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- Oz Cobb (Colin Farrell) makes a horrifying decision in “The Penguin” finale.
- Showrunner Lauren LeFranc told Business Insider there was a “level of dread” on set when filming the scene.
- She also said that part of the HBO series was inspired by Italian mafiosos on TikTok.
Warning: major spoilers ahead for “The Penguin.”
“The Penguin” fans may have been shocked when Oz Cobb (Colin Farrell) strangled his protégé Victor Aguilar (Rhenzy Feliz) in the show’s finale after the homeless teenager called him family.
But Lauren LeFranc, the showrunner of the series, told Business Insider she “always” planned to kill off Victor, who is the “heart of our show.”
Cobb made his nihilistic worldview clear in a way that suggested “The Batman” limited series wasn’t going to end well.
In episode three, he tells Aguilar: “The world ain’t set up for the honest man to succeed. That should be the American dream right there. You know? A beautiful story with a happy ending. But that ain’t the way the world works.”
Cobb’s poignant line distills the themes explored in the 2022 film “The Batman,” which “The Penguin” is a sequel to. It has been well received as a stand-alone project by fans and critics alike, earning a 94% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Speaking to BI ahead of “The Penguin” finale, LeFranc answered our burning questions about the season, including how she planned Aguilar’s horrifying death.
“The Penguin” was partly inspired by TikTok creators in the Italian Mafia.
Macall Polay/HBO
In episode five, Penguin tracked down Taj Maroni, a rival gangster, after he saw a video he posted to TikTok.
LeFranc, who also wrote the show’s first and last episodes, said she and director Matt Reeves were inspired by members of the Italian Mafia who bragged about their wealth on social media.
She said: “What’s funny is that Matt had sent me an article about TikTok mafia, that there’s younger mafiosos who are on TikTok and they’re kind of showing off their cars and they’re showing off their lifestyle and the amount of money they have. And that was really the inspiration for Taj in a lot of ways to make sure that he was a TikTokker.
“That gave him his own youthful ignorance and he had the power of being on social media. But that makes you more susceptible, it’s something that a certain generation would be doing, not an older generation. That’s what gave us the idea to dig deeper and to have Oz find him that way.”
LeFranc said she “always” planned to kill Victor at the end of “The Penguin”
Macall Polay/HBO
Victor stands out from the other gangsters in the series, and his death is more emotional because the audience has spent time getting to know him. LeFranc said that killing him is part of Penguin’s evolution as a villain.
She said: “I’ve always viewed Victor as the heart of our show, and in that moment, Oz kills his heart in a way, and he loses his humanity and he chooses to become more monstrous in a way that he did not need to do that. Victor didn’t do anything that merited other people’s deaths in our show.
“You could easily make excuses for them, but Victor is an innocent who just truly cares for Oz. And then Oz took his life. That day on set was really dark. I think there was a level of dread. I certainly felt dread writing that scene. I knew I needed to write that scene.”
Penguin doesn’t kill Sofia Gigante so he can psychologically torture her
Macall Polay/HBO
Considering Sofia Gigante (Cristin Milioti), a rising mobster in Gotham’s underworld, is responsible for the stroke the Penguin’s mother Francis Cobb has, viewers may find it surprising that he spares her life in the finale and she’s sent back to Arkham Asylum.
LeFranc said Penguin’s mercy is actually torture and punishment in disguise because they’re “two sides of the same coin.”
“I think he finds a deeper satisfaction in knowing that sending her back to Arkham is a fate that’s worse than death to her. That truly is her hell. And I think he gets a sick pleasure out of wounding her like that and knowing that she’s suffering in that way,” she said.
“It’s hard for either of them to put their past behind them, and certainly by the end of the show what they’ve done to each other in different ways. But if they ever were able to, they’d actually be a very good team,” LeFranc added.
The showrunner also touched on the letter that cat burglar Selina Kyle (Zoe Kravitz) sends Gigante in Arkham, which reveals that they’re half-sisters.
“To me, that is representative of hope in that ‘You do have family who you might connect with, and you might have more in common than you think,’ to give Sophia a little bit of a tease for that. It’s now up to Matt moving forward with what to do with that. That’s sort of my handoff,” LeFranc said.