Talking to Digital Spy, Reeves confirms that Batman’s absence in the show was due to the Dark Knight going through an existential crisis after his clash with the Riddler. “This was a time of great turmoil in the city, it’s literally the week after what happened… Much of the city is in desperation, so police can’t get everywhere, there’s crime everywhere, it’s a very, very dangerous time,” Reeves says, “[Batman’s] out there trying to grapple with the aftermath of everything that happened, which to some degree he blames himself for.”

Reeves confirmed by the time the sequel starts, Bruce would find it “very hard to be Batman”. 

From a practical standpoint, Reeves and Penguin showrunner Lauren LeFranc have confirmed that they couldn’t include Batman in the story without him overshadowing several of the main players including Oz and Sofia. While there were discussions of how they could get him to appear, they ultimately decided on just flashing the Batsignal at the very end of the first season.

The series has undoubtedly had a stellar run, but just like HBO’s Watchmen, a second season isn’t going to happen unless Reeves and LeFranc find a story worth telling with the character. If anything, a second season could follow after the events of The Batman Part II, but I would rather just shift the focus on another Gotham villain—maybe a side character introduced in Part II.

For now, The Batman Part II is aiming for a release sometime in 2026. Catch the complete Penguin now streaming on Max.

Probably one of the biggest moments in the series was Oz killing his protégé Vic, who he had been bringing up throughout the entire season. But despite Vic’s loyalty, it seems that Oz had grown attached to him—resulting to him… killing Vic?

It’s definitely one of the worst things that Oz has done in the show, but a lot of fans think that it was all set up from the beginning. Talking to Entertainment Weekly, The Batman director Matt Reeves explained:

“It’s not about how he’s killing Vic because he thinks Vic failed him, or someone manipulated him… He’s killing him because he can’t bear the fact that he actually does have that closeness with this kid, because that makes him weak. He’s basically trying to strangle his vulnerability.” 

Every fans’ jaw had collectively dropped when Oz got rid of Vic in the last few minutes of the show; but it was admittedly impressive how the series was able to make Oz likeable from the beginning only to have it slowly revealed that he was a sad psychopath toward the final episodes.

We don’t know what else is in store for Oz in this timeline, but it does seem he’s going to be having some political aspirations. Some speculate that he could end up being Gotham’s mayor by the third movie, but we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.

In the meantime, fans can check out the complete season of The Penguin now streaming on Max.

With so many loose ends left in the finale, The Batman director Matt Reeves has shared that they are currently exploring the possibility of there being a Penguin Season 2. Talking to Entertainment Weekly, Reeves confirms:

“What’s really important is that we earn it. The idea of revisiting means that we have to keep that same bar. I know that none of us wants to go back and just do more. We want to go back and do something great … We do believe that there’s going to be something in there, but it’s just beginning. It’s exciting though.”

So far, no details have been revealed of a follow-up season for The Penguin, but it has been confirmed that Farrell will be reprising the role for The Batman Part II. With the series having him end up on top of the gangs, it’s possible that the second movie could have him pursuing some kind of political career.

With Farrell said to have signed up for three movies, there could be a very significant arc for him to play down the line. While several Batman villains could definitely get the spotlight, it’s possible that Oz could represent the ‘regular’ criminals in Gotham as compared to the more fantastical rogues like Mr. Freeze or even the Joker.

For now, everyone is still just reveling on how The Penguin was pulled off. There’s now a bar for DC spinoffs, and fans are hopeful Reeves and showrunner Lauren LeFranc have more up their sleeves when it comes to this version of Gotham City.

Catch the complete Penguin miniseries now streaming on Max.

According to the Marvelvision Podcast (via World of Reel) Keoghan is currently in talks to star in his own Max series as the Clown Prince of Crime. The show is said to be aiming to come out after the release of The Batman Part II and be a build-up for Part III —to which the Joker will be the main villain.

In the movie, Keoghan’s Joker only appears for a short while near the end and talks to Riddler for a bit; but in the original cut of the film, Batman actually comes to Joker in Silence of the Lambs-fashion, asking him to help profile the Riddler and find out his modus. Check this out:

We don’t know exactly what Reeves planned to do with this Joker, but he has a completely different origin compared to other iterations. This time around, this Joker is just said to have been born with a deformity that gives him a permanent smile, and it’s his disturbing features that led others to cast him to be a social outcast.

It’s unclear how much of this scene is considered canon, but it’s implied that Batman already had a previous tussle with him, and their first onscreen clash could be their big rematch.

Seeing how great The Penguin turned out, I’m interested to see how a Joker series could be received. Sure the Joker movie made a lot, but this is a completely different take and would have more space to get fleshed out.

Let’s just hope that Reeves and his writers know what they’re doing.

For now, catch The Penguin streaming on Max every Sunday night.

Talking to Andy Serkis for InterviewMagazine, Reeves confirms:

“We have been talking, and it’s exciting because people are now embracing the show. My fantasy is coming into being, which is very exciting, and HBO has been incredibly supportive from the beginning. Now to see that the show is being embraced is really, really exciting. We have been talking about doing other shows. I wanted to make sure that we didn’t do the origin tale, which so many of the other series have done. I think the idea of being able to put a lens on these characters is a really exciting idea.”

Admittedly, The Penguin is only one of several spinoff ideas that were planned, but the others weren’t greenlit. One series was supposed to focus on the cops at Gotham City PD, and another one was meant to focus on the inmates at Arkham Asylum. Reeves continues:

“[The Penguin is] about cities and their dysfunction and the world and its dysfunction, which is what Batman stories are all about. They’re all about Gotham being a place that should be better. And you can have the experience of this almost novelistic epic crime saga, but you also just get these separate experiences. They have their own dramatic value. So Oz’s story is Oz’s story, and the idea is to do these other stories in the same way.”

We don’t know which new villains could be showing up to tackle Battinson soon, but Mr. Freeze is one that fans have been clamoring for. For a while there was a rumor that Clayface was being eyed as a villain, but no official update has been made.

At least we know that Barry Keoghan’s Joker exists in this universe somewhere.

Catch The Penguin Sunday nights on Max.

According to scooper @MyTimeToShineH (via ComicBookMovie), Gigante (Sofia) may have a large role to play in The Batman Part II. We don’t have any details, but with her killing the Falcones and attempting a team-up with the Maronis, she could very well be the next Kingpin of Gotham—not unless Oz Cobb has anything to say about it.

Admittedly, Sofia’s part has been expanded for this series, which is great since that leaves a lot of room to expand the character without too many comic book nerds getting angry at changes. Either way, Milioti has been stunning ever since the character was first introduced, to the eventual reveal of her backstory and takeover of the family.

At this point, a lot of fans don’t know if they should be even rooting for Oz anymore. Sure Gigante’s Sofia is violent, but she’s kind of the victim to the circumstances men put her in (specifically Oz and her father). Oz, on the other hand, just looks to be clawing his way to the top in some misunderstood belief that it will get his mother’s approval and respect.

Though Oz is admittedly charming and a little scrappy, some believe that he’ll be truly unlikeable by the time the seasons ends. We don’t know what he’ll do, but my fingers are definitely crossed that Sofia makes it out alive.

Catch new episodes of The Penguin Sunday nights on Max.

While this looks like a ‘case closed’ for who the identity of The Hangman is, a theory online posits that The Hangman’s true identity is not of Carmine, but Sofia’s dead brother Alberto Falcone. @RichardOcelot posts his thread:

That episode made it a deliberate point to not show where young Alberto was during the mum's death flashback.
And when he's talking with Sofia about it as an adult he's vague and brushes it off. It didn't show how that affected him.

— Richard (@RichardOcelot) October 14, 2024

Fans had been speculating that Carmine had been the killer for a while, especially since he had tried to choke out Catwoman in The Batman. Some guessed that this was his preferred method of eliminating people and he just pinned the murders on Sofia when the cops started investigating.

The thread, however, claims that Carmine could be a red herring, and it’s revealed that Alberto was actually the one committing the murders. Sure, Carmine may have been the one to kill Sofia’s mother, but the theory suggests that Al saw the whole thing happen as a child, and he started emulating his father in adulthood.

The evidence is actually there in the episode. Alberto is seemingly stressed after Sofia’s interaction with the reporter, suggesting that someone tipped him off about the investigation. It also seems that Carmine only kills people as a means to an end; it wouldn’t have made sense for him to just keep murdering women from the same place like a serial killer.

The theory suggests that Alberto was the one doing the murders, Carmine knew and helped cover it up; and when Sofia put it together that her mother was murdered, it just seemed easier to silence her altogether and send her to Arkham.

It’s also worth noting that Alberto in the comics is an actual serial killer (The Holiday Killer from Batman: The Long Halloween), and the show could be sticking to that backstory; they were just hoping for a different reveal.

While this does seem too convoluted at this point, the thread does suggest that Oz will figure out this information and use it as leverage with Sofia—who is now on a full-on rampage, killing her family and keeping Viti in her pocket.

Of course, this is all just a theory for now, but I did think it was pretty well thought out, and not impossible.

Catch The Penguin every Sunday on Max.

Check this out:

It takes about three hours of work to make transform Farrell into Oz Cobb. Besides the heavy facial scarring—especially the nasty gash that Oz has near his mouth—the shape of the nose was actually meant to resemble a beak. What’s also cool is that the eyebrows were also changes to resemble that of an actual bird—and also make Oz look angrier even when he’s neutral.

A huge difference in the make-up was that Farrell actually shaved his head bald for The Batman, saving the make-up artists a lot of time with the wig. For the series though, Farrell needed to keep his hair long for projects, so the team had to hid his hair under a bald cap—which still looks fine when you see the final product.

Farrell absolutely disappears with the full look, and everyone is still pretty amazed that it’s actually him playing the part of Oz. The Penguin may only run for one season, but so far, everyone is loving this ride.

It should be some consolation for the fans who didn’t like Joker: Folie a Deux too much.

Catch new episodes of The Penguin every Sunday night on Max.

A new featurette gives us a good look at the themes of the series, and the major players that Oz (Colin Farrell) are going to be going up against now that there’s a power vacuum left by the death of Carmine Falcone. Check this out:

Matt Reeves says about the series, “To me what was very important is this idea of the high and the low; the idea of the parts of the city that are insulated, and then the people who are struggling just day to day to get by. The Penguin is really looking at the profound corruption of Gotham. It’s kind of a dark American dream story, really.”

Multiple people have been comparing The Penguin to HBO’s hit series The Sopranos, and think this has become a new trend for comic book movies where they take a cult auteur classic and just give it a comic book twist. Probably the most glaring example of this is Joker which a lot of people say is just Scorsese’s King of Comedy and Taxi Driver but with a Batman flavouring.

Either way, The Penguin does look pretty interesting. Farrell has a very different take on the character, and it would be fun to see just exactly what Batman is missing when it comes to protecting Gotham. Not only do we have Oz in the spotlight, but the character of Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti) also looks like she can cause a lot of chaos, and it would be fantastic if she was able to do what very few shows do and become a mainstay in the comics depending on how good her character will be on this show.

The Penguin premieres on Max on Sept. 19.

Check this out:

The dragons were just the beginning. New stories, fresh chapters. It’s all coming soon to Max. Get excited for the upcoming HBO Original Series The Penguin, Dune: Prophecy, The Franchise, It: Welcome to Derry, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, and more.

New seasons of the HBO Original Series The White Lotus, The Last of Us, and The Gilded Age are coming soon, plus new seasons of Max Original Series And Just Like That, Sex Lives of College Girls, and more.

We’ve been getting small updates on series like the Dune spinoff, but this is the first time we’re getting a look at the IT prequel which is expected to feature Billy Skargard as Pennywise the Clown. There’s also a short clip of a show called The Franchise which is supposed to be a parody on a big studio like Marvel trying to run one of the most lucrative box office IPs for as long as it can.

Though there are a lot of new original shows incoming, fans also can’t wait for follow-ups to existing series like The White Lotus, The Gilded Age, and The Last of Us. Too bad Euphoria fans still don’t know when they’ll get a third season; hopefully Sam Levinson and Zendaya will be able to figure things out soon, because a lot of the cast—Jacob Elordi, Hunter Schafer, and Sydney Sweeney specifically—could be going on to bigger things.

Max is now available in select countries.

The series is set to premiere this September, but even now a lot of fans are wondering just where this series will be when it comes to the continuity of the original film.

As it turns out, Penguin will be the direct bridge between both Batman films; and it will serve as a build-up to the sequel. Talking to Entertainment Weekly, showrunner Lauren LeFranc explains, “We are the bridge between the two films… We’re going almost directly into the second film Matt has planned.”

If you’ve watched the latest teaser for Penguin, it’s been revealed that the events of the series only took place a few weeks after The Batman. We don’t know where things will end, but it’s possible that the time skip will be a lot shorter by the time Battinson will be back on the big screen.

As for the character of Oz Cobblepot, The Batman did introduce him as a kind of henchman for Falcone, but by the end of the film, Falcone is gone, and this series will have Oz navigating the power vacuum that Falcone has left behind.

Interestingly enough, it also looks like Falcone’s daughter Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti) is going to be a major player in the series. As it turns out, she’s a former Arkham patient, and it looks like she has her own kind of crazy to bring to the table. Farrell describes Sofia and Oz, “They’re two survivalists who’ve been immersed in worlds of duplicity and defeat and violence… They’re very suspicious. They also have a very personally connected backstory.”

Watch out for The Penguin when it hits HBO this September.

This year will see the release of the spinoff The Penguin starring Colin Farrel, and we have a new teaser to give us a look at this Sopranos-meets-comic-book-movies property. Check this out:

Following the events of “The Batman,” Oswald Cobblepot, a.k.a. The Penguin, makes a play to seize the reins of the crime world in Gotham.

So far, the only main Batman rogue we know is coming back is the Penguin himself, but the series will also feature some more obscure characters including Salvatore Maroni (Clancy Brown), Falcone’s nephew Johnny Vitti (Michael Kelly), and Falcone’s daughter Sofia (Cristin Milioti).

With Cobblepot being a lead henchman when we meet him in The Batman, he’s expected to be in a higher place in the sequel, and this series is going to be there to fill in the gaps—kind of like the function of every Disney+ Star Wars series.

Fans are hoping we’ll get to see some more familiar characters from the Batman mythos, but for now it’s too early to tell. Would it be so hard to have a new Jonathan Crane running Arkham?  Maybe he could be a therapist for the mob like Jennifer Melfi from The Sopranos?

With a release set for later in the year, we’ll probably have to wait a few more months for some bigger reveals.

The Penguin is expected to premiere on Max sometime this fall.

The show is set to premiere sometime next year, and we have a new look at Colin Farrell in costume thanks to Empire. Check this out:

According to Empire, the show is going to take place days after the events of The Batman, and it will be exploring Cobblepot’s rise as the absence of Falcone leaves a power vacuum among the criminals of Gotham.

Though Cobblepot wasn’t really high up the rung, he was still pretty well-connected, and some fans think we could be watching a Sopranos-inspired series with Penguin taking on the central role as Gotham’s Tony Soprano.

With spinoffs of course, some are wondering which characters from The Batman could show up in the series. While Batman himself is at the top of everyone’s lists, I think it’s a safer bet to think that Jeffrey Wright’s Jim Gordon could show up.

On the other hand, it would be fantastic if we could get the introduction of other villains from the Batman lore in the series. Killer Croc could easily be a high-level hitman in the show, or maybe an alternate version of Deadshot. They can even set up some baddies for the upcoming Batman II—depending on whatever Matt Reeves is planning.

No specific release date has been set for The Penguin, but the show is expected to premiere early 2024 on Max.

Talking to Variety, DeVito explains, “Colin Farrell is the Penguin now…He’s a brilliant actor. I love him. He’s a good friend. He’s a good man… I loved seeing him as the Penguin. I thought he was great,” DeVito also joked, “He reminds me of a couple of my relatives back in Jersey.”

Though DeVito’s Penguin was supposed to be more like a grotesque animal-man that eats raw fish and scares people, Farrell’s Penguin is played like a modern-day mobster, with a lot of influence from Tony Soprano from The Sopranos. He still gets the Penguin moniker from his facial scars and limp, but besides that, it’s a completely different take from DeVito’s version.

Though The Batman wasn’t an origin story for Robert Pattinson’s Caped Crusader, it did act as a sort of origin for his villains. Though Cobblepot was only a high-ranking goon in the film, we’re expected to watch him rise through the ranks, now that Carmine Falcone is out of the way.

Hopefully we get a new trailer soon, because the in-production teaser was pretty great.

The Penguin is expected to debut on HBO Max sometime in 2024.

Replying to a post about the rumor on Twitter, Gunn confirms that there isn’t a rights issue when it comes to Batman appearing in The Penguin:

https://twitter.com/JamesGunn/status/1636082885198487552

With WB seemingly taking every precaution they can with the character, fans weren’t expecting him to have a large role in the series. If anything, a Bruce Wayne cameo would seem to have perfectly sufficed.

Take not, just because Gunn confirmed that there wasn’t any legal issue, doesn’t mean that Pattinson could show up in the series as well. Though it would be great to have some kind of update on his Batman before the release of the second film, I think his appearance in the show could distract from the story of the main character, which is supposed to be Oz Cobblepot.

Until the series comes out, we’ll just have to wait and see. For now, production was said to have already begun, and we have Penguin sharing scenes with whoever is left of the Falcone crime family. I’m just hoping we get to see more of Gotham’s underworld if Batman isn’t going to be showing up.

No release date has been set for the Penguin series on HBO Max.

These photos come from The Daily Mail UK (via @thebatfilm):

New looks at Colin Farrell as The Penguin for The Batman spin-off series!

(via: @DailyMailUK) pic.twitter.com/q3DIzuNDSC

— The Art of The Batman (@thebatfilm) March 6, 2023

We don’t have full idea of what the plot of the series is going to be, but we know that we’re going to be watching Cobblepot’s rise to power after the power vacuum was left with the death of Falcone.

Other stars in the show include Clancy Brown, Cristin Milioti and Michael Kelly. There is also a rumor going around that Robert Pattinson’s Batman will appear for at least one episode.

While we can get the general broad strokes of where the series could go, I am pretty interested in figuring out what kind of tone the series will go for, especially with the mood that The Batman delivered. I’m imagining Cobblepot will be played like a new version of Tony Soprano, but I’m willing to let the show surprise me with what they have in store.

I’m just hoping we get to see some other Batman villains that could have potential to have larger roles in the future films. Killer Croc as a henchman? How about a new take on Scarecrow or Mr. Freeze?

No release date has been set for The Penguin, but it’s possible we could get a premiere sometime early 2024.

Talking to Jake’s Takes (via ComicBookMovie), Farrell revealed that he wanted to have a scene where his Penguin is smoking. He says, “I fought valiantly for a cigar… I even said at one stage ‘can I have it unlit’ and they were like, ‘no.’” He goes on to say that the studio didn’t want any kids starting to smoke because they would watch him doing it.

If anything, Farrell reveals that his version of the Penguin still has a ways to go before he becomes one of Batman’s most formidable villains. In the film, he’s actually more of an underling of crime boss Carmine Falcone (John Turturro).  Farrell continues:

“The Oz that we meet hasn’t embodied the energy of the Penguin that we recognize from the source comics and from previous films… so I’ll see if it goes again. I’d love to explore it because he’s not an underboss, he’s not a boss, he’s just a soldier of Falcone at this stage. But he has great ambition and dreams of doing big, big things.”

We don’t know how Penguin’s role will look next to the Riddler (Paul Dano), but you can catch them both when The Batman premieres on March 4.