The Penguin Boss Talks Sofia And Vic's Finale Fates, That Letter And A Potential Season 2 — Grade It!

Warning: The following contains full spoilers for The Penguin finale, AKA episode 8. 

HBO's The Penguin has come to an end, as Oz Cobb rose up to take control of Gotham City's criminal syndicate and become the force Batman fans know him to be – but with some considerable collateral damage along the way. 

By the end of the season finale, Oz had a penthouse apartment and his beloved mother, Francis, living with him in it, just as he wanted... except she lay in her bed silent and unmoving, in the wake of a massive stroke. And Oz had decided that despite – or because of – the unwavering loyalty he'd shown him, Victor "Vic" Aguilar was a liability and killed the teenager with his bare hands. 

In the midst of this, Oz also orchestrated the downfall of his nemesis, Sofia Gigante (formerly Sofia Falcone), getting her locked back up in Arkham just as Sofia was about to leave Gotham and her own life of crime behind. But there was a sliver of hope for Sofia when she received a letter from the half-sister she never knew existed, none other than Catwoman herself, Selina Kyle. (No, we didn't see Zoe Kravitz of The Batman, but Sofia seemed pleased with whatever Selina wrote.)

The Penguin showrunner Lauren LeFranc spoke to TVLine about everything that went down in the finale, why the characters met the fates they did, and much more. Plus, she ponders whether there could be another season of The Penguin, after Colin Farrell next reprises his role in 2026's sequel to The Batman.  

TVLINE | We knew going into the series Oz would be in The Batman sequel afterwards for sure, but that left Sofia and Vic as question marks. How early did you know their fates, and did anything change along the way as far as where they ended up?
When I first started conceiving of the show and digging deeper into Oz and the characters that I thought should surround him, I arced out all of their emotional journeys. That included where they would end up and emotionally why I felt like that was the appropriate fate that they would have. So I always knew Sofia would end up back in Arkham. Definitely when [other] writers came in, there were pitches of killing her, but I was pretty firm with wanting to keep her alive. It felt, first of all, just more correct that her fate would be one that is worse than death and that Oz would want to hurt her and make her suffer in the way that she craved for him. And I think there's always something about when you have two foils that someone wants to keep the other around or alive — that there's some power still in that. So it felt correct to me, always, to keep her alive, but to sentence her back to Arkham. 

And then for Victor, I always knew he needed to die, and I knew that Oz needed to kill him. I think what evolved was at first, when I was just kind of on my own arcing it out, I thought he might die in the second-to-last episode. Then as we started to break down the story in more detail, it felt better and better — and the [writers] room was really great about talking this out with me — to save his death to the very end. Not just in the finale, but really towards the end of the show. And what was so great about that, and I'm so grateful that we landed in that place, is that you get comfortable. You feel like they made it, these two guys made it out. I always wanted to mirror the first episode at Buddy's, with the two of them sitting outside. And so from the get go, I always knew that's where they would end.

TVLINE | Oz could have maybe shot Vic in the back of the head when Vic didn't know it was coming or something like that, but he kills him in a much more personal and horrifying way, slowly choking him as Vic begs for his life. What do you think it says about Oz that he chose this method?
I always wanted it to be intimate and painful. For Oz, when he's killing Victor, it's like he's ripping out his own heart. In his own sort of delusional mind, he realizes he needs to end this kid's life to achieve a certain level of power. I think he views his mom and what happened to her as a form of weakness in himself — that he loved her so deeply that someone like Sofia could take advantage of that. But also, he didn't get what he needed from her and there's a callousness from that. And there's always been a callousness in Oz. I think in that moment, it's really speaking to Oz really owning the fact that there's a monstrous side of himself and him believing that. Even though I think he cares for Victor too, [he decides that] a kid who's seen him at his most vulnerable, who cares for him in the way that Victor does, he just can't have that moving forward.

TVLINE | This is on the heels of your reveal in the penultimate episode about Oz causing the death of his brothers as a kid. It feels like it's an interesting tightrope to walk whenever we have a show about someone who we might call an antihero or just a straight up villain, since you still want your main character to be engaging and charismatic, and obviously Colin brings that. But what were your conversations with Colin like about making sure the audience still understands that this guy is a monster, even though he's an entertaining character?
Colin and I were always on the same page with all of those decisions. We would constantly have dialog throughout the season — when I was writing, when he was reading, before we would shoot scenes — about calibrating Oz and making sure that even though he is very fun and charming and engaging that there is a darkness within him. And we tried very hard to make sure that we never shied away from that throughout the show. Even acknowledging that the audience might want to think that that's not possible, or want to align themselves more with Oz, we really tried to pepper that in. Colin is such an exceptional actor that the level of nuance that I think he brings to every moment.... Like you can see the darkness within him, and then on a dime, he can pull off a cutting joke that makes us laugh and feel endeared to him again. And that's just Colin's skill as an actor, that he really brought Oz to life in such a tremendous way and I think really helped make him feel human and that was always the goal. But neither one of us wanted Oz to appear as a hero nor a villain, honestly. Our goal was always to just showcase a very complicated, flawed, problematic man.

TVLINE | You've got this fascinating parallel with Sofia throughout the series. She does terrible things of her own, certainly, but ultimately she can't quite be the monster Oz is. As you said, she's locked up back in Arkham, which is awful for her and a place she didn't deserve to be the first time. But Oz has a line to her, near the end, about how she's never going to find peace. Do you think he's correct about that? We'll get to the letter in a second, but even before the letter, has she perhaps found some sort of inner peace, even though she wanted to get away and that didn't happen?
I think Sofia is a character, like so many characters, that is searching for something and she's really struggling with that throughout the show. Which is what makes her so complicated, and really, in many ways, challenging to write, and I'm sure for Cristin [Milioti] to perform in moments, because she's trying to figure out who she is. She knows she's not a victim. She doesn't want to be. When she first comes out of Arkham, and the audience doesn't know her whole backstory, she immediately puts on the clothes that she once wore before she went into Arkham. She's trying to gain respect in the more traditional sense. And then, obviously, she hits a point where she's like, "Screw this, I'm going to take what I want. These people have disrespected me." And she chooses to murder her family and many, many other people as a result. And in that, she finds a level of freedom, even though what she chooses to do is extremely violent.

And then deeper in the season, towards the end, she starts to wonder, does she really even want to rule Gotham in the way that someone like Oz does? Or is that her father's dream for her, and is she still trying to sort of garner her father's respect and why? [She realizes] that she's living in this institution of the mob in its own way and really wants to free herself of that. So she's on a journey to do that towards the end, and yet Oz is a crutch for her. She can't let go of the anger and the rage that she feels for him, and that really leads to her downfall on her own volition, outside of what Oz does to her. So in terms of is she able to find peace within herself, I don't think she has really figured that fully out yet, where we leave her,

TVLINE | Where we last leave her is very exciting. We don't actually hear the contents of Selina's letter, although I think Cristin does a great job of showing emotion on her face as she reads it. Do you know what the letter says?
I wrote something in the letter for her... but I'm not going to tell you. [Laughs] But just to give Cristin a sense of something, she and I talked about it. I wanted to leave Sofia with a sense of hope. Like your question earlier, "Has she found peace?" -  I don't think so necessarily, but she's certainly someone who seeks it. I wanted to give her an inkling of hope. And her entire arc in the whole show has been her family doesn't respect her, doesn't see her, doesn't take care of her. She feels so lost and alone in that and what they did to her was brutal and they betrayed her. And so she feels at sea as a character in so many ways, and doesn't believe that she has any family left. She knows her brother was the one person who believed in her and he was murdered by Oz right out of the gate. But I wanted her to know at the end that there is someone out there like Selina who is technically family to her, something that many fans already know. But just to give voice to it on our show and to give Sofia some sense that she might not be as alone as she thinks.

TVLINE | The show has been so well received, and as excited as fans are for The Batman Part II, plenty of people would love to see more of this specific corner of Gotham continue as well. Are there any chances of that occurring? 
I don't know. I think Gotham has a wealth of amazing stories and characters to play with. I'd certainly say that it has been such a pleasure to get to play in the sandbox that Matt [Reeves] established in his movie, and his version of Gotham has felt so rich to me in how gritty it is and how grounded it is. It's been, honestly, an honor to get to explore Gotham and to showcase it in the eight episodes that we've had. I love the seedy underbelly. It's really fun to write for all these characters and it's been really exciting for me to sort of create my own canon within it and kind of bring life to all these characters, some of whom have been established, some are wholly new. I'm really grateful for Matt to give me that opportunity. But beyond that, I can't say. I know that I signed up to do this show that was between the first film and the second film. I personally think there's a lot of great stories left to tell. But you know, Matt's doing the film now, so I know he's tackling that and he's really excited about what that is, and I'm excited to read it at some point, I hope, and to see it. I don't know... We'll see!

TVLINE | I know you can't say whether or not Sofia might pop up in that movie, but I'm sure you know that fans want to see her again, one way or the other. She was from the comics, but this interpretation really stood out so much. You mentioned it was tricky to write for her but as you started to progress and eventually were filming scenes with Cristin, did you begin to suspect it could really work and maybe she'd break out in the way she has? 
Yes, I've been so excited about Sofia. I've been excited about her as I conceived her and was so excited to write her. I think you have to have an affinity and an empathy for all the characters that you write and create, but Sofia, for me, feels extra personal in a way, because I grew up reading comics, and I love those stories, and I always felt like some of the women just were not as interesting as the men, and it always disappointed me a bit in that. And it's gotten better, and I'm just excited that I was given the opportunity to be able to really evolve a character like her and make her my own.

And she is tricky to write because I think the most complicated, interesting characters are, especially because she's having an identity crisis in our show and she's really trying to explore something more deeply within herself. It's been really fun to get to have the audience experience what her story is and to actually give a character like her a deep backstory, because that's the thing that I always felt was lacking. I just didn't understand where some people in the comics came from and what they wanted. But seeing Cristin take on Sofia has been so enthralling. Cristin's so magnetic and I always wanted Sofia to have a wry wit about her and a darkness and [to be] someone who's very emotional as well. Not a lot of actors can have the range to be able to achieve all of those things in the way that Cristin has. She also has this raw vulnerability and volatility within her that she brings. It's really been a pleasure to see Sofia come to life in what Cristin has done.

Honestly, that goes for all of our actors, and I mean this so wholeheartedly... like Deedee [Deirdre O'Connell], who plays Francis, is so exceptional and so unbelievable. And Colin, of course. People, I think, forget, because Colin's under these prosthetics, but it's insane what he's doing. What he is bringing to this character is unlike anything I've ever seen or experienced. It's unbelievable. And then there's Rhenzy [Feliz], who's just so vulnerable and truly is the heart of the show, and it's why his death is so gut-wrenching, It's because of Renzy's performance. If Rhenzy didn't bring you in as an audience, that would not have the pain that I think it does for people. 

TVLINE | The Oz and Francis relationship is so integral and ultimately turns out to be a very twisted one. At one point Sofia assumes Francis is the one who must have shaped Oz. You were no doubt very well aware that people would initially see Oz and Francis and think of The Sopranos and other domineering mother characters. Is that something you enjoyed sort of playing with, as far as what really caused Oz to be who he is? We learn he seemed to be pretty messed up from the get go, and arguably "born bad," but there's a version of this where Francis got him some kind of help, either before or after what happened with his brothers....
There's definitely a lot to unpack there and that was the goal, that it's a very complicated relationship for so many reasons. I really tried to make sure that as you dug deeper and as more was revealed in our season, that the relationship between Oz and his mother feels very unique to them. I do like to try to sort of play a bit with what people expect a character to be or what they presume or people putting their own labels or notions on characters. And I think Francis is no different. For instance, Sofia, people thought she was crazy, and put a lot of ideas of that onto her. And then when we see Episode 4, we realize that it's not that simple. With Victor, he's a kid you meet when he's stealing rims. And then we see where he comes from and his warm family in Episode 3 and we realize he's a different character than what people might have presumed. 

With Francis, you meet her, and she's got a dirty mouth, and she's very controlling of Oz and very domineering. She also is loving and they have what seems like a very open relationship between the two. He tells her that he kills Alberto right out of the gate. But also, obviously, there's an element of her Lewy body dementia that starts to come into play deeper on. But my goal in [Episode] 7 and then in 8 is for you to understand what it was like to have a son like Oz for her, and that it's not that she's [been] this coldhearted woman always. She's always had a brashness to her but she loved her kids so much, so deeply, and it's really Oz who took them away from her, and that there's this built up resentment as a result of her always knowing what he did. These two characters are terrible at closure. They both should go to therapy but they haven't and so they don't actually talk to each other about the most important things. Though it seems like they have this open relationship, they truly don't. And I think that's something that I wanted to examine and have you understand and empathize with Francis by the end of how a mother like that would deal with a son like Oz and that she's just more complicated than maybe people initially thought. And then my hope is that we ask the question of nature versus nurture – Is someone born this way? Do they become this? And I'm not striving for a clear answer on that because I don't think there ever is a clear answer. I think it's a combination of so many things. But I just wanted to do my best to give the audience a true examination of this man. And then it's up to people to decide what they think, if they have to come to some definitive conclusion or not, or if they just, I hope, by the end, understand him more deeply and the characters around him as well. 

TVLINE | Going into the series, you and Matt Reeves were very open telling viewers that Batman wouldn't be appearing. He's ultimately referenced at the very beginning with one news report and then the very end with the Bat Signal. Did you ponder including other references, whether it be another news report or someone mentioning him?
It's funny because our show actually doesn't take place over a very extended period of time. And the thing that Matt always said to me in the beginning was that it's a big city and Batman is just a man and he cannot be everywhere. I understand that, obviously, there's things that happen in our show that begs the question of what is he doing and where is he going, or why is he not showing up? But I think that's something that perhaps the second film would engage with in terms of just what he's been up to and what's going on in his own life that we aren't aware of. It's a tricky thing in terms of storytelling when you try to plant things in the background as Easter eggs, in terms of where Batman is or what he might be up to, because I think it could end up teasing the audience in some way and I just didn't want to him to [do that] because he's an incredible character. The reason we're all here telling these stories is because of The Batman, right? But we are with Oz in the show and we're following him primarily. And I think as we move deeper in, we just didn't want to detract from any of our characters, or have people start to wonder so much about Batman that they're not engaged with our primary characters. And so that was really kind of the instinct in terms of how we focused the show and who we focused on, and how much time we spent with them versus exploring what else is going on in Gotham. Matt and I are on the same page [as far as] the events that happen in Gotham and the state of the city is very much informed by the first film and we inform the second film in that regard.

TVLINE | It was great how you dealt more with the aftermath of what Riddler did to Gotham City and the people who lived there in The Batman because that's the kind of thing movies rarely have the time to dwell on. Talking to Matt early on, was that something you both felt would make for a good underlying element?
Absolutely. Matt's big thing when I first came on was, "I think this should take place a week after the events of the film," because he wanted to make sure that we experienced the city and what the aftermath was. And I really appreciated that, because to me that was so exciting. I knew that would make it challenging in some ways but really interesting story-wise, because that allowed me to create a kid like Victor and go create his neighborhood and have us see what Crown Point is like, and meet the people and know that it's not just a haven for criminals. All the things that are sort of tropes in comic books sometimes, of like, "there's a lot of bad people in Gotham." Well sure, but there's so many good people, working class people, who are hurt by the actions of someone like the Riddler. And so it was so essential to me that in Episode 3, we see the flood and what happens through the lens of Victor and we stay in his POV. That was something that Matt and our director of that episode, Craig Zobel, and Johnny Hahn, our visual effects coordinator, we all were on the same page of "We need to stay with Victor on that rooftop." Because in the film you've already seen a wider view of that flood but we're personalizing it now. And I think it allowed us to tell a class disparity story within Gotham and the haves and the have nots. Just more of the nuance of that, and sadly, kind of give voice to something that is happening in our society. Now, every day, it feels like there's just terrible floods for a variety of reasons or different natural disasters. And, of course, there's extremists. So it really is trying to speak to our world even though we take place in Gotham City.

TVLINE | You mentioned how Victor met Oz. As a comic book fan, I was one of many people going "Hey, this is really similar to how Batman met Jason Todd when he was trying to steal the Batmobile's tires before he became Robin!"  
When I was coming up with a story for the first episode and then arcing the whole show, I read a bunch of comics again and just explored them. So that [Jason Todd origin] was something that I came across early on. When I first started thinking of who should be in Oz's orbit, I really wanted this mentee relationship. But that was rooted in this idea of Batman gets Robin, so how come a guy like Oz doesn't? I always thought it would be kind of fun to give a criminal like Oz his version of Robin — in his own way, of course. We're grounded and it's a different depiction, but my goal has always been to honor the comics and to make sure that we can pay homage and put in little Easter eggs but not do a straight up adaptation in any way. So I always viewed that as like a very twisted meet cute and the idea of someone like Oz coming upon a kid like Victor felt like the right way to introduce them. And of course, then it becomes very different in that I think it's also that in the grounded criminal world, grooming young men to do terrible things is such an integral part of the mob, and with gangs as well. And so I wanted to showcase that and make it feel as real as possible.

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