The Penguin Episode 4 Has A Big Connection To The Batman Movie

This article contains spoilers for the latest episode of “The Penguin.”

Four weeks into “The Penguin” and there has been nary a reference to Robert Pattinson’s masked, bat-themed vigilante colloquially referred to as “Vengeance” among Gotham’s criminal element — though that’s not to say that the events of director Matt Reeves’ “The Batman” have been brushed under the rug. Far from it. Obviously, the series is set during the immediate aftermath of the 2022 movie, when the most disadvantaged citizens are still reeling from the Riddler’s plan to flood the entire city and mobsters like Colin Farrell’s scene-stealing Oswald Cobb are hoping to take advantage of the abrupt power vacuum. That means it was all but inevitable for the late Carmine Falcone (originally played by John Turturro in the film, but since replaced by Mark Strong) to make an appearance at some point this season, and that moment finally arrived in the lengthy flashback storyline of this last episode, titled “Cent’Anni.” That was only the tip of the iceberg (lounge), however.

With Carmine back in the fold, the entire hour focuses on the Falcone family and specifically the tragic backstory of Sofia (Cristin Milioti). We’ve known that she was a recent resident of Arkham Asylum as a result of a killing spree only vaguely alluded to throughout the series … but which was enough to earn her the nickname of “The Hangman.” Yet, in a major twist, we find out that Sofia asked a few too many questions about her mob boss father’s alleged crimes — a series of strangulations chalked up as suicides, but almost certainly were homicides — and was subsequently set up to take the fall.

In the process, “The Penguin” has drawn its strongest and most overt connections to “The Batman” yet.

Will the real rat please stand up? 2022’s “The Batman” set itself apart from a string of recent reboots by actually committing to the detective story at its heart, which mainly revolved around an unknown “rat” who sold out the Maroni crime family (represented in “The Penguin” by Clancy Brown’s casting as the imprisoned Salvatore Maroni), took their place, and essentially bought Gotham’s silence by bribing and/or threatening politicians, cops, and any other influential party. Not to spoil one of the most successful and well-received comic book movies of the decade, but that rat turned out to be none other than Carmine Falcone. In the latest episode of “The Penguin,” we’re given an even closer look into his shady dealings and his tendency to literally squeeze the life out of anyone who got in his way.

Oftentimes, those victims were various dancers at his nightclub 44 Below (a club-within-a-club setup located within Oz’s Iceberg Lounge), a disturbing reveal that “The Batman” explored through the vengeance-seeking vigilante Selina Kyle (Zoë Kravitz). Where she was avenging the death of her mother, believed to be a strangulation by her father Carmine, Sofia is confronted by a reporter investigating even more killings using the exact same method: manual asphyxiation.

Carmine is obviously guilty — Sofia even remembers the telltale scratch wounds on his hands the night she came across her dead mother hanging from the ceiling of their family mansion as a child — but nobody can quite prove it. The other deaths are officially considered suicides by hanging in the police reports, but observant fans will notice the unspoken implication throughout the episode. With the Gotham police department bought and paid for, clearly Carmine managed to hide his crimes with the same intimidation tactics he’d later use to silence his nosy daughter Sofia and consign her to a decade in Arkham Asylum.

Thus far, the writing team has resisted the all-too-prevalent urge to load up “The Penguin” with distracting references, deep-cut Easter eggs, and unnecessary cameos; that makes it all the more impressive that one big exception (aside from Arkham inmate “Magpie”) is a minor character from the original movie. Casual viewers may not have even caught this, but episode 4 includes an early scene where Carmine namedrops “Kenzie,” a Gotham City police officer on his payroll who figures out that a reporter has been sniffing around and trying to dig up dirt connecting Falcone to the deaths of women working in 44 Below. That’s the same reporter, of course, who Oz notices has been meeting with Sofia in an attempt to uncover the truth — and the same reporter who ends up dead when Oz squeals on Sofia to her father. Kenzie finally arrives in the flesh as one of the cop goons who arrests Sofia for the murder of that journalist … along with the murders of all the women she had been investigating.

William Kenzie appears in “The Batman” (played by Peter McDonald) as a corrupt cop moonlighting as one of Oz’s hired muscle, but who obviously takes his orders directly from Falcone. Described hilariously by Batman himself as “the mustache with the broken nose,” Kenzie’s most significant role in the movie comes when Selina finds out that he’s the one who kidnapped Selina’s roommate and friend (and possibly lover) Annika to be killed by Carmine — through a grisly-sounding strangulation. He only narrowly avoids a bullet in the head when Batman intervenes and prevents Selina from taking her revenge. His fate remains ambiguous in “The Batman,” but “The Penguin” sheds some more light on just what kind of misdeeds he was up to in the years before the movie and spin-off series. And it was just the right amount of connective tissue to tie both pieces of media together.

New episodes of “The Penguin” air on HBO and stream on Max every Sunday night.