After our interview wrapped up, Colin Farrell had some questions of his own. He stood up, motioned for me to follow him, and led me to a quieter corner of the crowded junket room. “I know it was pretty dark,” he said, his famous eyebrows furrowing slightly, “but do you think it was too dark?” He was asking about the finale of The Penguin.
This conversation took place in September, just after the show’s debut, when many hadn’t yet grasped just how grim HBO’s The Penguin would get. The show, a spin-off from The Batman, dove deep into Gotham’s familiar world of corruption, with Arkham Asylum’s dark realities and the city’s crumbling institutions. So far, so typical for a story set in Batman’s world. However, The Penguin’s exploration of Oswald “Oz” Cobblepot’s rise from street-level thug to crime lord plunged into an unsettling abyss in its final episodes.
The show’s darker moments include not just fratricide and attempted infanticide but a deeply disturbing subplot involving Oz’s mother. But it was the murder of Oz’s right-hand man, Victor Aguilar, in episode eight that truly left a mark. Months after filming, Farrell still seemed shaken. “That day on set was the hardest,” he recalled, noting how it stood out even amid the long shoot that had been interrupted by the SAG strike.
“I’ve been acting long enough to know the ropes. You go home, take off your costume, and go back to your life,” Farrell said. “But there are some scenes that stay with you.” His words reflected the lingering impact of filming such a gut-wrenching moment. To summarize the context, Victor, played by Rhenzy Feliz, had first encountered Oz after trying to steal his Maserati in episode one. After becoming an orphan due to the events in The Batman, Victor was taken under Oz’s wing and gradually drawn deeper into his criminal activities. Their relationship was one of the few that didn’t switch from loyalty to betrayal every few episodes. But as Oz ascended to the top of Gotham’s crime world, Victor, connected to his past, became a loose thread that needed to be severed. In a shocking moment, Oz murdered him on a park bench, leaving the body staged to look like a robbery gone wrong.
Farrell emphasized the preparation for the scene, which set the tone for the somber atmosphere that night. “The crew was incredibly invested in the story—we had spent so much time together, on and off, over the course of the year,” he said. “But the mood was incredibly dark. The focus pullers, camera operators, even the craft services team… you could feel the weight of it. We all knew it was fiction, but it felt so ugly, so unjustifiable.”
The scene, which begins with Victor expressing gratitude to Oz—calling him family—ends with him begging for his life as Oz takes it. Farrell described the emotional toll of filming the scene: “We moved through it as quickly as we could, but it was just so brutal. It was really, really ugly.” In terms of shock value, Victor’s death rivals some of the most jarring moments in TV history, like Christopher Moltisanti’s demise in The Sopranos or Hank Schrader’s tragic death in Breaking Bad.
For Oz, the decision to kill Victor comes from a place of self-preservation. “Family: It’s your strength. It drives you. But it makes you weak, too,” Oz says as he chokes Victor. Farrell sympathizes with Oz’s twisted rationale. “One of the great pains of loving is that you’re vulnerable. And it can make you more tenacious than you ever imagined,” he said. “When you have a child, you realize you’re capable of anything to protect them. You’re also capable of experiencing pain you never thought possible.”
Oz’s choice to eliminate Victor reveals his cold pragmatism. While Oz has shown moments of compassion, such as when he tells Victor about the value of helping others, it’s clear that when pushed, he will choose his own survival above all else. “When push comes to shove, if there’s a choice between serving himself or serving others, Oz will always pick himself,” Farrell explained.
By the end of the series, Oz has proven this point. With no one left to challenge him at the top of Gotham’s criminal hierarchy, his journey has reached a breaking point. There’s only one direction for him to go now: down. Fans will have to wait until The Batman Part II in 2026 to find out just how far Oz can fall.
