One of the coolest aspects of the HBO series The Penguin is how it runs parallel to Matt Reeves’ Batman universe without having to directly mention it every other scene. We might see disciples of Paul Dano’s Riddler handing out leaflets, and of course the flood that happened at the end of The Batman continues to plague Gotham. But The Penguin very clearly is setting out to tell its own story of Oz Cobb (Colin Farrell), a player in the ongoing gang wars who causes problems for himself, and for the Falcones, in the series premiere.
Episode 2 of The Penguin dug a little deeper into the fascinating character of Sofia Falcone, played masterfully by Cristin Milioti (Palm Springs). Sofia, like many others, is caught up in the power vacuum caused by the murder of her father, crime boss Carmine Falcone (played on the show by Mark Strong). But Episode 2 also hinted at Sofia’s past, and her stint in Arkham for a series of murders that earned her the nickname The Hangman. In this episode, we meet Sofia’s doctor, Julian Rush. And the way that he hypnotizes her had me thinking about a different psychologist in the DC universe: Dr. Jonatan Crane, aka The Scarecrow.
Maybe I’m looking too deep for connections to the Batman lore in The Penguin. But following the release of The Penguin Episode 2, I asked the show’s director Craig Zobel if they ever had conversations about using Jonathan Crane instead of Julian Rush, and he told CinemaBlend:
Possibly there were. I think that the goal was that we wanted to tell a story that didn't… we didn't want to link it up in case Matt (Reeves) wanted to do something with that later. We wanted to talk about Arkham. There was many people working as doctors in Arkham, was the thought. So to be able to make him a standalone character just for the story, that felt like the smartest thing to do, really.
Totally understand. While The Penguin seems to be operating as a bridge between The Batman and Matt Reeves’ planned sequel, The Batman: Part 2, we don’t know many details about the plot of that movie, and we have a long way to wait until we see it in 2026. I think it would be unusual for Reeves to use a villain like The Scarecrow, who was an integral part of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, and separating a portrayal from Cillian Murphy’s work would be tough.
But the brief snippet in The Penguin Episode 2 that we see of Sofia in Arkham does serve as a very important appetizer for her backstory. So far, it has been made incredibly clear that Sofia’s relationship with her murdered brother, Alberto, is motivating her. She doesn’t yet know that Oz was responsible for Alberto’s death. But this will be something that eats at her.
So I asked Craig Zobel what he hoped to convey in this brief but very important scene. And he elaborated to CinemaBlend:
For one, just to tell the audience that you're going to spend time with Sofia on her own like this. I think it is important to know that (Sofia) is a person with a lot of trauma. And also just that – she's still a threat to (Oz). Because she genuinely is … unlike anyone else in the Falcone family, Alberto's death means something to her. I think to everyone else in the crime family, he was just Carmine's son. I don't know that he had a lot of allies in the family. But to her, he was truly an ally. So that's important to learn there.
This is something that will be explored in The Penguin as the season rolls along. So far, the show is off to an excellent start creatively, and it will only continue to chip away at the destructive force that is The Penguin in the remains of Gotham. Stay tuned.
