The Penguin Can’t Be Required Viewing For Batman 2

Key Takeaways

• DC should avoid repeating Marvel’s mistake of making movies and TV shows too interconnected.
• Failing to allow for standalone stories can alienate movie-goers who haven’t seen related shows.
• The Batman Part 2 should not rely heavily on events from The Penguin, allowing each to stand alone.

At this point, it doesn’t seem like there’s a debate on just how good a program The Penguin is. Running alongside another “superhero” television show – that’s really about a villain – in Agatha All Along on Disney+ – the DC comics show is getting all kinds of eyeballs and starting all sorts of conversations. The show’s popularity is a bit of a double-edged sword, though. It’s possible showrunner Lauren LeFranc and Matt Reeves could fall into a danger trap with the program, mainly because it was a direct follow-up to The Batman.

With the critical success of The Penguin and the viewership numbers that have it one of the most watched shows out there, it likely hard for Reeves and Lefranc to think that “of course” fans of The Batman movie are tuning into this to see how the story moves forward. It would then of course, be easy to think that anyone who is going to the theater to watch The Batman Part 2 has watched all eight episodes of The Penguin. However even if that’s mostly true, Reeves has to behave and make the sequel as though the HBO Max show never existed and Agatha All Along is a pretty good example as to why.

DC Can’t Make The Same Mistakes Marvel Did

Having a wholly integrated universe of television shows and movies sounds good on its face. It sounds fun to know that while Bucky and The Falcon have essentially just been side characters in the Avengers movies, MCU fans got to see how these two characters interact when the big battles were over, and it was mostly just the two of them. Having these television shows allows their creators to fill in the blanks that are obviously going to be left open, even with all the movies produced that were dedicated to the Avengers.

The key is to realize that there will always be people who don’t see those cracks filled in. People may not have HBO Max. They may not have Disney+ or they may simply be casual fans that don’t need to lap up every single little detail about a character in order to enjoy the movie. Except now, all of a sudden, when there are these integrated universes people do have to lap up every piece of information to really understand what’s going on from one movie to the next. For Marvel, that’s especially the case moving forward.

Imagine a fan enjoys Doctor Strange movies but never got to see Wandavision. Certainly the trailer would fill that fan in that Wanda had gone bad, but without the Disney+ show, they’d have absolutely no understanding of why. The Scarlet Witch is talking about how her misses her children and the average fan is wondering when she ever had children. For that matter, no understanding of why they’re gone. All of that subject matter was covered in the show and very little of the background was covered in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. For that matter, the multiverse as a concept would be quite confusing for anyone who didn’t watch Loki.

It’s not just Marvel either. Disney is doing this with their other big IPs as well. The Star Wars franchise hasn’t really done the movie-to-show-to-movie thing yet, mainly because it hasn’t had a big movie came out since this approach became the norm. But it has done some “if someone missed that show, they’re not going to understand this one.”

Anyone who didn’t watch Star Wars Rebels is going to have a heck of a hard time understanding the minute details of Ahsoka. It’s not just that the latter includes live-action characters from the former, it is essentially a live-action continuation of Rebels. One of the biggest plot point in Ahsoka is that the band of heroes are hoping that a friend of theirs might still be live. There’s very little explanation as to who this person really was, why he’s probably not alive, or why viewers should care.

Let The Batman Part 2 Stand On Its Own

Since The Penguin first aired, the assumption has been that however the series ends, it will lead directly into The Batman Part 2 but there is a way to fill in the blanks for Oz Cobb without having to directly refer to what happened in the series. There’s also an assumption by plenty that Sofia Falcone could play a big role in the next movie. It seems like at this point, it would be better if she weren’t involved.

If she is, there needs to be short explanation of who she is and why she’s there, without referring to everything that happened in The Penguin. Marvel has seemingly lost its way by making things a little too interconnected. So far, James Gunn has some serious hits on his hands at the start of this new DCU. It would behoove him to keep in mind that not everyone can watch every show or movie. Have The Penguinconnect to The Batman Part 2 for sure. Just don’t have the plot of the next film be dependent on the show.