The Penguin Season 2 Might Not Happen, Says Colin Farrell: The Batman Villain "Got in on Me a Little Bit"

Playing the Penguin took a mental and physical toll on the Oscar-nominated actor.

By Cameron Bonomolo

Colin Farrell is squawking at the idea of The Penguin season 2. HBO has billed The Batman spinoff series (premiering Sept. 19th) as an eight-episode limited series, set between the events of the 2022 reboot and 2026's The Batman Part II. While Farrell is set to reprise his role in the Matt Reeves-directed sequel — which Reeves confirmed is set up in The Penguin — the actor says his Oscar-nominated transformation into the scar-faced Gotham gangster takes a heavy toll.

"I don't know, man," Farrell grimaced when asked by Total Film if there will be a second season of The Penguin. "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.'"

"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…"

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(Photo:

Colin Farrell as Oz Cobb in The Penguin.

- Warner Bros. Discovery / DC / HBO)

Farrell has described The Sopranos-style series as "really dark," "really heavy," and "incredibly violent," explaining why he's hesitant to live in Oz Cobb's skin in a potential second season. "If you take what Matt Reeves created and then what Lauren [LeFranc, showrunner] did and what Mike [Marino, prosthetics and make-up designer] did and put them all together," Farrell said, "it was a really powerful experience."

Besides the grueling makeup process, there's the intense mental capacity required to play Penguin. After the death of mob boss Carmine Falcone (played by John Turturro in The Batman) at the hands of the Riddler (Paul Dano), the power-hungry Oz becomes entrenched in a gang war with the heirs to the Falcone crime empire: Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti) and Alberto Falcone (Michael Zegen). 

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"Lauren said, 'Look, if I could find a way that makes sense, would you talk about it?' And I said, 'Absolutely,'" Farrell said of a potential season 2. "And maybe in a year I would. But when I finished I was like, 'I never want to put that f---ing suit and that f---ing head on again.'"

The Penguin — also starring Rhenzy Feliz (Runaways), Michael Kelly (Man of Steel), Shohreh Aghdashloo (The Flight Attendant), Deirdre O'Connell (Marvel's Daredevil), Clancy Brown (Billions), James Madio (The Offer), Scott Cohen (The Americans), Carmen Ejogo (True Detective), and Theo Rossi (Luke Cage) — premieres Thursday, Sept. 19th on HBO and Max before moving to HBO Sundays starting Sept. 29th.

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