Announced in the wake of TheBatman, the series The Penguin is the great television surprise of the end of 2024. On the occasion of its fourth (excellent) episode, the series reused a character created for the series Batman, the animated series. We tell you everything!
The Penguin pays tribute to Batman: The Animated Series
Launched on September 19, 2024 on HBO and the Max platform, the series The Penguin is a great success. Setting its plot one week after the events of the film The Batman, The series tells the story of how Oswald Cobblepot – wonderfully played by an unrecognizable Colin Farrell – rose through the ranks of Gotham's organized crime, following the death of Carmine Falcone. But Oz must deal with the return of Sofia Falcone, the daughter of the former Mafia boss, also known as the Hangman Slayer. In addition to benefiting from splendid artistic direction, The Penguin is carried by an undeniably talented cast, including American actress Cristin Milioti (The Wolf of Wall Street).
The absence of the Dark Knight of Gotham has the consequence of making The Penguin an essentially criminal series. HBO's communication also compared it to the series The Sopranos, David Chase's masterpiece inspired by the Goodfellasby Martin Scorsese, broadcast on the cable channel between 1999 and 2007. However, showrunner Lauren LeFranc never forgets that the series The Penguintakes place in Gotham, an emblematic city of the DC Comics universe. The presence of Sofia Falcone is proof of this, since the character was created by Jeff Loeb and Tim Sale for the excellent comic book Bitter Victory, which followed A Long Halloween. (To discover: our selection of the 10 Batman comics to read at least once in your life.)
In addition, episode 4 brought back to the forefront a character created by Bruce Timm and Paul Dini in the iconic Batman, the animated seriesbroadcast from 1992: journalist Summer Gleeson. First appeared in Heart of Ice, in which Batman is confronted for the first time by Mr. Freeze. Intelligent and tenacious, she will become a recurring character in the series and will regularly have suspicions about Bruce Wayne, whom she suspects of being Batman. In The Penguin, she investigates the deaths of several employees of Carmine Falcone's clubs.
Following a meeting with the journalist, Sofia is accused of having killed the character. However, neither his death nor his corpse are shown on screen. While it could obviously only be an easter egg, his presence at screen may also be a harbinger of Mr. Freeze's arrival in The Batman II, as many fans predict. Is Summer Gleeson really dead? The next episodes will reveal it! And whatever the answer, it could have major consequences on the sequel to The Batman. We can't wait!