[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for The Penguin Season 1, Episode 8, “A Great or Little Thing.”]
The Penguin has come to a close and while it shut the curtain for some characters, it also set up potential moving forward in The Batman universe for others.
In the finale installment, “A Great or Little Thing,” the action picks back up in the past as Francis (Deirdre O’Connell) revisits a pivotal night in her memory where she was initially going to allow neighborhood mob boss Rex Calabrese (Louis Cancelmi) to kill her only remaining son after she came to the realization following the discovery of her two other sons in the sewers of Gotham.
While she was close to letting the hit on her only living son go through, she decided against it, using Oz (Colin Farrell) to propel herself in status as he climbed the mob ladder, eventually finding footing with the Falcones as viewers know. When the episode catches up to the present, Oz awakens to find himself tied up in the old club he almost spent his last night in all those years ago as a kid with his mother also tied up by Sofia (Cristin Milioti) and her men, among which are Dr. Rush (Theo Rossi).
HBO
There is a tense standoff as Sofia pushes for Oz to admit to his responsibility for his brothers’ deaths, but he is so resistant to telling the truth, that Oz almost allows his mother’s finger to be cut off. Angered, Francis calls out her son, and charges at Oz with a broken bottle, stabbing him in the gut. But it isn’t long before Francis falls over and goes unconscious from all of the events.
Panicking, Oz breaks free from his restraints and manages to get away from Sofia, shooting many of her men in the process. Once Francis is dropped off at the hotel, Victor (Rhenzy Feliz) meets his boss as they devise a new plan. Ultimately, Victor’s observant ways sway Oz to appeal to the underdogs, cutting a deal with the underlings of various mob families.
While Oz pins the latest crimes and destruction of Gotham on Sofia, this happens just moments before he is “kidnapped” by Mr. Zhao (François Chau) who was promised the keys to the former Falcone empire if he hunted The Penguin down. Delivering Oz at a hangar where Sofia plans to make her escape and clean break from Gotham, the underlings turn on Mr. Zhao, putting Sofia in Oz’s clutches.
HBO
In the end, he doesn’t kill his former employer’s daughter, instead, she’s left by the waterside for the police to collect her and send her back to Arkham. But Oz’s stealthy moves are almost for nothing when he realizes his mother has suffered a stroke and is in a vegetative state, leading to a very emotional and teary victory.
Commiserating over a drink by the water, Oz and Victor talk about the future, and when the new big shot tells his mentee that he can’t go with him to the next step, Victor doesn’t quite understand. At this point, Oz has begun to reach for the boy’s throat, and as Victor begs to be let go with gasping breaths, Oz explains calmly that family is essentially a weakness, but assures the cooling corpse that all the work he did wasn’t for nothing.
The closing moments find Oz living in a penthouse apartment, dripping in fine threads as he checks in on a bed-ridden Francis and joins Eve (Carmen Ejogo) in the living room where she’s made up to resemble Francis from when Oz was younger. Oz seeks validation and comforting words from Eve in a sick and twisted Oedipal dynamic as the duo dances. Outside the bat signal flashes, but Bruce Wayne (Robert Pattinson) is unseen.
HBO
Instead, fans got a little hint at a potential crossover between Sofia and her half-sister Selina Kyle (Zoë Kravitz) as “The Hangman” got a letter in Arkham from the friendly feline-inclined Kyle.
When it comes to Victor’s heartbreaking demise, Feliz tells TV Insider, “[Victor] believes in the fact that Oz is more than just a guy that’s selling drugs. It’s more than that. And he says that as much in the episode as well. And so… I think that just makes that ultimate turn all the more tragic because I think he genuinely does have a love for Oz.”
Although viewers may have a hard time coping with the killing, it does serve Oz’s greater villain story as he rises in the ranks of Gotham’s bad guy roster. After all, he is set to make a return in The Batman sequel. Still, Feliz adds, “I think [Oz] believes in the underdog. I think he has a genuine belief in it. Will he abide by it if it means that it’s going to hurt him? I don’t think so.”
Despite the character’s choice, shooting the death wasn’t easy for Farrell who admits, of the lengths Oz goes to in this episode, “It’s pretty dark stuff.” Recalling the night that showrunner Lauren LeFranc explained the conclusion of the show’s finale episode, Farrell jokes about the wild places it goes, “I was like, did HBO read this s**t?” He adds, “It’s really bold stuff… [and] in the world of psychopathy that Oz finally lands in… I think it’s all justifiable in that twisted world.”
As for the lengths Oz went to preserve his upward climb, LeFranc notes, “It was hard to write and hard to shoot, and watching Colin and Renzy perform it was just something else. But it did feel essential.”
See what else they have to say about The Penguin finale, as well as what Milioti and executive producers Matt Reeves and Dylan Clark have to say about Sofia’s important letter from Selina in the full video interview, above. And let us know what you thought of the episode in the comments section, below.
The Penguin, Streaming now, Max
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