The Penguin finale needed one simple change to set up The Batman 2

The Penguin ends with a warning: a familiar light hits the sky, teeing up the events of The Batman 2. It’s a grin-widening grace note that could have been so much better with one tiny change. 

The Penguin’s ending was a moral inverse of what happened in The Batman. Bruce Wayne saw that fear alone couldn’t protect Gotham – it may be a tool, but hope was the greater weapon against the city’s underbelly of corruption and violence. “Our scars can destroy us, [but] if we survive them, they can transform us. They can give us the power to endure and the strength to fight,” he said. 

Oz survived everything: stabbings, hostile takeovers, his mother’s bitter resentment. With Vic dead, his mom incapacitated, and the bent knees of the city’s mob deputies-turned-bosses, he’s finally the kingpin he always believed he could be. He used fear, but hope – of money and power – was his main weapon. 

The two characters will inevitably collide again, but if you were hoping to see Robert Pattinson’s Batman in The Penguin finale, you’ll probably feel pretty disappointed right now. I don’t think we needed a cameo – but one small addition to the closing seconds of Episode 8 would have connected the spinoff to The Batman 2 in a more effective, goosebump-raising way.

The Penguin should have used The Batman theme at the end

It’s this simple: as well as panning across Gotham’s nighttime cityscape to show the Bat-Signal, The Penguin finale should have ended with Michael Giacchino’s Batman theme. 

HBO

Every live-action iteration of the Dark Knight has one thing in common: incredible music. Danny Elfman’s magical brass, Hans Zimmer’s ‘BRAAAHMS’ and euphoric strings, and Junkie XL’s thundering, crashing suite. Giacchino’s theme is a contender for the greatest of them all: a head-bobber and a spine-tingler, evoking the lurking, giddy threat of its caped hero. 

The Penguin’s score was composed by Mick Giacchino, Michael’s son. It almost entirely avoids any nods to the original movie; in the finale, as Sofia reads Selina Kyle’s letter, you can hear Catwoman’s motif, but that’s it. 

The series boldly avoided any sight or chatter of Batman, with Matt Reeves and co. arguing it would have taken away the focus from Oz’s story. It’s a fair point, but when one of the most iconic superheroes of all time is your spinoff’s raison d’être, it is a little irritating when it seems to go to great lengths to avoid merely mentioning him, especially after Oz’s encounters with Batman in the film. 

For example, are you seriously telling me Oz didn’t consider the possibility of “the Bat” intercepting his drug run to Robbinsville? 

Its closing scene could have made up for his absence. After all, showrunner Lauren LeFranc described The Penguin as the “bridge” to The Batman 2. The next time we see Oz, it’ll be in the sequel, and the point of view is shifting back to Batman. The Bat–Signal is great, but imagine this: as Margaret Whiting’s ‘If This Is Goodbye’ plays over Oz and Eve dancing, that ominous, epic four-note motif seeps into the music, overwhelming the song and booming from the screen as the Bat-Signal appears in the sky. 

I would have liked a cameo, but I also respect the rationale behind not including him. If Batman showed up, Oz would have been in his orbit, undercutting the power of his own arc in the series. By not appearing, Batman was allowed to operate beyond the periphery and, more importantly, our attention remained firmly on Oz and his journey. 

But that doesn’t mean the show should have circumvented him entirely, and needle-dropping Giacchino’s theme wouldn’t have just been incredibly exciting: it would have represented the handover to Batman and how, even after all of the horrific things that Oz has done, hope remains in the form of Gotham’s hero – the one it deserves and the one it needs right now. 

Make sure you’re up to date with our The Penguin release schedule, find out more about Magpie, why Oz killed Vic, and why Dr Julian Rush may be a secret Batman villain, and if you’re looking for something to watch next, we’ve ranked the best superhero TV shows of all time.