I don’t know that I expected them to stick the landing as hard as they did.

If you haven’t watched The Penguin yet, understand that we’re spoiling all of it. Go watch the finale. Go watch the whole series if you haven’t. It’s an amazing series that does some pretty amazing things, and this is the hour where it pays for every one of them.

What’s up, my know-it-alls. Man, oh man. This show is unbelievable. It’s everything you think it’s going to be, and it ends everywhere you think it’s going to end. By the time you get to that ending, they’ve solidified Oz’s place as the kingpin of crime in Gotham, the head of organized crime at the moment, and as a solid entry in what’s very soon going to be Batman’s rogues gallery.

I feel like Colin Farrell deserves all the things. And it’s everybody in the show, from the actress who plays Oz’s mom to Sophia to all of them. Everyone’s doing such solid work.

The Previously On Was Telling You Something

The episode starts literally where we left off, with a really long previously on. This is one of those rare times I decided to watch it, because I really wanted to see how they were going to recap it. A previously on is built out of the things the episode you’re about to watch is going to hit.

So when it showed Vic, and all the times he and Oz were together and close, I was immediately leery. Boyfriend Know-It-All was right on top of it. He was here watching with us, and he kept calling things, and I was like, bro.

His Mother Has Known the Whole Time

I love how they start this one, because they blend the past and the present in a very unique way. Oz’s mom is being watched by Sophia’s psychiatrist from Arkham, her Arkham doctor if you will, and he’s hypnotized her to try to get more information. Through that early flashback we discover that Oz’s mom has known the whole time.

She’d made her peace with him being different. What he’s done, she can’t. She was going to get that gangster friend of hers, the friend of the family, to end him. She’s asking how she lives with the devil under her roof. And he tells her there are two ways to handle it. Guys like him can serve a purpose, go on to do big things, “especially in my line of work,” but you’ve got to know how to control them. Or, well, then maybe you let him go.

So when Oz remembers his mom taking him to Monroe’s, the night they end up dancing, that scene feels wrong without this context. Add the context and you realize the whole thing was a setup. It was designed to get him there and get him comfortable, and eventually the gangster was going to take him home.

Apparently Oz’s instincts were dead on from the very beginning, no pun intended, because he talks his way out of it. He doesn’t even know he’s facing the chopping block (I don’t want to confuse it with Sophia’s hangman), and he manages to have this conversation with his mom where he promises her all the things she’s wanted to hear and tells her how much he sees her. “Of course I’m going to take care of you. I’d do anything for you.” It convinces her. I do believe this is what happened right before the dance we saw at the end of last episode.

They wove such a dark relationship. His mom knew, and she fed his narcissism and that Oedipal desire for her approval, and she also accepted all the things he was going to do. All the greatness, if you will.

In Whose Head Are We Screwed Up?

She begins to see through the hypnosis, and she sees Sophia and Sophia’s Arkham doctor. He’s using the red thing to hypnotize her right there in the restaurant, which gives her more of a place to ground her visions. Then they bring Oz in.

It’s an amazing confrontation, and what made it amazing was that Sophia thinks she’s in control. She thinks that this entire time. She was so lost, so twisted up about everything, and she was nowhere near as prepared as Oz was. I don’t think Oz was prepared for the bomb going off and all of that. But he turns that nonsense around.

She tells him a story, a fake one, about a little bird who killed his little bird brothers. It’s a stupid story and she even admits it’s a stupid story. His story is much more interesting. She pushes him, and she threatens to cut off his mother’s finger, and he refuses to give. “Ma, you’re confused.” He’s selling it hard.

He’s selling it so hard that for a brief moment I asked Mrs. Know-It-All: could she have genuinely hallucinated that whole thing? Could she be our unreliable narrator? Mrs. Know-It-All didn’t think so, but it was confusing, and I don’t mean that in a bad way. In whose head are we screwed up right now?

Then his mom has a moment of lucidity. “Just say it. Tell her. I already know.” She says she has a devil under her roof, she grabs a bottle, smashes it, and stabs him in the gut.

Oh, yeah.

She moves around a little, and then she has what looks like a seizure. Later you find out it was a severe stroke, and she falls down. That’s all it takes for Oz to break free. He loses it. He breaks out of the arm of the chair, collapses the whole thing, snatches up a gun off the floor (I think he knocked one guy out on the way down) and starts taking people out left and right. He grabs his mom, hefts her like a bag of potatoes, and limps out with her, shooting at Sophia the whole way. He makes it out.

Vic brought the gangs, and the gangs ended up deciding the product was more important than Oz. Vic is upset about it, and he’s saying so. Before he can get himself killed, Link punches him. Bro, this is not the time. Watch your mouth, because you’re going to get yourself shot.

I looked at Mrs. Know-It-All and said, Link’s protecting Vic. You could read it as a lieutenant shutting up a kid who’s yelling at his boss. But he made that move so the room would see it answered. Bam, I’m responding to it, it’s all good, he’s on the ground, let’s get out of here. He’s shuffling them off and giving Vic an opportunity.

The minute I said it, a light bulb went off for Mrs. Know-It-All, and I think she got it better than I did. At the time I just figured he was being nice because he liked Vic. I didn’t think it was going to roll the way it ended up rolling.

The Pep Talk

Oz calls Vic, and Vic meets him at the hospital. Oz is done. It’s over. She got his mother.

Then Vic gives him the most incredible pep talk a henchman or right-hand guy can give their boss. “Nobody else did that. Nobody even tried. You gave people dignity. That’s bigger than Bliss. All right? So get the hell up. Let’s go.”

“You practiced that, huh?”

“Shut up.”

I love it. It was a wonderful, very heartwarming scene. And again, they’re making us love Vic so much before the end of this episode.

Ambition, and Then There’s Ambition

Sophia has a meeting with all of the gang bosses and asks them about the house. Do you like it? Which one of you wants it? Zhao says he doesn’t think they understand. She’s leaving, because she can, and because she hates this town. Whoever brings her Oz can have the house and everything else with it. The territories, the operations, all of it.

Oz, now that he’s ready to go again, takes Vic and goes to the courthouse. He meets with that councilman, the one he asked to turn the power back on, and he pitches him. I’m going to give you what you need. I’m going to give you the monster who just blew all of this up. He weaves him a story, and the councilman’s thinking it could kind of work. But can I trust you? Is any of that true? Of course it’s true, and I’ll give it to you tied up in a bow.

Then comes one of the most interesting things in the episode, because Oz wants legitimacy. “Might be good to feel welcome in a place like this for a change. You know, meet some of those friends you got. Hell, maybe one of these days we’ll bump into Bella Reál.”

Oz has aspirations, and it shows. There’s ambition, and then there’s ambition, okay? Seeing that difference in Oz, I got it.

Every Right Hand in Gotham

While Vic is waiting outside, Link calls him. You were right. So what are we going to do about it?

Then Oz comes out of the courthouse and Vic’s not in the car. Link and Zhao’s men get out of the G Wagon and tell him he’s coming with them. Oz has been caught.

Sophia gets the call from Zhao and goes to meet him at an airstrip. They’re all there. And Oz can’t help himself. He smiles as Link shoots Zhao in the face.

Oh, yes.

Everybody’s taken down. Oz has Sophia go for a drive with him, and while he drives her around he explains what’s going down right now all across Gotham. We see it. Every gang leader is being taken out by their number one, by their right hand. All of them.

It’s chilling, and it’s a lesson for us and for Oz, who’s learning it at the same time. The fact that they came up with this plan to put new gang leadership in was just chef’s kiss brilliant. Blew my mind. The guy is operating on levels we as the audience couldn’t even have conceived of.

There’s only one way for him to end this and get what he wants. They go to a junkyard type of place over on the river, and he tells her to turn around. She believes she’s about to be killed. All of a sudden a light shines above her. She turns around. The police have descended. Oz is gone. His car is gone.

He gave them their villain. He won. He takes Gotham. Checkmate.

Bro. Unbelievable.

The Darkest Thing I’ve Seen on Television

He goes to celebrate with his mother, and the doctors tell him she’s in a vegetative state. She had a major stroke, and combined with her Lewy body diagnosis, that’s where she’s going to stay. She’ll never be more than that. He’s upset.

So it’s Vic and Oz, sitting by the river, enjoying a moment. I don’t know if it’s a park or where they are. They’re just sitting there.

This is one of the darkest moments I think I’ve ever experienced in television. And I watched Breaking Bad, so I’ve seen some dark stuff. They made us love Vic so much, they showed us his whole story, and we care so much, that when Oz tells him “you’ve seen me at my lowest,” “you’ve been there by my side every step,” and then, “Listen, kid. I can’t bring you with me this time.”

“What do you mean?”

And then he ends it.

A little bit before this, Boyfriend Know-It-All had actually said it. Vic’s done. He’s going to end Vic.

Oz sees Vic as a weakness. I can’t tell if it’s because family is a weakness, and Oz had his ma used against him even though he tried forever to keep her safe and out of it. Or it’s the fact that they just took out all the other families using their right-hand men, which means Oz can’t trust anybody. All of that happened for him, and he realizes it can just as easily happen to him. I think it’s probably a combination.

And you hate him for it. He is despicable. He is disgusting.

The Hat, the Umbrella, the Signal

He has a brand new penthouse set up on the top floor of an old building. His ma’s there, and a tear runs down her face, meaning she’s at least somewhat aware of what’s going on in the world. Then you see he’s got his girlfriend back, and she’s cosplaying as his mother.

The layers on this thing.

I saved one piece for this part because I wanted to bring it all together. Remember when Oz told the councilman he wanted to meet his friends, the mayor and all of them? The councilman’s answer was: “You want to be welcome? You got to look clean as a whistle, pal.”

So at the very end, Oz gets out of a car carrying a top hat, wearing a full tuxedo with tails. It’s the Penguin outfit. He walks upstairs and hangs the hat on a rack that has a couple of canes on it, and he hangs it right next to an umbrella. You get the umbrella, you get the hat, you get the look. Blew my mind.

And then the one we called on Nerd Bites, and I believe I’ve said it myself in previous episodes. Penguin’s standing at the window, looking out over the city. The camera pulls back, and you see the Bat-Signal.

This is literally building up to something. According to Matt Reeves, this story absolutely continues. The Batman crime saga picks up in The Batman Part II, which comes out in like two years.

Oh, and a button. Did I forget to mention it? Sophia gets a letter from her half-sister, Selina. I love it. They even played a few little notes of Selina Kyle’s song.

The Verdict

The Penguin finale is a 10 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index, and that’s the episode and the season together in one number. Flat out, this thing stuck the landing so hard that it’s a 10.

There’s a rumor I want to debunk while we’re here. James Gunn has confirmed there are no plans or talks to do a similar series for the Joker, and I’m kind of glad. Part of the enjoyment of this was watching a character we haven’t highlighted so often, even though you kind of had Gotham, which did a mediocre job of it, but whatever.

I want to see more of this kind of story in this world. Give me a Harvey Dent story. Heck, give me any of the other crazy characters. If you can end with this being the Penguin, and we see him the way we see him, that’s brilliant. Chef’s kiss. I’m down, man.

Never forget, everyone loves a know-it-all.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on The Penguin. Was it everything you wanted it to be? Was it everything you expected it to be? Tell me in the comments on the video above.