It’s easy to call The Penguin a surprise success, but that’s not really true. The series had everything going for it: a basis in the grittiest Batman movie yet, a star with a proven track record and a firm grasp of the character, and Cristin Milioti, a TV veteran whose balance of seriousness and snark turns everything it touches into gold.
The real surprise was that The Penguin was advertised as a one-off miniseries, an interlude between The Batman and The Batman Part II. But between its huge success and the fact that Part II is moving even further into the future, The Penguin may come back with a vengeance — and Colin Farrell just teased a Season 2.
In his acceptance speech for Best Actor in a Limited/Anthology Series or TV Movie at the 82nd Golden Globes, Farrell thanked everyone from The Batman director Matt Reeves to Carolina, the craft services staffer who provided him coconut water when he was overheating. But in between all the thank yous was a sly prediction. “Yeah, I guess it's prosthetics from here on out,” he said, referring to the three hours of makeup work required for him to transform into Oz Cobb.
Was this just Farrell worrying he’d become typecast as a prosthetics actor, or could this mean he’ll play the Penguin beyond The Batman Part II? All signs seem to point toward the latter, including one that came earlier that evening. “If we could come up with an idea for what a second season might be, there’s a chance that [HBO CEO] Casey Bloys and the HBO team would want to pursue that,” The Penguin Executive Producer Dylan Clark told TVLine on the red carpet. “There have been quiet conversations about that.”
Matt Reeves also made some coy comments. “We are talking about doing another season,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “It’s really about coming up with the right idea and also about the timing, you know, we’re doing The Batman Part II and so how all of that fits together, but we’re really excited about doing another season, and we’ll just have to figure out exactly the right idea.”
The Penguin being nominated as a limited series is by no means a sign that Season 2 is impossible. In fact, Best Drama Series winner Shogun began as a limited series before its success led to a renewal and a change in its award category. If these quotes are to be believed, it's not a matter of if The Penguin Season 2 is coming, but when the team behind it comes up with a good idea.
