Macall Polay/HBO
Warning: This article contains major spoilers for the season finale of “The Penguin.”
Still reeling from the most shocking moment from the “Penguin” finale? We are, too. In a merciless act that cemented Colin Farrell’s Oswald Cobb/Penguin as a villain with no chance for redemption, the ambitious mobster landed at the top of Gotham City’s criminal food chain for good by committing as horrific a murder as you’ll ever see. This wasn’t the first time he’d ever killed anyone, of course, seeing how he’d orchestrated the deaths of his own brothers as a mere child. But given how closely he and his surprisingly helpful sidekick Victor Aguilar (Rhenzy Feliz) had grown throughout the series, killing the poor kid for no reason other than showing a bit too much emotional vulnerability was as villainous as it gets.
No wonder that left a bitter taste in the mouths of viewers, leaving many to wonder exactly why showrunner Lauren LeFranc decided to end Victor’s arc in such brutal fashion. The further we get from the finale, however, the more fans have come to embrace the series as one of the best comic book shows in recent years — Victor’s surprise fate notwithstanding. Still, the creative team has proven to be very forthcoming about the writing process and, in this case, the paths not taken. According to “The Batman” director Matt Reeves (who also was an executive producer on “The Penguin”), LeFranc initially described a different endpoint for Victor. He was always doomed to die, mind you, but the original circumstances wouldn’t have unfolded in quite the same way.
Originally, Sophia Falcone would’ve manipulated Oz into killing Victor
Macall Polay/HBO
While the broad strokes of “The Penguin” had been figured out well in advance, back when Lauren LeFranc first pitched her outline for the series to Matt Reeves, certain aspects ended up evolving over the course of the writing process. In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Reeves dropped an interesting nugget about how LeFranc first described Victor’s death. In the finale, Oz’s choice is presented entirely as his own. The moment Vic makes the fatal mistake of describing his boss as “family” and exposing his own sentimentality, the Penguin acts impulsively to snuff out this weakness and take him out of the picture entirely. Originally, however, this death would’ve been even more tragic, as the result of Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti) turning friends into foes. As Reeves explained:
“The one thing that was slightly different was [regarding how] Vic died. In the initial pitch, she envisioned how Vic was supposed to protect [Oz’s mom] Francis, and that had gone wrong. And in the struggle between Sofia and Oz, that Sofia was able to manipulate things in such a way that she turned Oz against Vic. And that would be this tragic thing.”
Ultimately, LeFranc opted for an ending that emphasized the depths of Oz’s depravity — something that would’ve felt slightly watered down if he’d simply been manipulated by Sofia. Complimenting this initial idea as one that “sounded great,” Reeves went on to describe how LeFranc ended up improving on this:
“But then, as we got deeper and deeper in, and she wrote the scene, she had changed her conception slightly, but in a critical way that I think made it even more powerful – an idea that was truly horrendous, but also profoundly tragic, which was that Oz needed to kill Victor because he couldn’t bear that level of vulnerability.”
In order to become the Penguin, all roads were always leading to Oz’s greatest act of villainy. You can relive Victor’s tragic end and Oz’s rise all over again, as every episode of “The Penguin” is now streaming on Max.