I absolutely loved the first season of The Penguin. I think this is the best superhero-adjacent show ever. It’s spectacular.

I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t love The Batman as much as other people did. While I thought it was a good movie, there were a lot of choices with (waves) everything that I’m ready to move past. I’m just over the growly growl super serious Batman this could ACKSHUALLY happen world.

The Penguin was exactly what we thought it was going to be: a gritty, seemingly “real life” crime story set in the universe that Matt Reeves established with the movie. Quite frankly, it was a spectacular bit of television.

If you didn’t already know about Batman and Gotham City, you would easily think this is just another show about organized crime with no relation to anything comic book. And, while it definitely worked for the show, it also felt less and less like it had anything to do with DC Comics, and it does bum me out that we don’t get to embrace the comic bookiness of it all

Still, the story was fantastic and set up the sequel movie with the Penguin being the head of all organized crime in Gotham.

The heart of the show hinges on the relationship between the Penguin and Vic.

Heading into the final two episodes, if you cared about Oz and Vic, then they succeeded. If they didn’t land that relationship, the entire show would’ve felt just off enough that you would’ve cared a little bit less about the ending.

Vic was essentially an avatar for the audience in the show. He was us: a bad kid but also a good kid, who’s gone through some trauma and gets pulled into navigating the underworld of Gotham. His family was ripped from him in the events of The Batman, so Oz becomes the only family he has left.

As Vic gets deeper into Oz’s life, he grows more confident in his own actions. Oz is looking out for Vic and vice versa. They are so close. They save each other.

That is what makes the depravity of their final conversation so brutal.

The acting was superb.

While Colin Farrell will and should get all of the accolades for his brilliant performance in this show (SERIOUSLY! He, an Irish man with an Irish accent, speaks Spanish with Oz’s New Jersey accent. It was incredible.), we can’t discount all of the amazing actors in this show.

Cristin Milioti’a Sofia Falcone/Gigante straddled the fine line between confident and powerful and unstable. While it’s revealed quite early that she was framed by her father for the murders that dubbed her as the Hangman, her time at Arkham Asylum clearly traumatized her. It was so well done, and I was thrilled that she was still alive at the end of the show.

With all that said, I think what Deirdre O’Connell did as Oz’s mom Francis Cobb was powerful. That woman stole every single scene that she was in playing a woman who had been through so much while also losing her faculties. The flashbacks were well done feeding into the character’s instability.

I also loved Clancy Brown as Salvatore Maroni. He was great. That dude is awesome.

You should hate villains, and I hate the Penguin.

When the final credits started to roll, I knew that the show succeeded, because I hated Oz. He would occasionally show signs that he wasn’t just the absolute worst, but then he would remind you that he did indeed suck.

When Oz strangled Vic to death in their final scene together, I was so sad. In the first episode or two, I thought it was very likely that we would see Oz kill Vic in the show. However, as the show continued, I was less sure that it was going to happen, and if I’m honest with you, I had completely forgotten about it even being a thing as the finale headed towards the end.

I swerved myself into a double swerve. Watching Vic die by Oz’s hands seconds after Vic told him that he thought of them as family after everything they’d been through was tough. Rhenzy Feliz was staggeringly good as Vic throughout this show until he took his last breath.