The Penguin: Is It Worth Watching Without the Batman Homework?

TL;DR

• The Penguin is a complete limited series, eight episodes, now streaming on Max.
• You do not need to have seen The Batman (2022) to follow it or enjoy it.
• Colin Farrell is unrecognizable and genuinely great. Cristin Milioti is the real surprise.
• It's dark, slow-burn crime TV — think more The Sopranos than superhero spectacle.
• The series tells a complete story with a real ending. No second season required.
• If you bounced off DC movies, watch it anyway. It barely feels like one.

You've probably heard someone describe The Penguin as "the DC show that doesn't feel like DC." That's not wrong, but it undersells what's actually happening here. This is a grimy, operatic crime series about Gotham's mob wars — and Colin Farrell, buried under prosthetics, is doing some of the best work of his career.

The question most people have before starting: do I need to watch The Batman first?

Short answer: no. Longer answer: it helps a little, but it's genuinely fine if you skip it.

What You Actually Need to Know Going In

The Penguin picks up a few days after the events of The Batman (2022), in which Gotham gets flooded and the old crime hierarchy collapses. Oz Cobb (Farrell) — aka the Penguin — is a mid-level enforcer for the Falcone crime family who sees an opportunity in the chaos.

That's it. That's the setup. The show explains everything else as it goes. Batman himself barely factors in. There are a couple of moments that will land harder if you've seen the film, but nothing that will leave you confused if you haven't.

What the show is really about is the Falcone family implosion, and specifically the dynamic between Oz and Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti), the family's exiled daughter who comes back to reclaim what she thinks is hers. That relationship is the engine of the whole series.

Is It Actually Good?

Yeah, it is — with a caveat.

Farrell is obviously great. Everyone said that before it aired, and it's still true. But the performance that caught me off guard was Milioti's. Sofia starts the series as a straightforward antagonist and ends up somewhere much more complicated. There's an episode, around the midpoint, that recontextualizes her entirely. It's the best hour of the series and one of the better hours of superhero-adjacent TV in years.

Here's the thing that matters if you're wary of committing to a new franchise: The Penguin ends. Actually ends. Eight episodes, a complete arc, and a finale that resolves what it set out to do. You won't finish it and find yourself waiting for a season 2 to get the payoff. The story it tells is the story it finishes. That's rarer than it should be in this genre, and it's a big part of why the series works as well as it does.

The caveat: it's slow. Deliberate slow, not padded slow — the pacing is doing something — but if you need an action beat every twenty minutes, this isn't your show. It's much more interested in the psychology of these characters than in fights or set pieces.

The production design is also worth mentioning. Gotham looks like a city that just got hit by a flood and is now being carved up by people who think the rules no longer apply. It's grimy in a way that feels specific, not just "dark superhero."

Who Should Watch It

If you like crime dramas — The Sopranos, The Wire, Boardwalk Empire, Ozark — this is built for you. The superhero stuff is almost incidental. The real genre is mob tragedy: a morally compromised protagonist climbing over people he claims to care about, convincing himself it's survival. You know how it ends for people like that. The show knows you know. It goes there anyway.

If you bounced off The Batman because it was long and serious, don't use that as a reason to skip this. The Penguin is also long and serious, but it has sharper writing, a tighter scope, and a much clearer sense of what it wants to be. It earns its eight episodes.

If you've been burned by limited series that don't actually limit themselves — shows that end on a cliffhanger and call it a season — this one is the exception. It's a standalone story. Watch it like a very good eight-hour movie about a man who wants power and gets it and discovers what that costs.

If you need a light watch, skip it. This one commits.

The Penguin (2024) is streaming on Max. Eight episodes, complete series.

Do I Need to Watch the Batman First?

No. The Penguin explains everything you need as it goes, and Batman himself barely factors in. If you're curious, The Batman is also streaming on Max — watch it first if you have the time, skip it if you don't.

Is the Penguin a Complete Story or a Setup for Season 2?

It's a complete, eight-episode arc with a real ending. The finale resolves what the season sets out to do, no cliffhanger required.