The Penguin series premiere, “After Hours,” almost purposefully avoids any sort of Easter eggs for the comic books. Sure there are characters like the Maroni and Falcone crime families. And you can certainly intuit a relationship like the one between Oswald Cobb (Colin Farrell) and Victor Aguilar (Rhenzy Feliz) parallel Batman and Robin. But one reference, when Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti) mentions she was called The Hangman, is straight from the DC Comics source material.
Spoilers for The Penguin past this point.
In the episode, Oswald has been called out to the home of the Falcone crime family and told to shut down his business in a prime area of Gotham City. He protests and reveals that he has a line on a drug that will revolutionize the trade in Gotham. He then asks: if he can get the Falcone’s the shipment, can he keep his operation where it is? What they don’t know, which we the viewers do, is that Oz found out this info from Alberto Falcone (Michael Zegen), who Oz killed at the beginning of the episode.
As Oz reveals this info, Sofia enters. She’s back after a stint at Arkham Asylum, and over a dinner together we find out more info about her… Specifically, she was sent to Arkham after being nicknamed “The Hangman” in the press.
While there aren’t many details on what she did, as mentioned above, Sofia was also nicknamed The Hangman in the comics. Specifically in Dark Victory, the 14-part series by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale that ran from 1999-2000. The sequel to the classic The Long Halloween, which inspired parts of The Batman as well as Batman Begins, Dark Victory began with Sofia — called Sofia Gigante in the book — in a wheelchair and a head brace after the events of The Long Halloween. Throughout the series, Batman is investigating a series of murders by hanging. And as you may be able to intuit, Sofia turns out to be The Hangman Killer by the end of the story.
So can we figure out what will happen in The Penguin, based on this version of Sofia also being called The Hangman? Ummm… No. The main plot of The Long Halloween concerns another killer named Holiday, who turns out to be Alberto Falcone. He’s in prison at the start of Dark Victory, when Sofia starts her round of murders; including Alberto, who she kills because he killed members of his own family, as Holiday. As mentioned above, Alberto is already dead by this point in The Penguin, and there’s no Holiday killer, at least by the end of the series premiere.
The one thing we could potentially see happen is that comic book Sofia was hanging cops. So will TV’s Sofia Falcone do the same? Is that why she was the serial killer known as The Hangman? Given there’s a picture that was distributed to the press of Sofia seemingly in Arkham Asylum; and one of Alberto in a scene we haven’t seen yet, there’s every chance we’ll have a flashback to find out just what it is Sofia did. When will that happen, though? We’ll see how far the series strings this out over the next couple of weeks. But I, for one, will definitely hang around to find out.
Where To Watch The Penguin:
The Penguin Premiere Dates And Episode Guide:
The first episode of The Penguin premieres Thursday, September 19 at 9 pm ET on HBO and Max. There will be an encore airing on Sunday, September 22 at 9 pm ET, and then the show will move to its regular time slot of Sundays at 9 pm ET starting on September 29.
Here’s the full list of episodes in The Penguin, with premiere dates:
- Thursday, September 19, 2024: The Penguin, Episode 1: “After Hours”
- Sunday, September 29, 2024: The Penguin, Episode 2: “Inside Man”
- Sunday, October 6, 2024: The Penguin, Episode 3: “Bliss”
- Sunday, October 13, 2024: The Penguin, Episode 4: “Cent’Anni”
- Sunday, October 20, 2024: The Penguin, Episode 5: “Homecoming”
- Sunday, October 27, 2024: The Penguin, Episode 6: “Gold Summit”
- Sunday, November 3, 2024: The Penguin, Episode 7: “Top Hat”
- Sunday, November 10, 2024: The Penguin, Episode 8: “Great or Little Thing”