The Penguin · Season 1 · Episode 1 · 19 September 2024
S1E1 After Hours
THE MOMENT Oz Cobb surveying a flooded, ruined Gotham and calculating exactly how to turn catastrophe into opportunity - the moment that defines the character for the entire run.
The Penguin picks up immediately after the Riddler's flooding of Gotham in The Batman (2022), dropping Oz Cobb into the power vacuum with nothing but audacity and tactical instinct. The premiere establishes the series' register - Sopranos-adjacent mob drama with superhero-adjacent origin story - and confirms that Colin Farrell's prosthetic transformation is matched by a performance of comparable depth.
Full episode analysis below. Spoiler-light verdict above.
Updated
The Penguin's premiere operates as a thesis statement: this is not a superhero series but a crime drama that happens to occupy a superhero-adjacent world. Set in the immediate aftermath of The Batman's Riddler flooding Gotham, the episode drops Oz Cobb into a power vacuum and watches him work. Colin Farrell's physical transformation via prosthetics is extraordinary, but the performance underneath it is the real achievement - Oz is calculating, resentful, and genuinely funny in ways that make him compelling even at his most brutal. At 95% on Rotten Tomatoes from 195 critics, the series earned that response largely from how the premiere established its tonal commitment. The decision to frame a Batman universe spinoff as a Sopranos-inflected character study proved immediately effective in the opening episode.