The Penguin Review - Gotham City Thrives Outside Of The Batman
When it was first announced that Colin Farrell would reprise his role as Oswald Cobblepot from 2022's The Batman in a streaming series, it was a scary proposition. After all, we've seen what happens when a popular superhero movie franchise continues its story on TV. We all saw how Marvel's Agents of SHIELD was not in any way a proper extension of the MCU. And don't even get us started about Inhumans. HBO's The Penguin, though, is almost an exact opposite of those shows, with a stellar cast and story that feel as though they were ripped directly from the world of The Batman, as opposed to tacked on after the fact.
With The Penguin, showrunner Lauren LeFranc and executive producer Matt Reeves have crafted a genuine extension of the world built in The Batman. The series also truly brings Gotham City to life in ways the movie wouldn't be able to. With eight episodes in Penguin's limited run, viewers not only learn more about Cobblepott--now named simply Oswald "Oz" Cobb for some unexplained reason--and what motivates him, but about Gotham, as a whole, in the aftermath of The Riddler's bombing of the seawall gates at the climax of the film.
This Gotham is suffering, as seemingly everyone but the wealthy elite has seen their lives destroyed by explosions and devastating flooding at the hands of Paul Dano's Riddler--who, like Batman, doesn't appear in the series. And it's in that space that the characters we meet (or already know, in the case of Oz) thrive.
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