TL;DR – A phenomenal ending to one of the great surprises of 2024

Disclosure – I paid for the Binge service that viewed this series.

The Penguin Review –

To say that the DCU has had a bit of a bad run up until now might be putting it mildly. Indeed, even this year, they had the absolute disaster of Joker: Folie à Deux. So, I am not sure that I had much hope in a television spinoff of The Batman, which was not even in the DCU as it was made during the bifurcation period. However, I have never been gladder to be wrong. In today’s review, we will first look at the season finale and then the season as a whole.

So, to set the scene, things are coming to a head in Gotham as the war between Oswald “Oz” Cobb (Colin Farrell) and Sofia Gigante (Cristin Milioti) comes to an explosive climax. Now Oz has been captured by Sofia and has been brought to a final confrontation with Francis Cobb (Deirdre O’Connell). Because a profound revelation is about to drop after some prompting from Dr. Julian Rush (Theo Rossi). Now, from here, we will be looking at the episode and season as a whole, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead.

What this final episode did the best was highlighting the strengths of the rest of the season in a kind of victory lap. In this case, it was letting every character have a moment that takes your breath away. Cristin Milioti has had a lot of solid roles before, but here, she has taken things to the next level. She commands every scene she is in, and every moment, you are drawn to her and her performance. There are a lot of substantial moments for her in this final episode: the final confrontation, the opening interrogation, and even her epilogue. However, nothing speaks to the power of her performance more than as she methodically set her family’s house on fire. Every moment was captivating, every step calculated, and I could not stop watching.

Then we have Vic (Rhenzy Feliz), oh, poor Vic. If there was an MVP this season that came prepared each and every week, it was Rhenzy Feliz. You felt his indecision, his fear, and his growing strength. Watching him organise the coup of every major criminal organisation was terrific to watch. When he ended up being the only main character who did not know that Oz murdered his brothers to have his mum all to himself, I was concerned, and I was right to be so. While I think it was the right choice for the Penguin character to double down on his villainy. It was still the hardest part of the final episode to watch. My only hope is that maybe Oz didn’t do a good job, given his state of mind at the time.  

On that front, take a bow, Colin Farrell, because it is rare to see someone so wholly falls into a character that could not be more different to who they are. What he was doing in The Batman was interesting. However, in this series, I lost myself in his performance, so much so that it was almost tonal whiplash when I watched a video of him talking normally in the makeup. His rise in this episode, as Oz has nine lives, was a delight to watch until he killed those people who protected him. I know that part of the performance is the excellent prosthetic work, and those artisans should get all the awards. But Colin brings something magical to that role, which makes those moments like that icky final dance work as well as it did.    

The big surprise for me this season was the performance from Deirdre O’Connell as Francis Cobb. To begin with, you found what was an unfortunate woman who was slowly losing her faculties to a disease she didn’t understand. If you have had a relative who has suffered a similar disease, you know how difficult that could be. However, the more that we go on, the more of the character is revealed, and you see just what a damaged person she is. That moment where she almost gets her finger cut off because Oz refuses to acknowledge what everyone else already knows was a masterclass.   

When we look at the season as a whole, I find a series that didn’t have many weak links. Each moment was compelling because you could feel that the writers had been given carte blanche when writing this story, and they killed so many characters when a lesser show would have been too cautious to do so. Nearly every episode had at least one scene that made me gasp out loud because you never knew how it was going to play out. Cant’anni is a perfect example of this, as the entirety of that dinner scene to the credits had me sitting on the edge of my seat, not knowing how it would go.   

Then there is the production that is working in the same cinematic language of The Batmanwhile charting its own course. Part of this was a deliberate decision to set most of the action during the day as a visual counterpoint to Batman’s nighttime shenanigans. They also take what is still a television budget and make it look like the big screen. Part of that comes from some good location scouting that did a lot of the heavy lifting in the series. But it also comes down to the small details. The costumes help create the world, and every detail of them is perfect. Then there is the visual clutter of the world that makes it feel like a lived-in real place. You see this the most once they go back to Crown Heights. Oh, and respect to the musical score.  

Overall, I would say that the overall narrative of the season was a strong one because it was launched at 100 miles an hour right from the start. Killing off Carmine Falcone (Mark Strong) in The Batman created a power vacuum, and nature abhors a vacuum. That action started a series of dominoes that crashed down throughout the city of Gotham. You can chart the decisions that happen in this series from stemming from that one moment, and everything logically flows. There were no eye-roll moments, bar maybe how they got rid of Shohreh Aghdashloo    

In the end, do we recommend The Penguin: A Great Or Little Thing? Absolutely. This might be my series of the year when it is all said and done because it captured my attention from start to finish. The cast, the production, the story, all of it worked in tandem to produce something magical. I hope they can take that energy into the rest of their productions going forward.

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Twitter Here, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

Have you seen The Penguin yet ?, let us know what you thought in the comments below, feel free to share this review on any of the social medias and you can follow us Here. Check out all our past reviews and articles Here, and have a happy day.    

Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of The Penguin
Directed by – Jennifer Getzinger, Craig Zobel, Helen Shaver & Kevin Bray
Written by – Lauren LeFranc, Erika L. Johnson, Noelle Valdivia, John McCutcheon, Breannah Gibson, Shayne Ogbonna, Nick Towne & Vladimir Cvetko
Created by – Lauren LeFranc
Based On – Characters by Bob Kane & Bill Finger and The Batman by Matt Reeves & Peter Craig
Production/Distribution Companies – Acid and Tender Productions, 6th & Idaho Motion Picture Company, Dylan Clark Productions, Chapel Place Productions, Zobot Projects, DC Studios, Warner Bros. Television, HBO & Binge
Starring – Colin Farrell, Cristin Milioti, Rhenzy Feliz, Deirdre O’Connell, Carmen Ejogo, Con O’Neill, Theo Rossi, Clancy Brown, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Michael Zegen, Scott Cohen, Berto Colón, Michael Kelly & Mark Strong with Ryder Allen, Louis Cancelmi, Craig Walker, Jayme Lawson, Nico Triozzi, Owen Asztalos, Ade Otukoya, Emily Meade, François Chau, Rhys Coiro, Jared Abrahamson, Joshua Bitton, Ben Cook, James Madio, Nadine Malouf, Aleska Palladino, Marié Botha, Tess Soltau, Daniel J. Watts & David H. Holmes and  Robert Lee Leng, Johnny Hopkins, TY Hubbard, Adrinne Acevedo Lovette, Leon Addison Brown, Micah Peoples, David Vadim, Myles Humphus, Ruth Solorzano, David Grabowski-Clark, Kresh Novakovic, Finnerty Steeves, Jessie Pinnick, Aria Shahghasemi, Jupiter Genesis, Christopher J. Alfaro, Eugene Solfanelli, Eric Berryman, Alex Anagnostidis, Jose Guns Alves, Rocky Vega, Shirley Roeca, Jenny Heaton, Peter McDonald, Renée Stork, T. Ryder Smith, , Kenzie Grey, Hunter Emery, Mershad Torabi, Mister Fitzgerald & Syd Skidmore
Episodes Covered – After Hours, Inside Man, Bliss, Cant’anni, Homecoming, Gold Summit, Top Hat & A Great Or Little Thing