The Penguin season 1 finale: EP addresses Batman absence
While The Penguin season 1 delivered a lot of fantastic and memorable moments, is there still 100% a valid criticism out there there. After all, this is a show about Batman and yet, a certain character was nowhere to be seen.
Instead, the closest thing that we actually got to this over the course of the season was the Bat-signal in the closing seconds of the finale. At that point, you can argue that it’s a cop-out way to set up The Batman: Part II without going through the effort to include the character on-screen. We understand as much as anyone that The Penguin is about Oz Cobb and there’s no need to distract from that; yet, the moment that we saw Sofia blow up Oz’s underground lair, it felt obvious that the Batman would need to make his presence felt. That didn’t happen.
So is there some sort of larger, somewhat-logical reason for this? Well, in a new interview with Digital Spy, executive producer Matt Reeves justified the omission with the following:
“This was a time of great turmoil in the city, it’s literally the week after what happened … Much of the city is in desperation, so police can’t get everywhere, there’s crime everywhere, it’s a very, very dangerous time.
“[Batman’s] out there trying to grapple with the aftermath of everything that happened, which to some degree he blames himself for.”
Of course, you can argue that Robert Pattinson’s character is off cleaning up other messes, but it really still feels like a wasted opportunity that may also de-value the show itself. After all, does the omission further along the implication that TV is thought of as the B-team, and that Batman’s presence needs to be “saved” somehow for the movies? We’re excited for the next chapter of Reeves’ franchise, but there is something so much more that could have been done to make The Penguin perfect.
Related – See some more thoughts on a possible The Penguin season 2
Do you think that The Penguin should have featured Batman in a more direct way?
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This article was written by Jessica BunBun.