How the series finale sets up the sequel to “The Batman.”

[Editor’s Note: The following review contains spoilers for “The Penguin” Episode 8.]

In an early discussion about how HBO's “The Penguin” would serve as a bridge between “The Batman” and the film that sequel director Matt Reeves was writing, Reeves showed showrunner Lauren LeFranc a scene between Oswald “Oz” Cobb , aka the Penguin (Colin Farrell) and Selina, aka Catwoman (Zoë Kravitz), who he wanted to cut from “The Batman.”

In the scene, Selina, on a mission for Batman (Robert Pattinson), goes to 44 Below, an infamous club owned by mafia boss Carmine Falcone (John Turturro), where she works as a waitress, except this time they're working on the underground VIP level wants to gather information – Batman tracks their actions through a specially equipped pair of contact lenses. Selina's mission is temporarily halted by Oz, the mid-level gangster, who is concerned for her well-being.

Oz: “Downstairs? No, no, you don't want to do that.”

Selena: “I need the money”

Oz: “Baby, there are some jackals down there. They will come after you.”

During the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast, Reeves talked about how that scene served as a starting point for what would be explored in “The Penguin,” and in particular how it led to the devastating final scene in Episode 8 that sets Farrell's character for its upcoming sequel.

“Oz reveals himself in a way that is much more vulnerable than he ever would with Batman,” Reeves said of the deleted scene. “But you start to understand that he has a soft spot for Selina, and in fact he seems to have a bit of a crush on Selina. He knows those guys will be after her down there. He doesn’t like that.”

Oz takes out his wallet and asks how much money Selina needs. He would rather pay her than let her go under. Selina refuses his money and interrupts him in a matter-of-fact manner, triggering an almost violent change in Oz's behavior.

“In that moment you see everything; Colin did the great thing; “It just got so dark and he said, 'Not good enough for you, right?' I know you don't see it because no one sees it, but one day this city will be mine,” Reeves recalled of the deleted scene . “And he says it right to Selina, but Batman is the one who sees it because we see it through the contact lenses and [Batman thinks]“Oh, I didn’t know it was this guy.” The Guy.'”

The deleted scene is an early revelation, a warning sign of Oz's Scarface-like ambition, but also hints at an emotional scar that ties his ambition to become a formidable crime boss to the Batman in the sequel to The Batman will fight.

“So the whole idea was to get to this place,” Reeves said. “He would never make someone like Selina truly love him. He knows that everything has to be paid for in some way because he feels like he's not enough. Everything is transactional. Where did these wounds come from?”

That was LeFranc's mission, not only to tell the story of Oz's rise, but also to explore the origins of the psychological wounds that make him so dangerous.

“When Lauren came in, I showed her this scene. We talked about where all this toxic masculinity comes from,” Reeves said. “Some vulnerabilities, some weaknesses are so deep inside that they overcompensate for them, they become so protective of the wounds inside that they can become frightening. Then Lauren had to go and find out, and she made up the story about Francis (Deirdre O'Connell).”

LeFranc constructed a devastating backstory that was revealed in Episode 7: As a child, Oz's actions led to the deaths of his older and younger brothers, leaving his mother Francis in a state of deep grief. In the comics, particularly Pain and Prejudice, the limping penguin is bullied as a child, including by his brothers. But LeFranc was determined not to justify or explain away Oz's behavior as bullying. In Episode 7, he locks his two brothers in the drain because he has an insatiable need to have his mother's undivided attention.

“In the comics, he's abused so badly that it then earns what he wants to do as an adult, and I really wanted to shy away from those tropes,” LeFranc said. “I was very careful not to excuse him.”

In Episode 7, LeFranc portrays older brother Jack (Owen Asztalos) as the leader, a good boy who is on the verge of joining the ROTC and whom Francis sees as her ticket out of the Eastside, the not-so-great neighborhood where she has problems has three boys to raise alone. Benny (Nico Tirozzi), the younger brother, is innocent and sweet. And Francis, before her boys are killed, is no Livia Soprano (Nancy Marchand), the mother of a future violent gangster with a personality disorder.

“Episode 7 is, in a way, not only Oz's origin story, but also Francis' origin story, because you see that she's a loving mother. She is a single mother. She has three boys. She has her hands full. She is overworked. She's doing her best. She always has a sassy tone because that’s who she is, but there’s a lot of love and affection in it,” LeFranc said. “And then in this episode and in the finale we start to realize that she has changed too. As a result of Oz's actions, something changed within her and there was something that she lost within herself because of what Oz did.”

While Episode 7 was from Oz's perspective, LeFranc said she decided early on that the finale, Episode 8, would be from Francis' perspective, allowing both the audience and present-day Oz to learn that Francis was not only knew the truth – that he killed his brothers in cold blood – but that she would have Oz, her only surviving son, killed in response, telling gangster Rex Calabrese (Louis Cancelmi): “There's a monster living in my house.” What saves the young, clueless Oz (Ryder Allen), his promise to his depressed and grieving mother (once he finally gets her out of the house and into the jazz club Monroe's) is to let him prove to her “every damn day” that he It will give her the life she deserves.

YYoung Oz: “Nobody else believes in you like I do. Nobody else will give you what you deserve. I'm going to get you out of the Eastside, Ma. Put yourself in a really nice place. Better than now.”

Francis: “Yes, better is simple than what we are.”

Young Oz: “The best then. On the top floor, in a penthouse like you want, with a view of the whole damn city.”

LeFranc told IndieWire that the structure of the series and the way it uncovered the hidden secrets of this intense mother-son relationship over eight episodes is such that by episode 8 you understand how unfillable the emotional hole is, that powers Oz.

“The fact that we're bridging the first and second film, for me it was always first and foremost a character study of Oz,” LeFranc said. “And I wanted to bring Oz to a place at the end of these eight episodes where you suddenly feel like you know him better. Francis expresses so deeply what he wants: his love and affection and for his mother to be proud of him. Of course he wants power, but that's exactly what power means to him. I thought about his biggest fear and it made a lot of sense to me that his biggest fear is that love is transactional. That she might not love him if he didn't achieve a certain level of power and give Francis certain things he promised her. And that shapes every relationship he has on the show.”

Oz finally succeeds, including the penthouse overlooking the city, when Francis falls into a coma and becomes “the vegetable” Oz promised he wouldn't become. Instead, he leaves her lying in a hospital bed, looking out at a penthouse overlooking the city below. Oz's tragic final scene with his sex worker Eve (Carmen Ejogo), whom he pays to dress up and wear a wig to look like Francis that night at Monroe's decades ago, is the tragic final note to which Reeves responded in the manner that LeFranc would abandon the character for the sequel to his film.

“One of the first things Lauren suggested was the ending with Eve looking like Francis,” Reeves said. “He can't get what he needed from his mother because she's no longer in that state because of the dark events and what he did, so he reproduces it in this other way with Eve, and it's very disturbing Reeves said. “This was something that we thought was a great idea and that reflected this guy's inner state so well. It's like knowing that a part of him will never be fulfilled, even though he now seems to have taken the first big step toward becoming Kingpin. These are the moments why we do the show. We're putting him where he's in a different place at the end, so that when you meet him in the next film, he's been changed by the events that you saw in this series.”

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