The Penguin’s Populist Rhetoric Hits a Little Too Close to Home

The Penguin has been one of TV’s biggest surprises this year, turning a goofy Batman villain into a nefarious, oddly charismatic figure who always just barely wiggles out of harm’s way. There’s plenty worthy of praise; Colin Farrell delivers a mesmerizing performance as Oswald Cobb (aka The Penguin), while Cristin Milioti grants Sofia Falcone both pathos and an eventual killer instinct. The series maintained a breakneck pace through eight episodes, delivering twists and turns as Oz’s best-laid plans repeatedly went south in exciting fashion. But as the series took a bow this weekend, one throughline came to the forefront more than ever: how Oz’s ability to twist words, provide a scapegoat, and tell people what they want to hear has an uncomfortable degree of overlap with recent events. He speaks to people’s deserved grievances and hurts, but his solutions won’t actually fix anything. Because, just like leaders in the real world who castigate the status quo while failing to address the root causes of what they’re railing against, Oz preys on lingering dissatisfaction and inequalities to further his own ends without any intention of following through on his promises.

As Oz works his way up the criminal underworld, he butts heads with the old guard, playing these adversaries against each other so he always comes out on top. Perhaps Cobb’s greatest skill for surviving this power struggle is his borderline preternatural ability to talk his way out of situations when there’s a gun to his head, and while these numerous narrow victories could have come across as implausible, it all feels earned because we can see why these people would believe him: he prays on their insecurities, doubts, and well-grounded fears while marking out a clear “Us” and “Them.” He gives speeches about how the average Gothamite is brushed aside and mistreated by crooked politicians and the privileged crime families that have dominated Gotham. Meanwhile, he’s careful to frame himself as a man of the people, as another poor kid from the East Side who had to hustle his way up.

And the thing is, at least in a vacuum, some of what he’s saying is true. Gotham City is run by a band of uncaring politicians and callous criminal empires who treat ordinary people like trash. Following the Riddler’s ill-conceived plan that disproportionately throttled poor people and not the status quo he was rallying against, folks who were already struggling are now in even worse shape. When we think of Gotham City, we think of corruption, disenfranchisement, and hopelessness; it’s a place that desperately needs change. But while all these problems require fixing, Oz couldn’t be a worse person for that task.

Still, while it’s obvious from the jump that Cobb isn’t going to meaningfully mend Gotham, there’s an interesting psychological ambiguity where it’s unclear how much he actually buys into his own lies. While he’s constantly tailoring his words to stir his target audience, the very first thing we see him do isn’t calculated; Oz impulsively pops Alberto Falcone because he made fun of his dream to be looked up to by his community, Al Capone-style. At least at this point, Cobb truly wants to be admired in the same way that Rex, his childhood hero, was. Moreover, at least at the start, Oz does seem to genuinely resent the Falcones, Maronis, crooked politicians, and everyone else who has used their influence to keep him down. But in the finale, it’s more apparent than ever that what he hated about these people wasn’t the suffering they inflicted on have-nots but that they possessed this power to exploit people while he didn’t.

In the last episode, “A Great or Little Thing,” Oz’s recurring populist rhetoric fully bears fruit. After Sofia kidnaps him, his apprentice, Victor (Rhenzy Feliz), tries to rally the other crime syndicates to his aid, and while the leaders of these other organizations aren’t interested in helping The Penguin, it turns out their underlings are. Victor fans the flames, and after a series of coups where the passed-over second-in-commands of these criminal outfits seize control, Oz once again escapes captivity. These actions aren’t done out of fealty to Cobb, but he planted these seeds by suggesting that they’ve all been forgotten and ignored despite their toil in the same way he’s been.

However, while things work out for those who took Oz’s lead and became the kings and queens of their little empires, for everyone else, things only get worse, particularly when it comes to those closest to our protagonist. After going against his mother’s wishes by allowing her to remain in a vegetative state after she suffers a stroke, he goes to the park with his closest ally and only friend, Victor. But after his mentee describes the two as family, Oz’s demeanor suddenly shifts. He thanks Victor for everything he’s done and then abruptly begins to strangle him to death. Oz’s face morphs into a genuinely monstrous expression as he explains that family makes you weak and how that’s something he can’t afford now that he’s on top. Having finished off the very person who just saved his life, he throws Victor’s ID in the river, leaving another anonymous dead body literally strangled by the powerful.

In the final scene, Oz visits his mother. He gets out of his garish Rolls-Royce wearing an expensive-looking mink-lined coat and golden tuxedo. His mom suffered a stroke and is now trapped in a penthouse owned by the son she hates, another casualty in his ascent. As Oz presides over his newly won kingdom in his flashy clothes, it’s apparent that one tyrant has been replaced with another. Like most leaders in this style, he had to pin all the blame on someone else, in this case, Sofia, but now he gets to rub shoulders with the political elites he allegedly hated. Not only did he fail to dismantle the systems he’s been rallying against, he’s become a part of it. Of course, this isn’t exactly a surprise; Oz never offered genuine answers to these problems to begin with. He never wanted to shatter this hierarchy, just to put himself at the top.

It’s an element of his character that ties in cleanly with recent history, and Oz’s methods of appealing to working class people are clearly inspired by an ongoing wave of right-wing populist politicians who prey on economic inequality to sell their bogus message. This brand of charlatan tells people what they want to hear about uprooting political elites but then makes policy decisions that continue to enrich those very same people because their solutions aren’t to dismantle neoliberal institutions or address the root causes of growing class disparity, like deregulation of financial systems and “trickle down” economics, but to blame everything on immigrants and other already marginalized scapegoats.

Specifically, despite running on a populist message, Trump is already filling his administration with anti-union, anti-regulation billionaires like Elon Musk as he promises to introduce tariffs, which virtually all economists agree will raise prices in the US, something that will likely hurt working class people the most. He plans on gutting the federal government and weakening institutions that are supposed to keep corporations in check (institutions that haven’t been doing a particularly good job at that even when fully staffed). The Democrats’ unwillingness to speak directly to working class people’s concerns created a vacuum, and Trump filled it with his nonsensical, xenophobic explanation of events that framed immigrants as the reason for increasing economic inequality and not the decades-long aftershock of Reaganomics.

In The Penguin, Oz’s rise to the top comes with a sizable counterbalance. After the central villain finally achieves what he’s always wanted, the camera slowly pans out to a Gotham skyline to reveal the Bat symbol hanging above the city. At this point, we probably know how this story will end, with The Penguin getting punched out by Robert Pattinson—Oz may have lied his way to power, but he probably won’t stay there for long. Still, while Gotham has an apparent “savior,” it’s also a city doomed to remain in stasis so that infinite variations of a guy dressed up as a flying rat will have villains to thwart. By contrast, in our world, change is actually attainable. The Penguin conveys the risk of trusting false ideologues who have no intention of improving things for anyone but themselves, but it’s up to us to organize and support alternatives that will actually do something about it. We don’t have a spandexed superhero to save us; we have to do that ourselves.

Elijah Gonzalez is an assistant Games and TV Editor for Paste Magazine. In addition to playing and watching the latest on the small screen, he also loves film, creating large lists of media he’ll probably never actually get to, and dreaming of the day he finally gets through all the Like a Dragon games. You can follow him on Twitter @eli_gonzalez11 and on Bluesky @elijahgonzalez.bsky.social.

For all the latest TV news, reviews, lists and features, follow @Paste_TV.