HBO's ‘The Penguin’ Review - Not Quite a Morality Play

Fans are raving over HBO’s The Penguin. The 8-episode first season offers a compelling look at the iconic comic-book villain, portraying him as a twisted man with a twisted conscience, torn between his personal ambition and his carefully crafted facade as a ‘man of the people”.

The series is a spin-off of Matt Reeves' The Batman (2022), a not-quite-so-fantastical take on the iconic superhero from DC Comics. In both the film and the TV show, heartthrob Colin Ferrel (unrecognizable under a mountain of prosthetics)  plays club-footed and bulbous gangster ‘Oswald Cobb’―known in the criminal underworld of Gotham City as “the Penguin” due to his waddling gait.

Most of the series focuses on the relationship between the Penguin and young, small-time criminal ‘Victor’ (Rhenzy Feliz), whom the gangster first encounters trying to jack his car. After enlisting Victor's help in disposing of the body of a man who disrespected him, the Penguin employs Victor as his driver. From there, the Penguin eventually becomes a father figure toward the young man.

Many times throughout the series, the Penguin gives the impression that he might be some kind of ‘noble savage’, a man with a functional sense of right and wrong trapped in a barbaric, kill-or-be-killed universe. He lifts the downtrodden out of poverty. He puts himself in harm's way to protect his family. He brings people together for a common cause against their enemies. These are all things you would expect of a hero, but when you consider his actions in retrospect, you realize his motives are all entirely self-serving. He lifts people out of poverty because he wants their worship. He protects his family only because he is desperately thirsty for their validation. He unites the gangs against the wicked elites only to protect his own criminal enterprises.

In a sense, The Penguin can be understood as a sort of ‘Calvinistic’ morality play―even the Penguin's good deeds are corrupt and vile, repulsive when examined in the full light of day.

HBO's The Penguin is a story in the same literary genre as Frank Miller's Sin City. These are stories in which the concepts of good and evil absolutely exist but in which virtually all the characters are so bogged down with evil that when they eventually seek to escape its clutches, the only thing they are capable of is gesticulating vaguely away from their own wickedness. They do not comprehend the source from which goodness and righteousness flows―that is, the Lord Jesus Christ. 

Despite being a small-time crook, Rhenzy Feliz's Victor is the most innocent member of the Penguin's world. He wants to be a good person, but his loyalty and devotion to the Penguin drive him into greater and greater crime and eventually murder.

In reference to the overused, modern Hollywood trope of portraying villains as ‘misunderstood’, pop-culture expert Gary “Nerdrotic” Beuchler praised the series, saying “It’s about time we had a villain be a [real] villain.”

Normal World host Quarter Black Garrett contrasted HBO’s The Penguin and Disney's WandaVision―another show centered around a villian―pointing out that Disney weirdly wants you to perceive the villainous title character as a heroine despite her wickedness, while HBO never lets you forget how horrible the Penguin is while still giving him some humanity.

Pop culture expert The Critical Drinker praised The Penguin, commenting that despite its comic-book origins, the show is “strong enough to stand as a solid crime drama all on its own merits.”

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