Thanks in large part to James Gunn and Peter Safran’s creative initiatives happening at DC Studios, fans can look forward to plenty of upcoming DC TV shows, from the horror-comedy teamwork of Creature Commandos to the murder-mystery Lanterns and so on. But outside of that eventually connected universe exists Colin Farrell’s Oz Cobb, the entrepreneurial thug at the heart of HBO’s brilliant crime drama The Penguin, and fans are very curious to know if he’ll be donning the prosthetics again for Season 2.
Quite honestly, I always believed The Penguin would exist solely as a limited series to serve as a wildly entertaining bridge of sorts between Matt Reeves’ first Caped Crusader movie and the upcoming sequel The Batman: Part II. Maybe that was just my pessimistic side being intimidated by the long waits between projects, combined with the number of other Gotham-set projects that were developed and then shelved.
While I’ve no direct clue what Reeves’ ultimate goals have always been, he’s often understandably come across as strategically cautious when talking about future Batman projects outside of James Gunn’s DCU. And he didn’t pull a 360 or anything, but did let a little light shine into the dark when talking to Andy Serkis about The Penguin for Interview Magazine. When asked if “they’ll do The Penguin” or focus on another element in Gotham City, Reeves replied with:
Yeah. 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.
Obviously we can’t get too excited about anything just yet, since it’s not like the filmmaker brought out a cake with “Season 2 Is Happening” written in purple icing. And Reeves technically could have been speaking specifically about one of those “other” projects he’s had in mind. But I’d like to think he would have made that delineation if there was one to make, especially since fans are already aware of the Arkham Asylum series that was developed and then canceled earlier this year.
As such, let's gleefully bank on the fact that The Penguin is now in contention for a second season, and that all of the main cast members are still alive to return for it after the season finale. I'm less optimistic about that, all things considered, but there's no way Oz is getting bodied, and everyone else is technically expendable at that point.
Matt Reeves continued, speaking to the importance of expanding and exploring pockets of Gotham City for audiences to temporarily hole up in to spend time with other characters from this deep bat-mythos. In his words:
It’s 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.
As loose a tie as it may be, I'm going to hold on tightly to the fact that he said "Oz's story IS Oz's story," and didn't use the past tense of the verb.
True, Colin Farrell has spoken quite a bit about how miserable he became wearing Oz’s prosthetics during production, which was cause for concern that he may not want to go down that same troublesome path to lead another episodic season. That said, he was also still very grateful at the time to hold such a prestigious role, and as Reeves implied, the fact that the show has earned a constant train of praise for the past two months has to be gratifying. Not to mention all of the early Emmys talk.
The Penguin's finale is set to air on HBO on Sunday, November 10 at 9:00 p.m. ET.
