The Penguin slides into its penultimate episode with a flashback-heavy episode, this time focusing on the early childhood of one Ozwald Cobb while simultaneously pushing the present-day narrative forward in an explosive way. It made for a shorter-than-usual episode, but one that still hinged on great writing and acting, with a brutal revelation early on.

We’ve heard about Oz’s two brothers throughout The Penguin and in this week’s episode, titled Top Hat, we finally get to learn what happened to them. And it’s so much worse than we could’ve thought. I mentioned before that Oz was already pretty messed up for the Maroni burnings, but I think this one takes the cake, in that Oz is directly responsible for the deaths, nay, the murders, of his own two brothers. When playing a game of hide and seek in the underground railroad, Oz would one day use it as his base of operations, and the two brothers leave the game’s boundary areas and go even further down, using a ladder to access a sewer. Oz, fuming that he can’t use the ladder with his bad leg, locks his brothers in the shaft, which just so happens to be an overflow chamber for the rain. Whether he knew this or not is left ambiguous, making us question whether Oz was just being a jerk trying to scare his brothers, or was intentionally leaving them to die as it had started raining before they picked up the game. Of course, Oz never reveals to his mother where they are and just goes on with his life, vying for his mother’s attention while she falls apart at the unexplained disappearance of two of her children. That’s some cold-hearted killer stuff there Oz, and all of this helps inform the kind of man that Oz is in the present day: he’ll do anything to get ahead and survive, which sure, isn’t anything new per se, but knowing that he’s been like this for a long time and what he’s willing to do, even at a young age, shows us the lengths he’ll go to get ahead and survive.

When Oz is taken by Sal in the present day and forced to reveal the Bliss lab for fear of anything bad happening to his kidnapped mother, an all-out battle breaks out between the two gangs. Oz and Sal end up in a fistfight for their lives, but in a twist of fate, Sal dies of a heart attack after pushing himself too far. Of course, Oz can’t drag Sal’s body out and declare victory without any marks on him, so he pumps Sal’s body full of lead and paints himself as the victor in this battle of control. This lines up with what we’ve come to know about Oz: he will say or do anything to manipulate the narrative in his favour. What’s funny is that characters like Sal and Sofia know this, but are powerless to stop it. I did like the scene between Francis and Sofia quite a bit though, with Sofia entering the room in a position of power only to be struck down by Mrs. Cobb’s defiance in the face of death, then perhaps pity upon realizing that she’s not a mentally healthy person; something she likely sympathizes with considering her time at Arkham. She gets Julian to look at her and we’ve yet to see if those flashing red lights will have any effect on her come the finale (I have a feeling they will).

Sofia, of course, is also one step of events and when Oz “promises” her control of Bliss in exchange for his mother’s life, she does not play ball but instead, has someone drive a massive bomb into his base of operations and detonates it, destroying Bliss for everyone. Of course, like the rat he’s so often called, Oz survives the detonation and is ultimately captured by one of Sofia’s goons. How he’ll get out of this predicament, I’m not sure, but what I am sure of is that it’ll involve Vic, who was absent for near enough all of the episode after Oz instructed him to get him an army to thwart the hostile takeover. I can’t see there being a triumphant ending that said, it can’t be as simple as Vic coming in with a bunch of goons to save Oz and his mother from Sofia’s clutches at the last minute. Something’s gotta happen that will leave us confused and conflicted and I think Vic will play a big role in that somehow. That or Oz will leave his own mother out to dry in order to live himself. Either or is possible with the information we got this week.

Stay tuned next week for our review of the final and the mini-series in general!