Will The Penguin Get a Season 2 on HBO?

Sunday night sees the release of The Penguin episode 8 and with it the conclusion of the first season of The Batman spinoff, but is that the end of the story? Since before The Penguin series premiered it has been spoken about as if it was a limited series, an event connecting The Batman to to the upcoming The Batman Part II. To date there has been no word about The Penguin continuing beyond the initial order of episodes from HBO, but the show’s popularity has only skyrocketed since its premiere, could that lead to a renewal order?

The short answer, as of this writing, is no, it does not appear that season 2 of The Penguin will happen. However plans like this do sometimes change and The Batman director Matt Reeves has already alluded to the TV future of this corner of DC. There are two major reasons why a season 2 of The Penguin seems unlikely, the biggest being that the show’s act as a bridge between The Batman and The Batman Part II likely doesn’t need another set of episodes before that movie (not to mention the timing wouldn’t really work out). Reeves himself has already confirmed that series star Colin Farrell will return in the sequel, so his standing in the world of The Batman will be clear as the series ends and we head toward the feature film sequel.

The second major reason that The Penguin season 2 seems unlikely is Farrell, who has made it clear that doing another batch of episodes is not really something he’s eager to repeat. Speaking in an interview with Total Film earlier this year, Farrell was asked about the potential for a renewal, replying: “I don’t know, man. Don’t get me wrong — I loved it — but it got in on me a little bit. By the end of it, I was bitching and moaning to anyone who would listen to me that I f-ing wanted it to be finished. I tried to remind them that I had ‘grumpy gratitude.’”

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He added, “I was still grateful, and still honored — I grew up watching Burgess Meredith [in the ‘60s Batman TV series], and then Danny DeVito [in 1992’s Batman Returns] was my Penguin — so being a part of the lineage of that storytelling, I really did feel privileged. But by the end of it…”

Series showrunner Lauren LeFranc offered a slightly more hopeful take on the potential of The Penguin as a continuing series, telling The Direct: “We put it all out on the table. I think that in order to do a second season, we have to feel like we can top ourselves. We have to feel like there’s something more there to really dig into. I mean, I really care about all these characters, even if they’re terrible people.”

Regarding the television future of The Batman and its characters, Matt Reeves recently spoke about where they might go, seemingly alluding to the TV shows focusing on individual characters in-between movies (and also them being one-and-done stories). Speaking with Interview, Reeves said: “We have been talking about doing other shows….You can have that experience of this almost novelistic epic crime saga, but you also just get these separate experiences. They have their own dramatic value. So, Oz’s story is Oz’s story, and the idea is to do these other stories in the same way.”

One element of this entire puzzle that might leave some fans wondering, and which does seem a little telling, is the way that The Penguin is present on the MAX streaming service. When viewers select The Penguin and are given the episodes to choose to watch, they’re all listed as “S1E1,” “S1E2,” etc, which stands in stark contrast to HBO’s other limited series shows on the service which brand their episodes as just “Episode 1,” “Episode 2,” etc. This was perhaps done to leave some wiggle room over whether The Penguin will be renewed for season 2 or not, but in the grand scheme of the series this is mostly circumstantial evidence rather than direct proof or confirmation about The Penguin‘s future.