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[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for The Penguin Season 1, Episode 7, “Top Hat.”]
The Penguin delved into Oz’s (Colin Farrell) backstory in the pivotal penultimate episode, “Top Hat,” as a flashback sequence unveiled the truth behind his brothers’ demises.
Sent out on an errand to drop off a ledger to the local gangster (played by Louis Cancelmi), Oz and his brothers decide to play a game of flashlight tag in the sewers, but when his brothers push him to potentially dangerous extremes, Oz lashes out by closing his brothers in a waterworks hatch.
Ditching them for home, Oz monopolizes his mother’s affection as the rainy weather ramps up, and begins to flood the hatch his brothers are stuck in. Ultimately, this is the cause of their death, and Oz never seemingly admits his bad deed, instead seeing his mother’s solo attentions as a positive thing. He promises to give her the life she deserves, which is thrown into contrast with the current timeline where Francis (Deirdre O’Connell) is being held captive by Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti).
HBO
Regarding the peculiar dynamic between Francis and Oz, O’Connell tells TV Insider, “I don’t know what keeps him tied to her… I think [she’s used him to] avenge herself on the world through him,” she adds. “She would send him into the world that has disregarded her, that has humiliated her, that has made her invisible in a way.”
As O’Connell points out, “The whole series seems to be about people who are invisible, who make Gotham work. She has the fire of that resentment in her, and she sends him as a missile into the world to fix that, to avenge her in a funny way.”
“I think she’s always had a sense of turning this human, this amazing bull of a boy who loves her so unconditionally, how can she turn him into her weapon? And she loves him unconditionally too. I think it’s just beyond her mind how much she loves him, but she also knows that he’s dangerous and that he’s not good.”
“Doing that stuff with Sophia was so fun. I think we were both really fired up… I just found what Cristin was doing to be so remarkable and fun and delicious as she got more and more strength and power underneath her belt,” O’Connell gushes over her scene partner. Fans will have to wait and see how Francis and Sofia’s predicament will unfold as she’s being held hostage.
As for approaching the mother-son dynamic between Oz and Francis, showrunner Lauren LeFranc acknowledges, “I’ve always found the relationship to be slightly Oedipal, a little weird, a little twisted. And so then the question is why, and it made a lot of sense to me that when you find out quite early on that his brothers died, all of the attention that Francis would’ve given to three boys, she puts on one child and that’s Oz. And that creates sort of a distorted relationship.”
It’s clear in the flashback sequence, as LeFranc notes, “Oz is desperate for his mother’s love and her attention.” And while it seems like “he tells her everything… [when] we dig deeper into the season, we realize he actually doesn’t tell her everything, nor does she tell him,” LeFranc teases. Stay tuned for potential revelations yet to be made as we await The Penguin finale episode.
The Penguin, Sundays, 9 pm ET/PT, HBO and Max
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