The Penguin Could Be Setting Up One of Batman's Darkest Moments
Things are gonna get worse before they get better.
The Penguin is shining a light on the parts of Gotham the movie didn’t have room for, from its social makeup to the big crime families in town and the power vacuum left behind after the loss of Carmine Falcone. But it’s also showing the devastation caused by the events of The Batman, when the Riddler set off explosives along the sea wall and flooded the entire city.
The Penguin shows how Gotham is recovering from the damage, but one line in Episode 2 sneakily references one of Batman’s darkest eras, and could reveal how it’s only the first step in a bigger plan.
In The Penguin Episode 2, Oz introduces his newfound protégé Vic Aguilar to his business associates. When camgirl Roxy asks where he’s from, Vic manages to choke out Crown Point. “My cousin lived over there,” Roxy replies. “It’s like a no-man’s-land now or something. I mean, they lost everything.”
Contagion, Cataclysm, and No Man’s Land
Batman on the cover of the No Man’s Land Volume 1 collection.
It’s an unassuming comment, but for comic book fans, it references a classic Batman story. In 1999, the Batman comics embarked on a year-long run called Batman: No Man’s Land. The series built on previous stories, which showed Gotham facing two huge natural disasters: a variation of the Ebola virus dubbed the “Apocalypse Plague,” and a massive earthquake. Between the two, 100,000 citizens of Gotham were lost.
Gotham is (mostly) evacuated and then declared a “no man’s land,” with all passages in and out of the city destroyed and the survivors left to their own devices. Needless to say, this makes Gotham even more of a hotbed of crime, with Joker founding his own community called Jokerville, street fighting erupting between the Street Demonz and Lo Boyz gangs, and an overwhelmed Batman disappearing for months.
The city wasn’t completely abandoned; the Justice League monitors the situation, and Superman eventually visits. While he couldn’t accomplish much, a mild-mannered journalist named Clark Kent later swings by to give the citizens some helpful advice. Lex Luthor then takes it upon himself to rebuild the city and, thanks in part to the media attention garnered when Robin’s father, Jack Drake, launches a search and rescue operation for his son, Tim, the no man’s land ruling is reversed.
Is Gotham About to Get Much Worse?
The flooding of Gotham might only be the start of the city’s problems.
In The Penguin, a struggling Gotham is trying to pick up the pieces after that disastrous flooding. But could this Easter egg suggest something even bigger is on the horizon? A gang battle is looming between crime families, while crime and poverty runs rampant. With all these looming crises, it wouldn’t be shocking if things got worse... and if drastic action was taken in response.
The Batman and The Penguin exist in a separate canon from the rest of the new DC Universe. Hypothetically, it could be a wreck in this timeline while still functioning in James Gunn’s. And if it does collapse under Oz Cobb’s watch, that would be an intriguing set-up for The Batman Part II, which could amp up the action with a semi-abandoned city as its setting.
The Penguin exists to expand the world of The Batman, but it could actually constrict it. That would be for the best, though; Batman is all about fighting crime, and closing off the city would let him show off his vigilante prowess.
