Warning: This article contains minor spoilers for the first episode of The Penguin! Check out Spoiler-free review from IGN of the new series.
The first episode of The Penguin has dropped on HBO, and there’s one character conspicuous by his absence. Robert Pattinson’s Batman is nowhere to be seen, even though the series is set immediately after 2022’s The Batman. And if star Colin Farrell is to be believed, we won’t see the Dark Knight in this series at all.
“This story takes place over five or six weeks, so it made sense to the creatives, Matt (Reeves) and Lauren (LeFranc), that he didn’t have to appear here,” Farrell told IGN in a new roundtable interview with the show’s cast. “And it’s a very different side of Gotham, too. Not that Batman doesn’t get his hands dirty in the shadows, but it’s a very, very different part of Gotham that I’ve never seen before. It’s really the underbelly of the city and it’s right down in the gutter.”
How can a Batman series go without Batman, especially when one of its most memorable villains is the star of the show? Where is the masked avenger right now anyway? Here’s what we know about Batman’s whereabouts after the first episode.
Batman’s crime-fighting strategy
While it may seem silly to do a spin-off of The Batman without Pattinson’s Batman, Farrell’s comments make sense. This series explores a very different corner of Gotham City than the one Batman lives in. Literally. Based on the first film, Bruce seems to focus most of his attention on Gotham’s inner city – the places where innocent citizens most often fall victim to crime. That’s where most robberies, muggings, and attempted murders take place, and that’s exactly what Batman is determined to prevent.
In comparison, The Penguin shows us the parts of Gotham that Batman doesn’t normally patrol. We see the slums that characters like Victor Aguilar (Rhenzy Feliz) and his friends call home. We see the relatively quieter and more secluded suburbs where Oz’s mother Francis (Dierdre O’Connell) still lives, waiting for her son to whisk her away to a life of luxury. And we see the wealthier side of Gotham, where the elite like the bosses of the Falcone family enjoy their mansions and carefully manicured grounds. These are all places Batman would likely not enter.
One thing the first film made clear about Pattinson’s Batman is that he is not the most efficient crime fighter. He is a very reactive force. Again, in this film we see him focusing on stopping robbers and wandering gang members before he gets drawn into the Riddler murders. He doesn’t really focus on targeting the root of crime in Gotham and the men like John Turturro’s Carmine Falcone who pull the city’s strings, at least until Riddler puts him on the trail of “El Rata Alada.”
That’s why, even after two years in office, Batman laments that he’s not making much of an impact on his city. Compare Pattinson’s Bruce to Christian Bale’s Bruce in the Dark Knight trilogy. When The Dark Knight begins in 2008, Bale’s Batman has been in office for about a year and is making great progress in systematically dismantling Gotham’s underworld. He knows how to fight corruption at its source, while Pattinson’s Batman is still trying to do more than brutally coerce criminals into submission.
If anything, “The Penguin” reinforces that idea by focusing specifically on the parts of the city that Batman ignores. Batman should really be more interested in men like Colin Farrell’s Oswald Cobb, who are jockeying for power in the vacuum left by Falcone’s death. We see the slow rise of a man ambitious and scheming enough to become the new boss of Gotham’s underworld. A better, more experienced Batman would work to nip this problem in the bud. But that’s not really the modus operandi of Pattinson’s Dark Knight.
Gotham City after Batman
To be fair, Batman has other pressing issues to deal with after the first film. Let’s not forget that The Batman ends with Riddler sabotaging Gotham’s seawall and flooding the city center. There’s no telling how many hundreds of thousands of citizens are dead or missing, not to mention the countless people left homeless by the flooding. We have to imagine that Batman’s biggest priority right now is helping those people and alleviating Gotham’s suffering.
Saving the city from Riddler and his fellow terrorists has taught Batman that he can be more than just the embodiment of vengeance. He can also be a force for justice and hope in a city that has precious little of that. Of course, Batman will focus on helping first responders and saving more lives rather than keeping an eye on a mediocre gangster like Oz Cobb, even if it causes him more problems down the road.
However, there is an even better reason why Batman does not appear in The Penguin: He has disappeared.
Batman is missing
This revelation is one of several small tidbits in a fake newspaper created as promotional material for The Penguin. The newspaper contains a political cartoon showing a dejected Commissioner Gordon standing next to the Bat-Signal while an officer says to him: “It’s been weeks, sir…”
It seems as if Batman has suddenly disappeared from the limelight, even though the city is crying out for its protector more than ever. Despite recognizing the positive impact his actions have had on the city, for some reason Batman has gone into hiding and stopped helping the police and rescue teams with the cleanup effort.
Why would Batman leave Gotham when it needs him most? We can only assume that Pattinson’s character is learning another important lesson – he can do just as much or more for his city as Bruce Wayne than he can as Batman. It’s something that characters like Andy Serkis’ Alfred and Jayme Lawson’s Bella Reál tried hard to teach him in the original film, and it’s a lesson that he may finally realize. When Bruce sees the masses of human suffering in Gotham, he may realize that Bruce Wayne’s money and influence can have a far greater impact than Batman’s fists.
When Batman uncovered the corruption within Gotham’s government, he realized just how much his own money enabled that corruption. His father donated a billion dollars to the city as part of the Gotham Renewal Fund, money that was promptly hoarded and embezzled by mobsters like Falcone and corrupt city officials like Rupert Penry-Jones’ Mayor Mitchell. If Bruce really wants to make a difference, he must become more active in ensuring his family’s fortune is spent properly. That means doing the thing he least wants to do – putting Batman on the back burner and stepping back into the light of day as Bruce Wayne.
Adaptation of Batman: No Man’s Land
Reeves’ Bat-Verse may be inspired by the 1999 DC Comics crossover Batman: No Man’s Land. In that storyline, Gotham City is dealing with the aftermath of a devastating earthquake. Gotham is so badly damaged that the U.S. government is forced to evacuate the city. The only survivors are criminals, villains in disguise, and those civilians too stubborn or unable to flee. Even Batman is missing at the start of the crossover, leaving a handful of heroes like Commissioner Gordon, Oracle, and Huntress to try to maintain some semblance of law and order.
The reason Batman goes missing in “No Man’s Land” is the same reason we assume he goes missing in “The Penguin” – he’s too busy focusing on Bruce Wayne for a change. In “No Man’s Land,” Bruce lobbies the government for help and fights to prevent the city from being written off as a lost cause. He becomes embroiled in a battle with Lex Luthor, who sees the disaster as an opportunity to step in and buy up property for himself, effectively rebuilding Gotham City in his own image.
We doubt Luthor will play a role in Reeves’ Batman universe, but this is probably true. Batman is missing from Gotham because Bruce Wayne is too busy saving his dying city. Right now, Gotham needs Bruce more than Batman. And if that means Batman is unable to respond to the new turmoil breaking out within the Falcone family, then that’s a problem he’ll have to deal with in The Batman 2.
For more information about The Penguin, visit 7 things you need to know about the penguinand find out Why Cristin Miliotis’ Sofia Falcone is such a big deal.
Jesse is a mild-mannered editor at IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by Follow @jschedeen on Twitter.
