Clancy Brown from The Penguin on Salvatore Maroni's death and Oz's torture

SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers for The Penguin, Episode 7, “Top Hat.”

In Episode 7 of The Penguin, things go awry when Oz's drug business, hidden in the abandoned trolley tunnels, and his mother are in danger.

But first…

This week's penultimate episode of the HBO-DC series begins with a flashback to Oz and his brothers as children, the first time in the series that we see his brothers alive. They live in an apartment with Francis, their mother, while their mother makes a living writing books for Rex Calabrese, the local gangster Oz spoke so enthusiastically about in Episode 1.

One afternoon her mother sends her out where the children meet Rex. He gives them $50 to give to their mother when they get home. The boys decide to play flashlight catch in the abandoned trolley tunnels. Oz is first marked with “it” while his brothers are climbing down a ladder in one of the tunnels. Because of his bad leg, Oz cannot climb down the ladder. They apologize, but Oz is hurt, so he locks them in one of the tunnels and heads home. He lies and tells her mother that they went to the movies with the money Rex gave them. In reality, they drowned in the tunnel after it was flooded in a heavy downpour.

In the present, Oz returns to the abandoned apartment he shared with his mother and Victor, only to find that his mother is gone and Vic is unconscious. He hears Sal Maroni and Sofia's henchmen coming and sends Vic to get reinforcements. Sal, still angry over how Oz murdered his wife and son in episode 5, begins brutally beating Oz with a golf club.

“At this point, Sal has tunnel vision,” Clancy Brown, who plays Sal Maroni, said in an interview with Diversity. “He just wants to kill Oz. If he could shoot Oz in the head and then someone would shoot [Sal] in his mind he would die a happy man. He's just so full of anger and hatred for Oz Cobb at this point, I don't think there's anything else. I don't think he plans to take out Sofia, and he doesn't care at all about the Gigante-Maroni alliance. I don't think he cares in the slightest. He’s just using this to get to Oz and kill him.”

Brown also said that both he and Colin Farrell wanted to make the beating as real as possible, but things may have gotten a little too real.

“At first Colin thought and I thought, 'Well, you know, [Colin’s] “It’s pretty well padded,” so Colin said, “Just do it.” So I did. And you know, a few takes after that, he pulled me aside and said, 'Okay, don't do it so much,'” Brown said, laughing. “I really tried to destroy the club.”

Sal is ready to kill Oz, but one of Sofia's men intervenes. Oz taunts Sal and says that Sofia has him on a tight leash, but Sal taunts Oz right back and reminds him that Sofia kidnapped Oz's mother. We then see Sofia preparing breakfast for Francis before talking to her about her son. Francis remains steadfast, mocking Sofia and her family, and firmly believing that her son will rescue her from her current predicament. However, things take a turn when Francis begins to suffer the effects of her dementia and loses all sense of where and when she is.

Back in Crown Point, Sal forces Oz to take him to the trolley tunnels and Bliss Operation. Sal tells everyone that they are now working for him and Sofia, but Oz baits him by talking about killing his wife and son. Sal grabs a can of gasoline before one of Sofia's men intervenes again, allowing one of Oz's workers to turn off the lights and cause chaos.

According to Brown, Sal had many plans for how Oz would die.

“He wanted to burn it,” he said. “He wanted to burn it slowly. He wanted to cut him up and burn him. He would definitely pour gasoline on him and make him smell like his own flesh was burning. Just the most painful thing he could imagine.”

Brown said there were plans to push the scene further when it ultimately left, although for practical rather than moral reasons.

“I think it was actually in the script for a minute that he was going to pour gasoline on Oz after talking about Nadia and the smell of Nadia, but the makeup made that an impractical thing to do,” Brown said. “Of course you can’t pour gasoline on your makeup. You can really ruin it by even pouring water on it because it would soak up all the water and eventually cause waterlogging, which would be even more unpleasant for Colin.”

Sal and Oz begin arguing and end up arguing in an old tram car. Things aren't looking good for Oz, but then Sal starts clutching his left arm and gasping for air. Soon Sal died of a heart attack.

“I thought it was a great joke,” Brown said of his character’s death. “That’s in there to add another little layer of frustration to Oz. Oz is a beast like Sal and he has to kill in a way that satisfies him. And that was very unsatisfactory.”

Later Sofia talks to Dr. Rush, who tells her that her niece Gia is trying to talk to the police. Sofia visits Gia, who reveals that she saw a gas mask in Sofia's bag the night everyone in the Falcone mansion died when Sofia filled the house with gas. Sofia tells Gia that “everyone in our family was bad people who deserved it,” but ultimately leaves the encounter visibly shaken by what she did to Gia.

Before Sofia can process this, however, Oz calls and says that Sal is dead. He lures them into the tunnels to trade his mother for the Bliss.

Oz and his men wait armed for Sofia's arrival. A car comes down the tunnel while Sofia is on the phone with Oz. She and Oz talk, during which she makes Oz think his mother is dead in the back of the car. He opens the trunk and instead finds a bomb with a timer near zero. Oz runs away, but the bomb explodes, collapsing a large portion of Crown Point above them. Sofia is last seen escorting Francis to a seedy club called Monroe's.

In another flashback, we see Oz and his mother after his brothers die. She puts on her most beautiful dress and takes him to Monroe's, a popular jazz club at the time. There she tells Oz that he needs to grow up and give her everything she deserves and make her happy, which he eagerly agrees to. In the present, Oz stumbles through the rubble of Crown Point, where he finds Det. Marcus Wise, the corrupt police officer on Sofia's payroll. He tells Oz that he is taking him to Sofia, but knocks Oz unconscious.