The Penguin Director on How Shocking Premiere Moment Sets Tone for the Season (Exclusive)

The Penguin director Craig Zobel reveals how Oz's shocking decision in episode 1 sets the tone for the whole season

By Matthew Aguilar

DC's The Batman universe has expanded with HBO's much anticpated Penguin series, and the series wasted no time hitting the ground running with a major turning point happening in the show's first 15 minutes. In fact, many of the elements seen in the show's introductory episode set the tone for the rest of the series, highlighting several aspects of Oz Cobb that will be at the core of even more decisions to come. ComicBook had the chance to speak to Executive Producer and director of episodes 1 through 3 Craig Zobel all about Oz's big decision and how it's emblematic of Oz's best and worst traits throughout the series.

Working His Way To The Top

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(Photo: Warner Bros. Discovery)

The Penguin stole the show throughout his limited time in The Batman, but in the series, Zobel and the rest of the team had the chance to make the iconic villain the main feature, expanding on several elements of the character only teased in the film. "What was so fun was that you get a sense of him in the movie, but you kind of don't know very much about his backstory or anything like that. And what was fun about this was exploring and seeing what Lauren LeFranc did with the writing in terms of telling the story of this guy who isn't the Penguin that we've seen before at all," Zobel said. "In the movie, he wears kind of flashy clothes and has a purple car, but that's because he's, like, peacocking almost.

"He's sort of strutting, trying to show that he's a person who has money and power and stuff because he's actually a person that came from a very working-class background and is trying to pull himself up," Zobel said. "And he's a mid-level guy in the crime family, not the top, and it was fun to kind of start him there and send him hopefully to the top by the end. It was sort of what the goal or the hope of the show is."

Back Against The Wall

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(Photo: Warner Bros. Discovery)

The show's very first episode puts two of Oz's key traits on display. The first is his unpredictable nature and the violent edge that accompanies it. As we see in the show, that leads to some difficult and challenging situations for Oz, and quite a few of them are self-inflicted. That said, that leads to the other core element, which is the fact that Oz tends to be at his lethal best when his back is against a wall, and that just happens to be around 80% of the time.

"This new thing that isn't as much explored in the movie is like, Oz is a character who probably does his best work getting out of a problematic situation, right? And so there's actually some part of his personality that... he can't resist shoving himself into problematic situations, pushing himself into a corner so that he has to get himself out of that corner," Zobel said. "He has like an impulse that just happens, that doesn't come from a conscious place. Some element of his personality has him do brash things, and those brash things kind of put him into a place where then he has to problem-solve his way out of it. It was fun. It's a thing you see in the first episode, and then you recognize kind of repeatedly throughout the course of the series."

Expanding The World  

While you will get even more out of the series if you've also watched The Batman, Zobel and the team wanted to create a show that could capture your interest whether you've seen the film or not. For those who have watched the film, they will see just how Riddler's actions in the film affected Gotham in the days immediately after and beyond.

"I think that the goal was to make something that you didn't have to know, really, the story of the film in order to still enjoy. Hopefully, this could be a mob show that you could just watch, but if you did know the Matt Reeves world that he had created, this would be a big primer and kind of constantly have little winks and nods toward where we're going in the bigger picture," Zobel said. "It was also fun because when you watch superhero movies, the climax of the movie has something big and destructive happen and it was fun to be like, well, what was two days after that, what was happening? It was a cool place to set a story."

The Penguin's first episode is now streaming on Max, and will air on HBO this Sunday.

What did you think of The Penguin's premiere episode? You can talk all things Penguin and DC with me on Threads and Twitter @mattaguilarcb!

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