The Batman‘s universe continues strong. HBO’s The Penguin is earning positive reviews with a certified fresh rating of 94% with critics and an audience score of 89%. In his review, our Alex Maidy stated, “The Penguin easily becomes the best DC or Marvel television series to date, with the bar being raised substantially. Colin Farrell’s performance will easily earn the actor a slew of awards, and it is another jewel in the long-running streak of top-caliber HBO original series. A couple of key moments towards the end of the series will shake up audiences who are unprepared for where The Penguin is headed. Still, it also provides some references that tease us into how these characters will factor into The Batman Part II. Not a single moment in these eight episodes feels wasted or padded, which is surprising since every episode comes close to a full hour, with the premiere and finale going longer than sixty minutes.”

Variety has now revealed that The Penguin has become quite a hit with the Colin Farrell and Cristin Milioti show opening to 5.3 million U.S. viewers across all platforms since it debuted on September 19. This figure also includes repeat airings on the premium channel HBO, as well as multiple viewing streams. These numbers make the show a bigger hit than the final season premiere of the Emmy-winning Succession, which had brought in 4.9 million viewers, and the second season premiere of the comedy, The White Lotus, which came to about 4.1 million. However, The Batman spin-off would come just behind the premiere of the crime series True Detective: Night Country, which attracted around 5.7 million viewers. The series would also accumulate the biggest 4-day audience for a new series on Max in every region globally since the adaptation of The Last of Us from January 2023.

As delicious of a role as this is for Colin Farrell, the Irish actor doesn’t see himself continuing to reprise him beyond the show. “Don’t get me wrong – I loved it – but it got in on me a little bit. By the end of it, I was bitching and moaning to anyone who would listen to me that I f*cking wanted it to be finished. I tried to remind them that I had ‘grumpy gratitude.’ I was still grateful, and still honored – I grew up watching Burgess Meredith, and then Danny DeVito was my Penguin – so being a part of the lineage of that storytelling, I really did feel privileged. But by the end of it…”

That’s not a guaranteed no but Colin Farrell’s hesitation at this point to return for a second season of The Penguin isn’t looking good. Thankfully, he at least wasn’t constantly taking the character home with him or getting involved to the point where he started embodying Oz. “It’s not like I didn’t know who I was and I was going out and burning cars and shit, but…if you take what Matt Reeves created and then what Lauren [LeFranc, showrunner] did and what Mike [Marino, prosthetics and make-up designer] did and put them all together, it was a really powerful experience.”

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