After Hours
Following the events of The Batman, Gotham City’s underworld is being overrun. Carmine Falcone may be dead, but it’s time for a new villain to take over. Enter Oswald Cobb, the mobster best known as the Penguin plans to make his mark in Gotham.
Power Vacuum
Carmine Falcone’s death may have a limited impact on the affluent citizens of Gotham, but the seedy underbelly of one of the most crime-ridden fictional cities has gotten seedier. The series picks up exactly where The Batman ended, with Cobb looking over the city before we find him trying to find blackmail material for the Falcones. He gets caught by the new boss, Carmine’s son, Alberto Falcone. Cobb wants to be in charge, but he knows Alberto presents a different problem than Carmine.
Cobb wants Alberto to be revered instead of feared, but Alberto likes the life his father built and doesn’t want to be the mob boss that Cobb presents. Alberto mocks Cobb once he realizes the Penguin wants that life for himself. This ends up being a grave mistake that results in Alberto Falcone meeting a very untimely end.
Sophia Falcone
With Carmine dead and Alberto missing (also dead, but the family hasn’t confirmed that yet), the last remaining Falcone, Sophia, gets out of Arkham. Her presence puts a new set of issues in front of the Penguin. Played by Cristin Miliotti (the titular mother from How I Met Your Mother), she is known as the Hangman, the Falcones’ resident serial killer. Sophia on the loose means Oswald Cobb must go to great lengths to protect the only woman he loves, his own mother.
Betraying the Falcones
Cobb knows to truly take over, he has to continue pitting crime families against each other. He offers his services to Salvatore Maroni who makes it clear he doesn’t want an inside man for the Falcones, because Cobb isn’t loyal. The Penguin manages to shake that resolve by returning Maroni’s ring. A ring that Carmine Falcone took from him and Alberto had inherited following Carmine’s death. Alberto was wearing the ring when he ran into Cobb and foolishly told him the ring belonged to Maroni. Cobb made sure to take it off Alberto’s dead body.
Sophia has her goons take Cobb hostage as he tries to return to his pad, because a child he terrorized the night he killed Alberto has pinpointed him as a traitor. Cobb lies his way out of it and Sophia kills the child. However, Cobb is only saved by a car crashing through the Falcone’s greenhouse. That car has Alberto’s dead body in the trunk causing her to lose control and Cobb to just begin laughing to himself. The car has the word “Payback” carved into it, so it looks like Salvatore Maroni ordered a hit on Alberto.
Penguin’s sidekick
The car was a present from Victor Aguilar, a kid from the same side of the tracks as Cobb who the Penguin has taken under his wing. He is training Victor to be more like him, and while that backfires a little bit in the premiere because Victor is scared to die, the teen is also hungry to prove himself. The Penguin appears to have the skills to be an excellent mentor, he’s just also evil which means he’s training Victor to behave badly.
Rating
Colin Farrell plays the Penguin with the right amount of sincere and sinister to be both charming and threatening. Burgess Meredith played the character campy. Danny Devito played the character like an actual penguin. And Robin Lord Taylor played him like a wannabe crime boss who was in over his head. But Farrell plays him like a true villain that could be one of Batman’s greatest foes.
With DC rebooting its movie universe to get away from the mediocre fare of the DCEU, especially Zack Snyder’s putrid efforts, it’s good to see the Batman characters be grittier. Matt Reeves nailed the Caped Crusader and his Rogues Gallery in The Batman, and it looks like The Penguin will be able to continue carrying that torch.
Check out The Penguin exclusively on Max.
Article Written By: Jeremy Brown for Stelmach Brown Media 2024
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