Sofia from The Color Purple said, “A girl child ain’t safe in a family of men.” Unfortunately, there was no one around to give Sofia Falcone that wisdom.
Spoiler alert if you haven’t seen The Batman or Episodes 1–4 of The Penguin, please check out the film and episodes and come back to this article. Who would have thought that the most complex female character I’ve seen on television this year would be in a series about the origin story of a Batman villain?
HBO’s The Penguin is like if The Sopranos met Breaking Bad in Gotham City, and it’s been my favorite series of this season so far.
The timeline of The Penguin begins just a week after the events of The Batman. Gotham City is in disaster recovery mode after the Riddler’s terrorist attack destroyed Gotham City’s seawall. Crown Point, the lowest-income area of the city, was the hardest hit by the flood, while the wealthy regions of Gotham remain pristine. Carmine Falcone’s (Mark Strong, Kingsmen: The Secret Service) death, followed by the murder of his son Alberto (Michael Zegan, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel), has left the Falcone crime family in a power vacuum with Carmine’s brother Luca (Scott Cohen, Kissing Jessica Stein) as leader.
Oz, aka the Penguin (Colin Farrell, Sugar), and the entire Falcone family are unsettled as Carmine’s only daughter, Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti, The Wolf of Wall Street), aka the Hangman, is released from Arkham prison for the criminally insane after ten years of incarceration. Sofia thinks Oz has something to do with the death of her brother, but Oz wiggles out of suspicion with the aid of his new driver, Victor (Rhenzy Feliz, Encanto)
Layered under the action, intrigue, and violence is a distinct commentary about people coexisting with disabilities, elder care, dementia, and the impact of living in poverty. Oz is not a traditional leading man, but as the audience learns more about him, he comes off as charming and despicable with an edge. He’s not a made man, has been looked over for decades, and seems to have a soft spot for his mother Frances (Diedre O’Connell, The Affair), his girlfriend Eve (Carmen Ejogo, I’m a Virgo), and Vic, the young man with a stutter who ends up being his driver/assistant.
Even though Oz does terrible things in the first three episodes, he comes off as a charming and despicable anti-hero. In these episodes, Sofia, a recent inmate of Arkham, is easily classified as a psychotic female villain even though she’s just trying to find out who killed her brother. Alberto may have been an irresponsible addict, but he was the only one who visited her during the ten years she was at Arkham. It’s because of Alberto that Sofia has her freedom. She is determined to get justice for her brother.
As the Penguin and Vic get themselves in and out of several sticky situations, it’s easy to forgive these guys for their dastardly deeds because we know their backgrounds. These guys come from working-class families. Vic and Oz are criminals with hearts of gold, right? They have relatable dreams, and rooting for them feels good. Yeah, he does some questionable things, but it is satisfying witnessing this guy who has been underestimated his entire life McGuyver himself out of problem after problem as Oz deceives this unstable privileged lady, Sofia Falcone, and the rest of the demented gangsters in the Falcone crime family.
Like Cassandra in Greek mythology, Sofia’s intuition is strong, but none of the men in her family believe her. But they don’t know how strong she is. Oz and the Falcone family do not understand what she went through at Arkham. She doesn’t trust Oz, but once she thinks he’s not responsible for her brother’s death, she gives him the benefit of the doubt because she has to prove herself to her family. Oz knows what to say to get her to do what he wants. We get slight hints of the trauma Sofia has endured at Arkham for the past ten years (and at the hands of her family before that). Still, in Episode 4, “Cent’anni” (which means “May you live a hundred years”), the entire series gets turned on its head and leaves me with a new disdain for the entire Falcone family and the Penguin.
Initially, Sofia is as innocent as the daughter of a mob boss who turns a blind eye to where all the money comes from. Sofia is the responsible one. While Alberto is running around and drinking, Sofia is the chairwoman of the Isabella Falcone Foundation. Her dad respects her talents and is ready to break tradition and make Sofia his successor, even though she’s a woman. However, we also learn in Episode 4 that the Penguin goes to Carmine Falcone with information about Sofia, which leads Carmine to frame his daughter to cover up his crimes.
The underlying context of Episode 4 is the trauma and chaos that happens when men take away the bodily autonomy of women. Sofia is only supposed to be at Arkham for six months to be evaluated before standing trial, but her father has bribed the guards and the primary doctor. Sofia fights a losing battle to prove her innocence. Sofia could only count on her brother Alberto. Not only did her father betray her, but every single member of her family signed false affidavits that said Sofia was in mental decline. No one advocated for her, supported, helped, or visited her for ten years while she was slowly being turned into a psychopathic killer in Arkham.
Yes, Oz is a complicated character, and he couldn’t have known that ratting out Sofia would lead to her father committing her to Arkham, but if he had just spoken to her before going to her father, perhaps she wouldn’t have been committed. Sofia begrudgingly trusts Oz, and he betrays her over and over again.
The henchmen loyal to Sofia are murdered because of the Penguin’s lies. But by the end of Episode 4, Sofia takes back her agency in a big, bold way. Skin folk ain’t all kinfolk, and Sofia took care of those who didn’t have her back in a commanding way that allowed her to take her birthright and become the head of the Falcone crime family without apology. Halfway through this season, Sofia now knows who Oz is and what he’s done, and she has the resources to take him down.
Yes, Sofia Falcone deserves much better than the Penguin, and I can’t wait to see what happens now that she knows who he is and what he’s done. I can’t wait to see how Sofia handles these men in future episodes to come. And as Sofia Falcone, Cristin Milioti knocks the ball out of the park. I hope she gets nominated for and wins an Emmy for this role.
