crown Point, he points out to Councilman Hady from the mayor’s city council seat (the whole scene with Oz talking down to Hady from the bench is nothing short of delicious — a devilish arena for Colin Farrell to do monster-truck doughnuts of back-door-deal-making sleaze), and Oz has an ever-so convenient version of the “truth†on the matter laid out like a red carpet: Sofia Falcone sent a carful of explosives into the tunnels because she was in a drug war with Salvatore Maroni. The headline is: Same Old War. The Maronis and Falcones rip each other off; the Maronis kill Sofia’s brother, burn Sal’s wife and son to a crisp (Oz’s words, not mine), and blow up his entire bliss operation. Case closed, with what’s left of Sofia’s car and Sal Maroni’s whole corpse lying in the rubble for good measure. And Sebastian Hady can be the hero in the papers: the guy who turned the lights back on in Crown Point and ended the drug war that’s plagued Gotham for decades.
It’s a crooked offer this crooked councilman can’t refuse. With a cover story for the media and institutional help in selling that story secured, it’s time for the final showdown with Sofia. It’s been a stellar season of watching these two sympathetic monsters duke it out for the top spot, but given the show’s title, we ultimately know who would come out on top in the final round. Still, we feel the thrill of victory for Oz and the agony of defeat for Sofia the moment it all goes down at the airport, which is nothing short of exhilarating. It’s proof of a job well done by our two leads. Of the countless DC supervillain team-ups and face-offs over the years, it’s hard to imagine a more successful rendition than the one Farrell and Cristin Milioti have brought to life here.
The key to Oz’s success is simple, as he explains to Sofia, driving her to what she thinks is her place of execution: Link was tired of being underestimated. And he wasn’t the only one. Every one of the gangs had a first mate that ended up turning on their boss to rid themself of the boot on their neck — the very waters the Penguin swam in long enough to know how to rule them. The montage of each literal deputy of each gang’s boss feels like a bit of a rush job that accidentally flattens the narrative a bit here, but the bigger point is well taken: There’s no army more powerful than the army of the overlooked.
“Oswald Cobb: Man of the people,†says Sofia. “That’s what you have to believe.†And she’s right. In the face of total corruption of the very childhood memories that fueled his gangster populism, Oz clings to the aspiration with a renewed fanaticism, while Sofia is handed over to a worse fate than death — arrest and reinstatement at Arkham Asylum in the Hangman’s shackles. It’s an effectively tough pill to swallow for all of us who have watched the show and reveled in Milioti’s revelatory performance of Sofia’s tragic arc. But the cliffhanger arrival of a letter from her half-sister, Selina Kyle, portends more of Sofia Gigante in future chapters of the Batman Epic Crime Saga. The Penguin’s critical and commercial success have surely led to a shift in focus for the burgeoning DC franchise. The comments from Reeves in his conversation with Serkis indicate he wants to continue to make more dark-character-study-type stuff with Batman’s Rogues Gallery certainly opening the doors to more series-long, single-character-focused dramas (if not an actual second season of The Penguin, which seems just as likely). Will Sofia’s runaway popularity with viewers get our girl her own series, or is there a role for her to play in the upcoming The Batman Part II? However the rest of this crime saga turns out, Sofia is sure to rise again and meet the challenge.
In the meantime, victory proves a cruel ironic mistress for Oz Cobb. He finds his mother catatonic from a stroke upon returning to the hospital with some whiskey to celebrate the birth of his new empire. He’s finally painted the town in the colors of his mother’s desperate dreams, but there will be no verbal acknowledgment of pride to drown out her final words of hate. “That’s the thing about family,†Oz tells Victor on a cold bench by the river. “It’s a strength. It drives you. But fuck if it don’t make you weak too.†In a shocking but logical end to their brotherhood, Oz strangles Victor Aguilar to death, throws his ID in the river, and leaves his anonymous body to be found by the next passing stranger. A murder as swift and unceremonious as the hubcap-jacking that brought the victim and the murderer together — the time spent between them a chance for both men to find genuine kinship out of the ashes of their broken lives. By killing Victor, Oz rids himself of all meaningful connections to his past, fortifying his ascension to Gotham kingpin in solitude.
Only not quite. Francis Cobb is still breathing and still unable to move or speak. And soon she’ll be tucked away in an ivory tower with an immaculate, ceaseless view of the city — perhaps the cruelest of all fates at the end of The Penguin. On the next floor down, Oz is all spruced up in a penguin suit, dancing with Eve, who’s dressed as Francis, and repeating the lines Oz quietly demands of her. “You did it. I knew you would, my beautiful boy. Gotham’s yours, sweetheart. Nothing’s standing in your way now.†A bat signal appears in the night sky, signifying that future battles with greater enemies lie ahead for every major player in the Gotham underworld.
Say, while we’re at it, where’s the old Caped Crusader been this whole time anyway? You’re telling me Batman wouldn’t be investigating this whole damn gang war the second an entire criminal dynasty was wiped out in a single night, or a wild new drug smuggled out of Arkham Asylum and spread through Gotham’s streets like wildfire, or a major city block reduced to rubble? We knew from the beginning that neither Robert Pattinson nor Batman would be cameo-ing in this show, but the entire back half of it strains a sense of internal logic by refusing to even acknowledge, let alone allude to the Bat’s existence until we see his signal. Still, The Penguin’s gamble on telling a Gotham story sans Batman has paid off in dividends, materializing into one of the best shows of the year and a comic-book origin story that speaks to the times without losing sight of the source material’s heightened reality. Oz is the Penguin now — like everyone in Batman’s Rogues Gallery, a caricature of his own trauma, drawn to criminal means of false liberation.