The Penguin Episode 1 recap: Being a gangster is murder
HBOThe Penguin Episode 1, ‘After Hours’, is a dark reintroduction to Gotham’s criminal underworld, kicking off Oz Cobb’s path to power with an impulsive act of violence and a fresh-faced recruit.
When we met The Penguin, aka Oz Cobb (not Oswald Cobblepot, with the series officially changing his name) in The Batman, he wasn’t a quaking, crazy kingpin – he was a nightclub proprietor, drug trafficker, and one of Carmine Falcone’s trusted “soldiers.”
Now, with Carmine killed and Gotham fractured, Oz’s destiny seems closer than ever. There’s just one problem: there are other Falcones to deal with, namely Albert and Sofia, and there’s the small matter of the Maronis.
Two families, one Penguin, a drug that could revolutionize the market, and bitter-blooded murder: a lot goes down in Episode 1, so don’t worry if you think you missed anything – I’ve got you covered.
A quick Batman recap
The Penguin effectively opens at the end of The Batman, with Cobb staring out the window as we hear newscasters discuss Don Mitchell and Carmine Falcone’s murders, and the Riddler’s seawall explosions which flooded Gotham.
We don’t see the caped crusader, but we’re told he’s busy helping the city’s survivors. Meanwhile, the city has already reached “boiling point” in the wake of the incident, with illegal drugs and violence spilling through the streets. Falcone’s death is particularly important, as it’s “created a power vacuum in Gotham’s underworld.”
Albert, his alcoholic, drug-addled mess of a son, is reportedly poised to take his place, stoking concerns about the future of the family’s more expendable footsoldiers.
Oz tries to be sneaky
HBOAs rain falls from Gotham’s nighttime skies, Oz pulls up outside the Iceberg Lounge (wrecked by the floods) in his purple Maserati and walks in armed with a big hammer.
He heads into Carmine’s old office and busts open the safe, finding a folder with information on councilman Sebastian Hady and photos of Johnny Viti sleeping with another woman. He giggles to himself as he stashes it away, before he pulls out a box of jewelry.
Alberto appears behind him, holding a gun. Oz doesn’t blink before coming up with an excuse, claiming that he was there to make sure the jewels were safely delivered to Alberto before the “scavengers” got their hands on them. “Thought I’d do you a solid, as a show of support for your new position,” he says.
“You got some big shoes to fill,” he says, before laughing and adding: “Manageable shoes.”
Alberto is clearly paranoid, so Oz offers “a hit” from the stash in the loft. He’s trying to stay off the drops, especially with a “new deal” coming up, so Oz offers him a drink instead to lighten him up. Alas, it’s not long before he’s moistening his eyes.
It turns out Albert has something big cooking. He’s not just altering the formula, he’s going to “revolutionize the game” with a new drug.
He keeps schtum, though, throwing Oz one of his necklaces instead. Alberto isn’t an idiot: he knows he’s a “good soldier”, but he also knows Oz is a dirty operator who’s always skimmed money off the top – just the right amount that’d go unnoticed by most people. Carmine never cared, because he “knew what it meant for a guy like [him] to get a piece.”
Oz kills Alberto
HBOAlberto flashes his ring – not just any ring, but Salvatore Maroni’s ring, the same one Carmine used to wear like it was a trophy. He asks if Cobb wants to try it on, but he says no. He’s clearly anxious about whether or not he’ll be able to earn the same respect as his dad, but Oz explains how there’s different types of power.
He tells Alberto about Rex Calabrese, an old-school gangster in his neighborhood. People revered him; he helped locals when they were sick, loaned them cash when they needed it, and did anything he could. He died when Oz was 14, and everyone “threw a parade in his honor… can you imagine to be remembered like that?”
Alberto is offended, mocking Oz’s “pathetic” dream. “What a little bitch,” he says, and it’s the last straw: coldly, Oz pulls out his gun and shoots Alberto five times in the chest. He dies (obviously), and Oz chuckles as his blood stains the couch.
Reality sets in. He’s killed someone and the body needs to be disposed of (not before he unlocks Alberto’s phone with his face, smart cookie). He lifts his corpse down the stairs; in one hilarious moment, we realizes how pointless it is to be so careful and chucks the body over the railing.
Oz meets Victor Aguilar
HBOOutside, a group of “punks” are trying to steal Oz’s gold rims, but he catches them in the act and starts firing his gun. They all get away… apart from one: Victor Aguilar, a teenager with a stutter who begs for his life.
Oz doesn’t kill him. Instead, he gets him to help with the body (under the threat of murdering him and everyone he cares about, of course), before letting him drive his car. Oz checks Alberto’s phone and finds the date and time of the shipment he spoke about.
Oz and Victor have something in common: they’re both from the east side of Gotham. Victor lives in a rougher area – Crown Point – while Oz was further from the port. They even talk about a corner mart and mixing all the flavors of a slushie to make a “suicide”, but it’s clear Victor is still terrified.
They go to another apartment block to meet Eve, Oz’s… female friend (a sex worker whom he regularly sees, evidently). He needs an alibi, so she agrees to say he’s been with her since 10pm.
“A nice sunrise”
Oz buys Victor a sandwich and mocks him for his “lack of ambition.” Soon, the sun is rising and it’s time to get rid of Alberto’s body. They don’t dump him in the river or chop him up: they shove him in the trunk of an abandoned car in the junkyard (Oz pockets his ring too).
Oz then tells Victor to look at the sunrise behind him. He’s not an idiot, he thinks he’s going to get shot and killed as soon as he turns his back – and he’s right. However, he convinces Oz to keep him around so he can help with whatever he needs.
“If you step out of line, even once, I swear to god I’ll gut you like a f**king fish,” he warns, and they both watch the sunrise together.
Oz takes Victor back to his apartment, and we finally see why he limps all the time: he has a pretty gnarly club foot. He keeps the Maroni ring safe beside his bed before getting back to work.
They arrive at Oz’s drug operation, where he hands one of his workers an envelope with Hady’s gambling debts. “We all got our vices… make sure he knows it’s from me,” he tells him.
Meanwhile, his “doctor” has been busy recovering drops from the flood. There’s a risk of contamination, but who cares? That won’t stop “drop-heads” from buying it, so why not give them what they want?
Sofia Falcone is back
HBOMoments later, a dealer is dragged in with blood on his hands. He was jumped, either by the “Odessa mob or Burnley town” and they took his whole stash. Before he can even get angry, the Falcone family’s head honchos call him and ask for a meeting.
“It could mean anything… am I holding a f**king crystal ball? It’s all a song and dance,” he tells Victor, predicting they just want to scold him to make themselves feel better.
He arrives at the house, where he meets Johnny Viti and Milos Grapa. Unfortunately, they have a big announcement: they’re closing his plant and moving operations to Robninsville, believing there’s too much heat in Gotham.
Oz thinks packing up and running away makes them look weak, plus they could be handing the Maronis the keys to the kingdom, but as Viti points out, it’s not his call. “Wait a second,” he says. “What if I could fix it, this… I got wind of a shipment coming in it. It’s big, it’s got the potential to revolutionize the drug business.”
As he hypes up this exciting new product, a mysterious figure walks in at the back of the room. “All you guys gotta do is sit back and reap the rewards,” he says, before realizing who’s behind him: Sofia Falcone, Carmine’s daughter fresh out of Arkham.
Sofia doesn’t care about the business, she just wants to know where her brother is. Before she can probe him, Johnny tells Oz to shut down the plant in 48 hours.
Oz has lunch with “the Hangman”
HBOAs he walks back to the car, Sofia follows him outside and asks him about Alberto. He says he must be busy, given he’s the boss… which is exactly what Johnny and Milos said. She notes the color of his car. “Purple, very subtle,” she says, and he notes that it’s actually “plum.”
She also notices the bullet hole on his trunk, but she doesn’t ask many other questions. Instead, they go for something to eat, a predictably swanky restaurant where Sofia drinks and eats like she’s been starved for a fortnight.
Nearby, other patrons shift in their seats and throw quick glances at their table. Sofia doesn’t blame them; after all, wouldn’t you be a bit nervous if a “psycho killer” was out and about? It’s unclear what she did at this point in the story, but it must have been brutal, considering the Gazette gave her a nickname: the Hangman. The guards in Arkham even forced her to read every article since she was locked away.
Whatever went down, Oz played a role in her getting caught, but Sofia doesn’t hold it against him. They clink their drinks to mark being “untamed.”
Sofia then reveals she knew Alberto was going to Carmine’s loft above Oz’s club, and considering she was the only one who knew about this “revolutionary” new drug, it seems a bit strange that Oz is pitching it to the family like it’s his idea just as Alberto goes missing.
“You know, it’s so brazen that you either have to be blindingly stupid or wildly confident that he isn’t coming back to reclaim it, so I’m going to ask you again: do you know where my brother is?” she asks.
Oz spins her a semi-convincing lie: apparently, Alberto wanted him in on this new deal, but Oz wasn’t even aware that Sofia was out of Arkham. He tells her Alberto was on a “bender” and apologizes for running his mouth with the family.
He offers to take Sofia to the club and look around, but stresses that she likely won’t find anything, given he was with Eve the whole night. “People underestimate you, but not me, I’ve always known you were capable of more,” she whispers in his ear before leaving.
Meet the Parent
HBOOz and Vic take a train out of the city to Irving Grove to visit Oz’s mother, Francis. He gives her Alberto’s necklace and tells her they need to take a trip. He finds her pills in the bath, but her reason confuses him: “The boys were playing in the bath and they didn’t want to get out.”
It quickly becomes clear that Francis has dementia, hence why she thinks she saw Oz’s brothers as if they’re still here. She panics when she sees Victor, but Oz tells her he’ll look after her.
She knows something is wrong and calls her son out for the obvious “bullsh*t” he’s spouting. He confesses to killing Alberto because he laughed at him, and he’s convinced Sofia knows. She tells him he’s acting like a “weak little p*ssy boy” and thinks he should take ownership of the murder. He wants power, why should he be ashamed of that?
Later, Victor and Oz watch Gilda together; specifically, the ‘Put the Blame on Mame’ scene. Victor asks who Mame is. “She’s just the scapegoat,” Oz says.
The next day, Oz and Victor hatch a plan, but we don’t know what Victor has been asked to do. He seems nervous, so Oz tells him he knows that his home was wiped out in the floods. “You made it… I’ve been where you are. This is one of those moments where you gotta ask yourself, what kind of life do I want?” he asks.
“You saw how the Falcones live. Can you imagine living like that? They don’t know what they got because they always had it,” he adds, telling Victor to take “whatever they decide is ours.”
Oz wants to give him a chance, but he can’t tolerate any “bullsh*t… can I count on you to pull through?” Victor says he can do it, so they get to work.
Oz gives Salvatore Maroni an offer
HBOThe first part of Oz’s plan presents itself: he offers his services to Salvatore Maroni behind bars. “Where I sit and where you sit, I don’t think you’re in the position not to hear me out,” he says, believing the family’s older higher-ups have lost touch with the “ground game.”
It’s simple: the Falcones are about to get rid of a huge source of income, so the Maronis could just swoop in and take it, with Oz’s help.
“Don’t you miss it… respect? That’s what Carmine really stole from you, ain’t it? He’s a dirty rat, he played us both for fools, ain’t no changing that. But he’s dead, and I’m here now and I’m offering you the opportunity of a lifetime,” he says, offering to tear down the Falcone empire from the inside out.
Maroni isn’t interested; he doesn’t like men who sell their loyalty. Oz understands, but urges that whoever controls drops controls the streets, so he says he’ll return in two days to try and work something out again.
Just before he “f**ks off”, he gives Salvatore his ring back. “Maybe I’m more than you think,” he says, with a sinister smirk.
Sofia tortures Oz, but he has a plan
HBOOz drives home, only to find Sofia and her men outside his apartment. He drives off, but they pursue him through the city. Victor doesn’t answer the phone, leaving Oz to deal with the men himself. He kills one of them (well, they kill themselves, stumbling in front of a speeding school bus after Oz stabs him in the eye), before he’s knocked out.
He wakes up naked, taped to a chair, and getting punched in the face. “The guards stripped us bare at Arkham every morning. It was humiliating, being turned into a thing,” Sofia tells him.
Sofia admits that Oz was right about the club and loft being clean, but he forgot one detail: how unforgettable he is, whether it’s his plum car or the fact he shot at kids in the middle of the street.
She reveals she’s kidnapped one of those teenagers, who told her that it happened on the night Alberto went missing. Oz says he’s lying, so she shoots him in the head right in front of him.
“That’s what you wanted, to have my reputation precede me? You’re so good at talking your way out of things, even at the cost of someone else’s life – especially then,” she says.
Her guard starts torturing Oz by garroting his armpit, and Sofia demands answers. “Tell me that I’m too emotional and have an overactive imagination, and that I shouldn’t take things so personally. But first, tell me he’s alive,” she says, before a car crashes into the garden.
There’s no driver, but the trunk is open… and Alberto’s body is inside, missing a pinky. It’s the same car they left him in at the scrapyard, and Oz’s plan reveals itself: in their eyes, it can’t be him who’s responsible.
Victor and Oz go for a “suicide” slushie, and while he tells Victor he did a good job, he wants to know why he only chopped off the pinky, because he agreed to only deliver his head. He admits he didn’t know how to do it properly, but Oz says it’s okay. “Room to grow,” he tells him.
“We just put the Maronis back on the map, if Sal’s got a problem with that then f**k him. I don’t need him, I don’t need any of them. From here on out, there’s no more playing it safe. Drops are yesterday’s game, I’m gonna whatever’s in that shipment, I’m gonna run this goddamn city, and I want you in on it. Guys like us, we gotta stick together.”
After Episode 1, make sure you keep our release schedule for The Penguin bookmarked so you know when to catch the next episode. You should also check out our list of the best superhero TV shows and our ranking of the best superhero movies – including The Batman.