The Penguin Season 1 finale review: Colin Farrell finds the wizard in Oz

A still from ‘The Penguin’ Season 1
| Photo Credit: @StreamOnMax/YouTube

‘A Great or Little Thing’, the terribly beautiful title for the final episode of The Penguin, is a line from Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’. In the poem, while “a voice behind me whispered low, That fellow’s got to swing”, is oft quoted, it is the line ‘The man had killed the thing he loved’ that succinctly encapsulates the triumph and tragedy that is Oswald “Oz” Cobb (Colin Farrell).

At the end of episode 7, ‘Top Hat’, mob boss, Sal Maroni (Clancy Brown) dies of a heart attack in Oz’s underground drug lab at Crown Point, while Sofia (Cristin Milioti) has kidnapped Oz’s mum, Francis (Deirdre O’Connell). At the trade-off — Francis for all of Oz’s drug supply, Sofia blows up the lab killing all of Oz’s crew and capturing Oz.

Bringing Oz face to face with his mum and his first crime, he still clings to his version of the truth. Managing to escape, Oz gets Francis, who has suffered a stroke, to hospital, patches himself up and tells the corrupt councilman Hady, (Rhys Coiro) how the story could be spun to his (Hady’s) benefit.

Though Sofia considers leaving the city and the journey of vengeance she visited on her family for having her committed at Arkham and Oz for betraying her, her doctor, Rush (Theo Rossi) convinces her of the sweet delights of revenge. She declares an open season on Oz. She promises the one who brings her Oz, wealth, power and connections, as she is leaving Gotham and its crime behind. With all the mob bosses baying for his blood, Oz’s lieutenant, Vic (Rhenzy Feliz) desperately scrambles for a plan.

The dark, twisted ending, with no winners and the Bat-Signal offering a slim sliver of hope as well as a link to Matt Reeves’ The Batman – Part II, is a sombre conclusion to eight hours of vicious warfare between the two crime families — the Falcones and Maronis. Looking at The Penguin as a bridge between the two Robert Pattinson Batman films would be a great disservice to the show.

The Penguin is more gangster epic in the Catholic shades of Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola or Brian De Palma, than a comic book villain origin story. There are the main characters with their tragic flaws, loving their people to death, the operatic blood baths, the internecine struggle for power, the fierce love and rivalry between siblings, parents and children, the gracious houses with gleaming cutlery and tables weighed down with food, contrasting with decrepit houses where people starve without heat or power.

Colin Farrell is the twisted heart of The Penguin, and his performance cannot be dimmed by the best prosthetics in the world. Through the scars and the misshapen gold tooth, Farrell projects the little lost boy or the coldly ambitious soulless killer through the sloe-black eyes.

Matching him step for step in this dance of dragons is Cristin Milioti’s Sofia. She is the hero/anti-hero in Oz’s Tony Montana-like rise to the top. She is the Red Queen with her long, chandelier earrings, dramatic eye makeup, short dresses in primary colours, tights and towering Louboutins.

She plays all the men, who think they have the power while it is she who holds the whip hand. We almost want her to win. Apart from the obvious power struggle between the warring crime lords, there is an underground one fought by the women consigned to “mad women in the attics” status by the men in their lives. 

With two such strong, morally ambiguous characters, and others skating equally close to the grey areas from Dr Rush to Oz’s lover, Eve (Carmen Ejogo), we get invested in everyone’s story. That is why the ending makes so much perverse sense, with the taste of victory as bitter as ashes as it surely is in Oz’s mouth.

The Penguin streams on JioCinema