The Penguin is about to bring Colin Farrell's Oz Cobb to the small screen. Picking up after the events of The Batman and the chaos caused by the Riddler, everything is to play for in Gotham City's criminal underbelly. After the death of Carmine Falcone, Oz joins the battle to take control, but he's got fierce competition…
The Batman spin-off may be set in the same version of Gotham as Matt Reeves' 2022 movie, but can we expect any familiar faces to cameo in the series? In short, does Robert Pattinson's Caped Crusader appear in The Penguin? We've got everything you need to know right here.
Is Robert Pattinson's Batman in The Penguin?
The short answer is no, Batman won't be making an appearance in The Penguin.
As our The Penguin review says, "this may make it hard to digest for the more devoted Batman fan, used to the fight between good and evil usually so crucial to this world," but executive producer Reeves and showrunner Lauren Lefranc have their reasons why.
"I’m a point-of-view filmmaker," Reeves told Total Film. "When I’m doing a Batman story, Batman and Bruce is going to be the main point of view. To explore the rogues gallery, they could never get the real estate we can do in a series. So Batman is in this [show] only as a sense that he’s a presence. You’re aware that all of these events began because of the Riddler, but the Riddler doesn’t appear and Batman doesn’t appear… We did talk about all that but we felt the best way to do this was to go on a grand exploration of a guy grabbing for power in this moment."
Meanwhile, Lefranc told SFX, "I understand why people's desire would be to have Batman, or to think that unless Batman's in a show or a film then it doesn't have the same punch. To me I think it packs a different punch. Matt's films are through the lens of the Batman, so you're high up, looking down on the city. It's a different perspective. With Oz, you're in the city streets, you're in the grit and the muck and the grime. He's looking up, wanting to claw his way to the top. So it's a different experience. I think Gotham is an interesting enough city that it deserves to have more doors unlocked within it, and for us to walk through those and see what we think."
It seems unlikely, then, that we can expect any other cameos from The Batman, either. We'll be keeping our eyes peeled, regardless...
The Penguin premieres on HBO and Max on September 19 in the US and Sky and NOW in the UK on September 20. For more, check out our guide to The Penguin release schedule, or take a look ahead to the other upcoming DC movies and shows.
