The Penguin and the Evolution of the Sympathetic Villain

MAX brings out the grime and gutters of Gotham in THE PENGUIN, showing us how to properly focus on a villain without the recognizable hero’s shadow looming about.

The Penguin, MAX’s Matt Reeves The Batman-verse limited series, ended its run on Sunday. It was a bittersweet event for viewers with it being the series finale, among other instances that unfolded on screen in the episode’s 75 minute run time. During the past eight weeks, the program has been lauded by both critics and fans alike, with some going as far as to call it the second coming of the Sopranos. I can see this, especially if you dipped the Sopranos in oil, then dragged it behind your car for a few blocks before dusting it with roadside sand. 

Initially, fans and critics were skeptical, and rightfully so, when the series was announced as a bridge between The Batman and The Batman 2. With SONY squandering its Spider-Man villain universe, why would anyone think for a minute that a Batman Villain-centric television program would be any different? Man, people were so wrong about this one. Even an attempted trolling by an early IGN reviewer quickly got washed away as it became evident how surprisingly good this show was. 

First off, I’ve learned to never bet against DC television. From Batman The Animated Series to the CW’s Arrow-verse, and HBO with Peacemaker and now this on MAX, the venerable network has proven once again that DC characters work best on the small screen. Showrunner Lauren LeFranc starts her story right up where Matt Reeves’ The Batman ends. The production, the writing, it’s all stellar and tells a compelling story about the rise and fall and rise of the Gotham City criminal kingpin. But it’s the show’s stars that shine brightest, Colin Farrell and Cristin Milioti.

Colin Farrell returns to his near unrecognizable role as Gotham City criminal Oz Cobb, aka The Penguin, and drives this series. His portrayal of the complex criminal is as far removed from his dumpster diving appearance in Ben Affleck’s Daredevil as Bullseye… as Ryan Reynolds and Green Lantern/Deadpool. He makes you forget about the cartoonish Danny DeVito from 35 years ago. He’s an evil, scheming little bastard who you can’t help but root for as he constantly loses, but gets back up again. This Penguin is a true Gotham City cockroach, a poisonous bug nearly impossible to kill. 

His foil is Sofia Falcone, the lost daughter of the Falcone crime family. Played by Soprano’s vet Cristin Milioti, she is the perfect foil to Farrell’s Cobb, a wrongly convicted young woman with revenge on her mind. She’s CLEARLY a hero doing evil things, creating a complex, Byronic antagonist for the ages. LeFranc’s writing team does a splendid job of building Sofia up, as they do with her enemy, Oz. This series is filled with the gray area between good and evil, making it a perfect allegory for the world we live in today. And it’s the reason it’s so goddamn good.

There was a time when bad guys were just that… bad guys. Their motivations were clear. They wanted to do something nefarious. This activity could range from the extreme of taking over the world, to something as innocuous as a bank robbery. But the why of their motivations was usually kept in the dark. For many years, the precursor to the MPAA was Hays Code, which prevented sympathetic villains from being depicted on screen, a case followed by the CCA (Comics Code Authority) for graphic novels. But all that changed in 1968 with the advent of the MPAA.

Sympathetic, and to a lesser degree Anti-Heroes, came out of the woodwork on the screen. The latter Byronic rogues were always there, redemption arcs or lessons in morality being the focus of many of the stories told surrounding them. But now we had pure villains being frosted over as our protagonists. Bonnie & Clyde. Butch & Sundance. Dog Day Afternoon. As we as a society started to better understand the implications of mental health, the era of villains motivated by psychological implications came into being. Now bad guys had a reason, and often that reason was a mental illness viewers and readers could empathize with. In recent years, this has been exemplified by two major villains on screen, Daenerys Targaryen from Game of Thrones, and Thanos in the MCU. 

Dany spent a decade on television building a rapport with viewers to the point where none of them could see the tells. They got so wrapped up in a  pretty girl, they failed to see the rot inside of her. Dani makes bad decision after bad decision throughout the series, and she never seems to learn from those mistakes, as she repeats them. She was long predicted to go mad, and she did just that as the series drew to a close, prompting fans who had fallen under her spell to cry foul. “Daenerys acted out of character, that was shite… blah blah blah.” 

By contrast, Thanos spent a lot of screen time over a few movies justifying his quest to wipe out half the universe to bring balance. Yet, in spite of people clearly understanding that killing half the universe is an evil thing, we still saw THANOS WAS RIGHT propaganda in the fandom. The difference between Thanos and Dani? We accepted him as a villain even if we had empathy for his cause. Dani, on the other hand, many viewers fell for her cult of personality… hook, line, and sinker.

The Penguin does a brilliant job of showing Oz’s scarred charisma and how it works to his advantage. He uses his ability to talk himself out of trouble. Oz Cobb is a working man’s Tony Soprano, and everything he does to make us bond with him, he does a fantastic job of flushing down the toilet in the finale. The series was brilliant, allowing you enough empathy to bond with Oz, then it ripped it away from you in the closing moments of the show. Much of what transpired was foreshadowed in the first episode, how evil and ambitious Oz Cobb actually is. But it’s not until the end of the series that we truly grasp it. If you watched this show and didn’t want to gut-stab Oz yourself by the time the credits rolled, I’m going to go out on a limb and say you need to see a doctor.

The Penguin will go down as one of the greatest limited run series of all time. It is up there with HBO’s THE WATCHMEN (surprisingly, another DC televised property!) and Lovecraft Country as one-and-done series that made an artistic impact on pop culture. There are rumbles of another Reeves-Batverse limited series coming in the future, and I’m on board for it sooner than later. As it stands, we are going to be waiting at least two years before we see The Batman 2, so bring us more limited series flushing out Gotham!