The Penguin Was Almost Perfect, But It Wasted One Character

Now that Season 1 is officially over, it’s time to recognize that The Penguin is nearly flawless. The show was great at creating characters both fun and interesting to watch. It offered up a story that made people think they had a handle on where it was going and then pulled the rug out from under its audience. The Penguin was one of the best shows on television or streaming this year and it will almost certainly go down as one of the best in the last decade. But it did have a flaw.

One of the things The Penguin did really well was not to introduce a bunch of characters that served no purpose. It feels as though everyone who appeared on screen was there for a very important reason. There wasn’t dead weight, even if some of the characters didn’t play a huge role in the larger plot all the time.

What Was The Point Of Dr. Julian Rush?

When Dr. Julian Rush was first introduced into the world of The Penguin, almost everyone expected that he would eventually become someone else. The prevailing theory was that he would either be shown as this show’s version of Dr. Hugo Strange or he would turn into the HBO Max series’ Scarecrow. There was even some talk that he was going by an alias.

And then … nothing happened. There was no big reveal. There was no moment when Rush put on a mask or gave a monologue that proved he was some brilliant criminal mastermind. Instead, he just followed Sofia Falcone around like a lost puppy. He even followed her back to Arkham at the end of the season. Because of that, there are some real questions as to what the point of the character was. In a show that didn’t waste screen time or waste characters, just what was he doing there?

Rush did bring one talent to the stage that no one else had. He was apparently an expert hypnotist who can bring out memories of his patients as a way to work through them and deal with them. That was yet another reason why fans of The Penguin felt he would eventually be entirely unmasked as someone else.

It wasn’t even like his ability to bring out people’s memories helped anyone or served a real purpose. While the show was nearly perfect, this was the one area where showrunner Lauren LeFranc seemingly fell down on the job. The recaptured memories of Sofia were therapeutic for sure, but they didn’t play a massive part in the plot. They spurred her onto taking action perhaps, but there were plenty of other ways that could have happened. And then, near the end of The Penguin, when Sofia and Dr. Rush thought they were turning Oz’s mom against him, it turned out she already remembered everything. She already knew Oz killed his brothers. There simply wasn’t a need for the doctor to be around.

However, in a show where it sure didn’t feel like anyone was a wasted character and there weren’t many wasted scenes, could Dr. Julian Rush really be as big a waste as he looked? It’s possible the goal was always to make him look useless and pointless and then spring a trap some other time.

The Penguin’s Intentional Misdirect?

Is it possible that The Penguin is setting up for a Season 2? Is it possible that Dr. Julian Rush isn’t really just Dr. Julian Rush but that Season 1 just wasn’t ready to make the big reveal? There are some indications that it’s possible LeFranc was holding things back for either a Season 2 or The Batman Part 2.

There are some thoughts that Oz’s girlfriend at the end of Season 1 is going to turn into a famous villain. There’s also talk that the end of Episode 8 set up an eventual team up between Sofia and Selina Kyle. So it’s possible Dr. Julian Rush is just lying in wait and will eventually turn out to be a bigger influence on the denizens of Gotham than he has been so far.

And then there’s the clues one Redditor found shortly after The Penguin ended. There’s one scene in Episode 4, “Cent’Anni” where a quick shot of Rush’s desk shows a few items that on further inspection, appear to be the gloved hands and the mask of The Scarecrow. The user also pointed out that those items weren’t there in a previous episode when he and Sofia were in the same part of the room.

That leaves two possibilities. Either it was a very odd mistake for people who paid so close attention to detail in The Penguin to make, or it was intentional and they were designed to hint at something. For now, fans of the show and The Batman will have to wait and see if it becomes anything else. But one has to hope that’s the case. Otherwise, a near-perfect series had one glaringly pointless character included.

Created by Lauren LeFranc and starring Colin Farrell, The Penguin builds on 2022’s The Batman. The Max series chronicles the eponymous villain’s attempt to reach Gotham’s criminal peak, rising through the underworld in the middle of a power struggle.

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