How “The Penguin” ending sets the stage for “The Batman Part II ”— and just maybe season 2

"The Batman" director Matt Reeves and "The Penguin" showrunner Lauren LeFranc unpack the climactic finale, and tease what's next.

Warning: This article contains spoilers from The Penguin season finale, "A Great or Little Thing."

When The Batman director Matt Reeves knew what the general story of his movie sequel would be, he clued in Lauren LeFranc, the showrunner and lead writer on HBO spinoff series The Penguin. "I'm always interested," she tells Entertainment Weekly. "I'm like, 'Can I plant something for you? Is there something I can do to help your film?' We have the real estate to do that."

The Penguin's big ending with season finale episode "A Great or Little Thing" does the most in that regard.

Oz Cobb (Colin Farrell), dressed in a tuxedo that's reminiscent of classic Penguin villain imagery from DC comics, celebrates his many victories in a penthouse suite. He successfully planted his feet as a kingpin in Gotham's criminal underworld after a lengthy gang war that claimed many lives; he condemned his chief competitor, Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti), back to her worst nightmare in Arkham State Hospital; and he now has his ailing mother, Francis (Deirdre O'Connell), all to himself as she essentially becomes trapped inside her own unresponsive body, forced to remain in a hospital bed in her deranged son's home.

Related: Gotham's heir apparent: The Penguin star Cristin Milioti breaks down Sofia Falcone's Arkham-induced breakdown

But the ending signals — quite literally, in fact — that the game isn't over. While in her Arkham cell, Sofia receives a letter from Selina Kyle, Zoë Kravitz's Catwoman of Reeves' The Batman. She hopes to connect, acknowledging that both of them are half sisters. Jayme Lawson also reprises her role of Gotham City's new mayor, Bella Reál, for a brief appearance on the show. Then, in the final shot of the hour, as Oz dances with Eve Karlo (Carmen Ejogo), who's dressed as his mother, the Bat Signal blazes in the night sky in the distance. Robert Pattinson's Dark Knight will soon join the fray.

"Over the course of writing the season, we discussed many times whether or not there might be some cross-through that would feel earned," Reeves tells EW in a separate interview about referencing Pattinson's Batman. "We tried a few different ideas conceptually, nothing that was ever written ultimately, but nothing seemed to quite gel in a way that felt earned." One idea they toyed with was having Bruce Wayne appear before Vic (Rhenzy Feliz), Oz's righthand guy. "But even that ended up throwing things off too much," the filmmaker adds.

"We wanted our characters to be the predominant people that you're following in this show," LeFranc explains. "Anything that started to detract from that wasn't servicing the type of show we wanted to do."

Related: Building Batman's crime saga: Matt Reeves on scrapped spinoffs, The Penguin, and what comes next

LeFranc knew the ending she wanted from the beginning. "Everything that I put in the first episode, I put purposefully knowing where we were going," she says. LeFranc wanted Oz to ultimately kill Vic, strangling the kid to death on a similar park bench where the pair once shared slushies in the premiere ("suicide slushies," she now calls them). "It's not about how he's killing Vic because he thinks Vic failed him, or someone manipulated him," Reeves remarks. "He's killing him because he can't bear the fact that he actually does have that closeness with this kid, because that makes him weak. He's basically trying to strangle his vulnerability."

LeFranc also knew she wanted Oz to be the one to drive Sofia back to Arkham as a twisted mirror of his beginnings being her driver years earlier. "There's references in the final scene between Oz and Sofia from conversations they had earlier in the season, as well," the showrunner points out. As for whether a physical Kravitz cameo was ever in the cards, LeFranc recalls they never "dug deep" into that scenario. "Fans know that they're half sisters, so it felt important to acknowledge it in this way and set up a potential future," she notes, "but even more than that to end Sofia's arc back in Arkham. She's in this terrible state of mind, and yet this letter from Selina feels like this inkling of hope."

The third element LeFranc knew she wanted early on was for Francis to become her worst nightmare. "We planted that purple dress throughout the season to have that payoff," LeFranc says of Eve now wearing the sequin garb in the finale.

Related: How The Penguin recast Carmine Falcone for a pivotal episode

Finally, the showrunner knew she wanted the Bat Signal to appear at the very end "to launch into Matt's second film," she continues. "I very much liked the idea of the Batman undercutting the strange, delusional scenario that Oz created for himself at the end, to merit all of his previous actions and to say, 'I finally made it.' And then for us to say, 'Maybe not. Maybe you haven't.'"

Reeves previously confirmed to EW that Oz will be one of the entry points into The Batman Part II, which is scheduled to film next year and hit the big screen on Oct. 2, 2026. "We're kind of flicking you at the end to say the story's not over," Reeves says. "The idea that Oz and these characters could be on a collision course at some point with Batman, that's of course out there. So we wanted to leave you with a sense of that without overshadowing that this is really the completion of the story."

At the same time, there just might be a reality in which The Penguin series continues with season 2. Reeves acknowledges from the beginning of development that the executives at HBO might want to see more from the show. Now that the comics-inspired crime-drama maintains an audience on par with The Last of Us and House of the Dragon (per Warner Bros. Discovery's November earnings call to investors), plus the critical acclaim paid to Farrell and Milioti's performances, conversations are being had.

Related: How The Penguin remixes Batman comics to create an original Gotham crime drama

"We are, in a very preliminary way — me, Lauren, [Reeves' producing partner] Dylan [Clark], and Colin — starting to talk about what would be the way," the director confirms. "For me, what's really important is that we earn it. The idea of revisiting means that we have to keep that same bar. I know that none of us wants to go back and just do more. We want to go back and do something great. So that's what we're talking about now. We do believe that there's going to be something in there, but it's just beginning. It's exciting though. It's very gratifying."

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An early report (published after EW's interviews with Reeves and LeFranc) suggested a new spinoff to The Batman centered around Barry Keoghan's Joker was being considered for the next HBO series. However, a source close to the situation tells EW this is false. Reeves admits "there's an urgency" in the sense that HBO clearly would love to know what those plans might entail, but says, "I couldn't tell you what the timeline is yet."

All he can share at this particular time is, "We're leaving Oz and [Gotham] in a state where the city is still trying to heal itself from what happened. It's also a time, as you see [with] what goes on with Vic and Crown Point, where the city's deeply wounded. As we're entering the movie, all of that stuff is still broiling. The repercussions of what happened as a result of the last movie and what's happened during this gang war are very much the table setter for the way we enter into [The Batman Part II]."