SPOILER ALERT: This article contains major plot details from the finale of HBO’s“ The Penguin ,” now streaming on Max. In the pantheon of television spinoffs of blockbuster films, “The Penguin” is an extraordinary achievement. The eponymous villain may be no Batman, but as played so deliciously by Colin Farrell and amplified by some truly remarkable prosthetics, few watching the show have time to think about the cinematic universe from which he came, much less miss it.
Even so, showrunner Lauren LeFranc concludes the season with a shot of the Bat-Signal looming over the Gotham skyline; after Oswald Cobb vanquishes his mob-family competitors and installs himself as an ally of city legislators, it serves as an ominous reminder that moving up the city’s criminal food chain only places him more directly in the Caped Crusader’s crosshairs. “We were searching for an elegant way to hand off our show to ‘ The Batman ,’” LeFranc tells Variety . “It felt correct to have the Bat-Signal to undercut him and say, ‘You have not made it to the top yet.
You are living in this fantasy, but there’s a real larger world out there.’’” That final shot was just one of many subjects discussed with LeFranc, Farrell’s co-stars Cristin Milioti and Deirdre O’Connell and executive producers Matt Reeves and Dylan Clark about the eighth and final episode of “The Penguin.” The HBO spinoff from 2022’s “The Batman” — which Reeves co-wrote and directed, and star.