An unrecognizable Colin Farrell returns to Gotham in first The Penguin teaser

While fans will need to wait an extra year to see Robert Pattinson re-don his black cape for The Batman Part II (the film is now set to premiere in 2026), they don’t need to stay out of Matt Reeves’ gritty version of Gotham entirely. Colin Farrell’s Oz Cobb—in all his prosthetic-covered glory—is returning far sooner for his own eight-episode spinoff series, which lands on Max sometime this fall.

Move over, Tony Soprano. A new boss is coming to HBO. The first teaser for The Penguin opens in a flooded Gotham, right where the 2022 film left off, with Farrell doing exactly what any DC villain worth his salt should do: monologuing.

“When I was a kid, there was a gangster, real old-school type,” he opens. “Rex Calabrese. He was a big deal. He helped people. He saw you on the street, he’d call out to you. When I was 14 or something, he has a heart attack and dies, still holding a cigar. In my neighborhood, they throw a parade in his honor. A friggin’ parade. It wasn’t fancy, but it was a gesture, a show of love, of what he meant. Can you imagine to be remembered like that?”

As the teaser ramps up, Cobb’s monologue is interspersed with clips of his violent rise through the ranks of Gotham’s brutal underground. There are knives, pistols, explosions, screaming—everything you’d expect from a mafia series centered on one of the most notorious villains in comic book history. It’s even better than a parade.

Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. producer Lauren LeFranc is serving as showrunner, with Reeves executive producing. The rest of the cast is rounded out by Cristin Milioti, Rhenzy Feliz, Michael Kelly, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Deirdre O’Connell, Clancy Brown, and Michael Zegen.