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    • Review of The Penguin Finale: Messy but exciting
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    Review of The Penguin Finale: Messy but exciting

    Vaseline Posted on

    The following review contains spoilers for The Penguin’s finale, “Great or Little Thing”

    Great media takes a story to places the audience didn’t expect or even knew they wanted, and delivers something new and unique. It’s something modern audiences have struggled with in an age of endless fanservice (I have many thoughts on the subject), but is often the result of an artist with a vision for a project that is so well thought out and completed that it succeeds despite the trends. The Batman is a great example of this, with Matt Reeves taking a character full of fanservice potential and creating something both familiar and unique that audiences didn’t know they wanted. Because The Penguin came from that well of creativity, it has benefited greatly from it. The tone, characters, and aesthetics of The Batman can all be used as a blueprint. And leading up to the finale, the series has done a solid job of saying “yes and” to the movie, without too much overt flattery or catering to its most ardent devotees (or those of Batman in general).

    Now, The Batman isn’t entirely innocent on this front. The Joker bit the end is a huge teaser for fans (and probably my least favorite moment of the film). The Penguin also saved its fan service for the end, with the final shot of the series almost literally passing the baton to The Batman Part II. Reeves has said that The Batman would lead directly into The Penguin, and then The Penguin would then lead directly into The Batman Part II, but the series makes it crystal clear. That, on top of a note that Selina Kyle, aka Catwoman, sent to Sofia Falcone, gives audiences a lot to look forward to in the sequel.

    There’s a part of me that thinks The Penguin could have taken these moments away. They harshly raise expectations for what is to come. But at the same time, it was enough to get me excited about continuing the Batman Epic Crime Saga, now that The Penguin has added so much lore and backstory to Matt Reeves’ little pocket dimension of the DCU.

    The Penguin does very well in the most difficult part of wrapping up his own story: how do you finish something like that, or even begin to tell it, when the main character is a villain? It’s something I’ve mentioned before while reviewing the series, and I think The Penguin has always done the right things in this regard. It never tried to portray Oz as a good guy – maybe sympathetic, but never Good – and the more time you spend with him, the harder it is to be on his side. And ‘Great or Little Thing’ is not a happy ending. As much as he will try to convince himself that he has won and that he has gotten what he always wanted, in those final moments it is easy to see how empty his success is. That his quest for power over Gotham pushed him to become his worst self, and that he was already pretty terrible. “Great or Little Thing” leaves a bad taste in your mouth, which is exactly what The Penguin is going for, and what it should do. Oz is not the hero of this story, and the finale stabs that knife deep.

    However, it’s the pacing of the finale that really brings it to our knees. The story logically follows the path it created for itself last week, but in a way that sometimes meanders. It takes time to get to the better moments towards the end. I feel like every week I’ve talked about how every scene is necessary and impactful, and how it’s just the order in which they’re placed that disrupts the rhythm. It’s a symptom that plagued much of the second half of The Penguin , and “Great or Little Thing” is no exception. While every scene makes sense and makes sense for where the characters are and who they are as people, it just doesn’t always flow. “Great or Little Thing” has some impactful moments that will excite and dishearten (in a good way), but they would have been even more impactful if the episode’s smaller moments had lived up to them.

    The most impactful moments are the final scenes we get with these characters. Vic’s final scene is especially devastating to watch, in which the little boy talks his way into trouble just by being human, and Oz lets him know how much he means to him. Vic was always too good for this world, and his death at the hands of his supposed mentor and protector confirms that we can no longer excuse Oz’s actions. At least Sofia gets to leave with her life, but is sent back to Arkham and ends up right where she started, all again thanks to Oz.

    “Great or Little Thing” leaves a bad taste in your mouth, and that’s exactly what The Penguin is going for.

    But where we leave Francis is perhaps the most horrifying of all. Living the rest of her life in a vegetative state, the one thing she said she could never do, as she is forced to stare at a Gotham she will never truly see again. And yes, she was bad, but no one deserves what she got. Where Oz leaves those around him is the ultimate indictment, which puts the final nail in the coffin of his soul. He sold it and really became The Penguin.

    Vaseline
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