Is Victor really dead? The Penguin ending explained 

By the end of The Penguin Episode 8, Oz has everything he wants; in his words, he’s “the f**kin king” – but heavy hangs the head that wears the crown, and that power comes with a huge price. 

In the penultimate episode of The Penguin, the rug was pulled from underneath Oz’s clubfoot: Sofia abducted his mother Francis, taunted her over Oz murdering his brothers, and in the closing minutes, one of her footsoldiers drove a car bomb into his underground Bliss operation and left a huge crater in Gotham’s streets. 

With no mention of Batman (sorry Robert Pattinson fans), things didn’t look good going into the finale. It opens with Francis stumbling through her memories, remembering how she nearly had Rex Calabrese (Oz’s childhood hero) kill him – until she decided to raise his inner monster to build a better life for herself. 

Meanwhile, Oz wakes up in front of Francis, Dr Julian Rush (who could still be a secret Batman villain), and Sofia – and even when it goes wrong, he still emerges happy(ish) on the other side. 

Is Victor dead at the end of The Penguin? 

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Victor could be dead. After all, Oz strangled him to death and left his John Doe corpse on the side of the river. Or, he could become this universe’s version of Victor Zsasz. 

Let’s deal with exactly what happened to poor Vic. After Sofia puts an attractive bounty on Oz’s head (her entire empire for whoever found him first), Link reaches out to Vic. Soon after, Link finds Oz and tells him to get in the car, and it seems like he’s going to be handed over to Sofia. 

Instead, it’s all part of an elaborate ruse organised by Link and all of the crime bosses’ deputies. In exchange for their loyalty, Oz “offers them a shot” as he puts it – so they kill their chiefs at the airport and save Oz’s skin, not to mention sealing Sofia’s fate (more on that later). 

So, why does Oz kill Vic? It’s simple: Vic tells Oz he’s like family to him, and Oz can’t thrive as a kingpin with that sort of connection. As he explains, family drives you, but it makes you weak, so he chokes Vic as he begs for his life on the bank of the river, whimpering as he slips away. 

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As his body slumps to the ground, Oz searches his wallet. He takes the cash and his ID (a small callback to the first episode when he held onto Vic’s license) before chucking into the river. In short, he really does seem dead. 

However, bear with me a minute: what if Victor Aguilar is The Penguin’s reimagining of Victor Zsasz and we’ll see him embrace his psychotic, murderous fate in The Batman 2, The Penguin Season 2, or another project? 

Think about it: Victor lived in Crown Point, one of Gotham’s most impoverished areas, and he always wanted his parents to aspire to something greater. They were killed in the flood caused by the Riddler’s explosions, and he ended up colliding with Oz while trying to steal his rims.

Victor allowed himself to wholly trust Oz… and he betrayed him. In the comics, Victor Zsasz turned to gambling in the Penguin’s Iceberg Lounge, and when he lost everything, he decided to take his own life by jumping off the Gotham Bridge (which is in view when Vic is killed).

Before he could step off, a homeless man tried to stab him when he refused to give him any money. He took the knife and killed the man, and from then on, he dedicated his life to “liberating” people from their meaningless existence. Every time he killed someone, he’d scar a tally mark into himself, leaving a special spot for Batman (and earlier in The Penguin, after Vic killed one of the Maronis’ men, the crash left a scar on his head). 

Oz killing Vic is more proof that he’s a monster 

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We watched him murder Alberto Falcone in cold blood… but that was okay, because he was kind of asking for it. He stitched up Sofia’s right-hand man when he was about to get caught, but that wasn’t too bad, because he seemed like he’d give Oz hassle down the line. He betrayed Sofia several times, but he did seem regretful of the pain it caused her. 

It’d be fair to say the show, at times, has portrayed Oz as something close to an anti-hero; “a man of the people,” as Sofia puts it in the finale. But two moments have made his villainy abundantly clear: the past childhood murder of his brothers and killing Vic. 

Throughout the series, Oz tried to foster Vic’s confidence. When they ate at a nice restaurant, he gave him the room to stutter through his order and told him to “take up space” rather than apologizing for something he can’t control. When he launched Bliss at the Triads’ nightclub, he put Vic in charge of the drugs and the money, and he told him he was proud of him. 

They’re somewhere between Batman and Robin and Tony Soprano and Christopher Moltisanti; father and son, boss and sidekick. Nothing in the show suggested that Oz would be the one to kill Vic, but here’s the thing: he didn’t want to kill him, nor did he plan on it… until Vic referred to him as family, and the cost of their relationship dawned on him. But unlike Spider-Man telling MJ he can’t risk her life against his enemies, Oz doesn’t just let Vic go – he murders him, because death is his love language. 

Why didn’t Batman show up at the end of The Penguin? 

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In the closing seconds of The Penguin finale, the Bat signal lights up Gotham’s sky, but Robert Pattinson’s Batman is nowhere to be seen. Matt Reeves and showrunner Lauren LeFranc felt it would have detracted from the show’s story and made Batman the focal point, rather than Oz. 

Speaking to Esquire, Reeves explained: “He’s more of a specter in the city. 

“One of the things that was really exciting about the opportunity to do a show was to let it really focus on that rogues’ gallery character and change points of view. The whole movie is done very deliberately from Batman and Bruce’s point of view. The only scenes that aren’t from his point of view are from Riddler’s point of view. 

“And that was done to make you think for a moment: Wait, is that Batman or Riddler’s point of view? This was like: What if we could just go down that alley and follow Oz in the wake of what happened in the movie?”

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In an interview with CinemaBlend, LeFranc said she agreed with Reeves that “Batman’s not everywhere… it’s a big city! And also, it has been established in the film that he doesn’t really pay much attention to Oz. 

“He doesn’t think he’s really worth paying attention to, in that regard. And so, honestly, we didn’t really think in terms of this idea that Batman would be watching. We were just really more focused on following our characters on our show.”

This echoes what Colin Farrell told IGN during a roundtable interview, who believed “he didn’t need to appear in this… and it’s a very different side of Gotham, as well. 

“Not that Batman doesn’t get his hands dirty in the shadows, of course, but it’s a very, very different part of Gotham that I’ve never seen before. It’s really the underbelly of the city and it’s down in the gutter.”

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At the end of The Penguin, Oz frames Sofia for almost everything that happened during the series. Instead of executing her, he puts her back in Arkham, where she receives a letter from Selina Kyle… her half-sister. 

Cast your mind back to The Batman: Selina (aka Catwoman) was revealed to be Carmine Falcone’s bastard child. Her mother Maria worked in the Iceberg Lounge, but when she was even, Carmine (the Hangman) strangled her mom to death. 

Years later, Selina became a successful cat burglar, but she eventually got a job at the Iceberg Lounge to track down her missing roommate. This put her on a collision course with her father, who tried to murder her, but Batman stopped him. 

In The Penguin finale, Selina writes to Sofia in Arkham to reveal she still has family out there. There have been rumors that Sofia will play a significant role in The Batman 2, so this could be setting up a major dynamic in the sequel, but right now it’s unclear exactly why Selina reached out to Sofia. 

The Penguin finale fully reveals Oz’s mommy issues 

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If The Penguin makes one thing fully clear, it’s that Oz has a serious Oedipus complex with his mother. 

During Episode 7’s flashbacks, Oz was incredibly attentive (and needy) to his mother, something she seemed to appreciate as much as humor. However, his devotion was so fierce that he was happy to leave his brothers to die so he could have her all to himself. 

After Jack and Benny’s deaths, Oz made his mother a promise: he’d give her the life she deserved with everything she could ever want – jewellery, nice clothes, and a penthouse apartment overlooking Gotham. 

In the finale, he finally achieves it… after she has a severe stroke and is left in a vegetative state, summoning nothing but a single agonized teardrop as Oz towers over her in her bed (more accurately, her tomb). 

Moments later, dressed in his snazzy tuxedo and holding his top hat, he goes downstairs to meet Eve… who’s dressed up exactly like his mother. He asks her to tell him she loves him and that she’s proud of him, something his mom rarely did when she was verbal. 

He craves his mother’s affection, but it comes from a complicated place; his guilt over his brothers’ deaths undoubtedly plays a role. He just wants to feel loved, something that Eve is all too happy to give him, and it’s hard not to feel a bit icky in the finale’s closing moments as they dance together, Eve sultrily whispering Oz’s sought-after words while his mother lies alone above them; silent, trapped, and terrified of what she raised. 

Keep up to date with our The Penguin release schedule, find out more about Magpie, read our list of the best superhero movies of all time.