Spoilers follow for the The Penguin finale “ A Great or Little Thing ,” which premiered on HBO on November 10. As soon as Vic Aguilar told his boss Oz Cobb he considered the lumbering crime don his family, the orphaned teen was doomed. “You still think there’s good and bad, right and wrong? There ain’t.
There’s just this: survival,” Oz told the young man early in their partnership, and that scolding was a warning — both to Vic and to us. As a series sequel to Matt Reeves’s The Batman , The Penguin ’s intentions were clear: Build out Gotham and shade in Oz so that if he appears in the film sequel, The Batman: Part II , Colin Farrell’s ancillary villain would be fully realized. But the extent to which The Penguin obliterated Oz’s soul to get him ready for more screen time? Even if we should have expected it, man, did it hurt.
The Penguin has been clear about Oz’s cruelty from the start. In childhood , he killed his two brothers by locking them in an abandoned underground trolley station and leaving them to drown. In adulthood, he fails to care for his mentally ill mother, Francis, and lies to her about what happened to her sons, practically abandoning his last living relative to ascend to the top of Gotham’s crime ladder.
Think of how he describes the warring mobs he’s spent years working for or doubling-crossing: “All these fucks are related ...
Sixty years ago, two Sicilian brothers jizzed all over the toe of that boot.” Oz treats both litera.