The HBO show succeeded where Joker 2 failed.

This post contains spoilers for Joker: Folie à Deux and the finale of The penguin.

This year we saw that Batman Cinematic Universe expands with two new entries: the film Joker: Folie à Deux and the TV series The penguin. While Joker 2—Todd Phillips’ musical follow-up to his 2019 hit film, joker– bombed at the box office and was seemingly panned by everyone from critics to (if we are to believe online lip readers) its own star, The penguin has skyrocketed. The HBO limited series that sees heartthrob Colin Farrell reprise his role as the titular DC villain he first portrayed in Matt Reeves’ 2022 film The Batmantouts a positive Metacritic score of 72 and strong viewership.

Joker 2 And The penguin actually have a lot in common, at least on paper. Both play on the line between anti-hero and villain, with Farrell’s Oz Cobb an underrated mafia capo trying to monopolize Gotham’s drug trade and Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck, a repressed incel turned murderous edgelord. Joker 2Ultimately, regardless of Phillips’ intentions, was this film intended to be a response to the phenomenon of toxic fandoms? – ultimately fails to skewer toxic masculinity or create one of those villains you root for even though you know you shouldn’t. But where this film stumbled, The penguin has proven to be a great example of charting the path from sympathetic anti-hero to villain. No episode makes this more clear than the clever finale on Sunday evening. “Big or small thing.”

As a result, Oz becomes a more tragic antihero than even Shakespeare could have dreamed of. After his main enemy, Sofia Falcone (an extraordinary Cristin Milioti), successfully kidnaps his mother, exposing Oz’s few personal weaknesses, some shocking turns of events occur. The first and biggest: Oz ultimately wins – he outwits and defeats the remaining leaders of the “Three Families”, who alongside the Falcones control the drug trade in Gotham. After outsmarting them all, Oz wisely decides to turn to one of his honest contacts, Councilman Hady, to help him force his way into the more legitimate realm of joining forces with the big boys. He expresses this by offering Sofia as a scapegoat for all the disturbing events that have occurred over the course of the series, from the bomb that decimated Crown Point’s underground tunnels to the gang violence that stems from a turf war between the Falcones and the Falcones became a different family (a conflict caused by Oz, mind you). This deal also benefits the city council, which will be held responsible for ending the “drug war that has plagued the streets of this city for decades” following the arrest of the last Falcone. For the first time since the show began, Oz finally becomes what he always wanted to be: the last man standing – and in good local government company, to boot.

But in order to achieve this result, everything else in his life must first fail. Oz’s mother suffers a stroke and goes vegetative, making it impossible for her to give him the “I’m so proud of you” moment he’s always longed for. His only other wish was to be someone his mother wouldn’t be ashamed of, and despite his best – now incredibly fertile – attempts, he will never get that satisfaction. As he has learned, having loved ones can only be a weakness. Therefore, his next task is to murder his own buddy Victor, whom he has slowly turned into a dutiful, loyal right-wing man. As Victor sits on a park bench at night and the dust has settled on Oz’s master plans, he thanks Oz for his belief in him and explains that they are family. Oz agrees, just before wrapping his hand around the young man’s neck and squeezing until his body goes limp.

What does The penguin his subversion is so convincing. Oz is a protagonist you just want to root for – he’s an oft-mocked underdog who’s been undervalued and underestimated his entire life, whose mother insults and condescends him, who seems committed to lifting up those he loves – but then he leaves he goes off and does something like kill his trusty sidekick by taking a hard left out of hero or anti-hero territory. Like the infamous sopranos In the episode “College,” the series makes it clear that Oz is a villain through Victor’s death. In the last few episodes, we understand that the worst crime Oz ever committed was accidentally causing the death of his older brothers as a child. Through his backstory, you realize that everything in his life has led to Victor’s blood being on his hands – that he sought absolution for the crimes of his youth but found greed more tempting. Thanks to his murderous moves, he’s finally at the top of the underworld, but ironically, he now has no one left to share it with and not even a single person left to say “I told you so” to. In many ways, the victory made him an even more tragic figure, ultimately still plagued by the mistakes he made in his youth.

Joker 2 tried to teach the same final lesson by chastising us for foolishly supporting a deeply flawed anti-hero, but it missed the mark by a wide margin. Aside from other reasons to dislike the film – the plot made little sense, the song choice was disappointing, some hated that it was a musical at all – the film ended spectacularly. As Slate’s Sam Adams points out, it just provides the same fodder that the previous film’s “drooling idiots” — who idolize the protagonist — were craving rather than turning against them. When Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur denounces his fake identity as the Joker and proves that the fantasy is instead a fallacy, he loses not only his girlfriend but also his life when a fellow inmate at Arkham Asylum stabs Arthur before slashing a Glasgow smiler in his own face, presumably to take on the role of the crazy clown. But Arthur’s death is nothing more than the embodiment of two and a half hours of wasted time. It doesn’t undermine the idea of ​​hero or villain, nor does it complicate the question of whether Arthur is worth supporting The penguin does this expertly with Oz. It corresponds to the blank shock value.

In contrast, all developments are in The penguinis the last episode largesurprising moments – and they actually pay off. The final twists undermine both the hero and villain tropes while successfully complicating the audience’s desire to see Oz win. Oz may be oppressed like Arthur, but he doesn’t campaign to win the title of Best Victim, he just goes for it win. The penguin It took eight episodes to paint a nuanced picture of a villain with noble causes and a heart in both the absolute right and wrong places, who has both survived trauma and caused countless ripples of the same across Gotham. After this final, it’s clear that he has no fans – or rather, that being a fan of his wouldn’t save you from a six-foot hole in the ground. In the end, The penguinOz Cobb becomes someone not for or against, but someone to watch, in many ways one.