Is The Penguin Setting Up A Subterranean Clash Between Oz Cobb And Batman?

This article contains spoilers for the latest episode of "The Penguin."

While I can't help but think of "The Batman" as "Seven" but not quite as good, there was still a lot to love about the film. Director Matt Reeves tried several new things with his take on the Dark Knight, turning Bruce Wayne from a millionaire playboy into a tortured shut-in inspired by late-career Kurt Cobain. While Reeves touted classic crime thrillers such as "Chinatown" as his inspiration, "The Batman" was also clearly working from a David Fincher rubric, with the aforementioned "Seven" providing the most obvious influence alongside "Zodiac," which partly inspired the look of Paul Dano's Riddler.

Elsewhere, one of the coolest changes Reeves made to Batman lore was the Bat-cave itself. In "The Batman," Robert Pattinson's vigilante works out of an abandoned train station beneath Wayne Tower in the center of the city. Such a change would surely have made Christopher Nolan proud, as it came with an extremely practical benefit. Namely, it allowed Bruce to reach pretty much every area of Gotham with ease simply by traversing the abandoned underground tunnels beneath the city, directly from his subterranean home base.

Now, "The Penguin" has taken audiences on a similar journey beneath Gotham, as Colin Farrell's Oz Cobb looks to solidify his new drug operation by working out of a similarly abandoned underground cavern. All of this also has us wondering: Is this where "The Penguin" and "The Batman" truly coincide in a major way?

In episode 5 of "The Penguin," Oz reminds us all how truly vicious he can be, setting his rival Sal Maroni's wife and son alight and moving to consolidate his grip on Gotham's drug trade. Towards the end of the episode, the villain also reveals just how ambitious his plans are, taking his young protégé Victor Aguilar (Rhenzy Feliz) — who represents a twist on the Batman and Robin dynamic — to a hidden entrance to the city's defunct Gotham trolley tunnel network.

Following the tunnels leads the pair to a chamber that looks a heck of a lot like Bruce Wayne's train station Bat Cave from "The Batman." Much like that hideout, built in the shell of Wayne Terminal, Penguin's underground lair comes complete with empty trolley cars and a makeshift aesthetic that speaks to the relentlessly enterprising nature of its inhabitant. It's here where Oz plans to set up a base of operations for his new Bliss drug enterprise and various other criminal undertakings. While there's no specific mention of anything that suggests this is the same network of tunnels that Robert Pattinson's Bruce Wayne uses to access the city, interestingly, as Oz and Vic enter the hidden chamber, Penguin says, "These tunnels go everywhere. Give us access to the whole damn city." 

Surely there can't be two separate sprawling networks of underground tunnels in Gotham? If so, that raises the question of whether "The Penguin" is setting up some future underground interaction between Oz and Bruce.

With Oz now operating out of what seems to be the same underground network as Bruce Wayne/Batman, "The Penguin" could very well be leading towards a surprise clash between the two characters. We know that Robert Pattinson's Batman unequivocally does not show up in "The Penguin," and thus far the show has refrained from tying itself too closely to Matt Reeves' film. But there are two things to point out here.

Firstly, HBO dropped a mid-season trailer for "The Penguin" which opens with shots of a motorcyclist riding through the underground tunnels. It's never revealed who is actually riding the bike, but fans in the comments are speculating that this could, in fact, be Bruce Wayne himself. Others claim it's Victor Aguilar, but the very brief shots of this subterranean ride at the beginning of the trailer do seem oddly cryptic, as it's never explained who we're seeing or why they're underground before the trailer cuts to a shot of an above-ground train station.

Secondly, even if "The Penguin" doesn't feature Bruce Wayne, there's nothing to say Bruce and Oz won't encounter each other in the upcoming "The Batman Part II." If Oz continues to operate out of his underground hideout, this could make for a really interesting clash between the Dark Knight and the Penguin in the film. It might even be a way to carry on the more humorous aspects of Oz established in the first film, where the character became instant meme material with the line, "Take it easy, sweetheart!" Having Oz encounter Pattinson's vigilante out of nowhere in the abandoned tunnels might make for yet another memeable moment, or perhaps Bruce will stumble across Penguin's operation and run tabs on it without the oblivious Oz ever realizing.

Even if none of this comes to fruition, the underground hideout is an interesting inclusion in "The Penguin" for the way in which it draws a parallel between Bruce and Oz. Both are sons of Gotham who evidently feel at home in the dank underbelly of the city, as evidenced by Oz's line in the episode, "This f***ing place. Calling me home." Unfortunately for him, it's this line that really speaks to the character's future: "It's humid down here, it's dark. You know what thrives in a place like this?" Bats, Oz.

New episodes of "The Penguin" premiere Sundays on HBO and Max.