The Batman corner of the DC Universe was radically changed in Gotham, the bizarre compelling Fox series that ran for five seasons. Instead of featuring a regular Batman taking on his various villains, the show is ostensibly a prequel to the rest of the Batman mythos that sees a young Bruce Wayne watch his city descend into madness. With a young Jim Gordon as its central character, the series chronicled the early exploits of the better part of Batman's rogues gallery.
Several of the show's most surprisingly tweaks to Batman lore were made to the Penguin. As played by Robin Lord Taylor, Oswald Cobblepot went from a simple criminal minion to a kingpin of the city, and became a lot of other things along the way.
Oswald Cobblepot was introduced as a low-level criminal living in Gotham City. He lives with his mother Gertrude (who he's devoted to) as he tries to rise up the ranks of Fish Mooney's gang. Fish treats Cobblepot poorly and even breaks his kneecap for his treacherous nature, giving him a waddling limp. This helps spread his nickname as Penguin, something he learns to embrace. As a sign of his willingness to play along with the rules of Gotham City, the newly arrived James Gordon is ordered to kill Penguin. But Gordon can't do it, and allows himself to escape. As a result, Cobblepot developed an affection and respect for Gordon that pushes them together repeatedly over the years.
Cobblepot doesn't flee Gotham, though. He quickly goes over to Sal Maroni, a rival crime boss to Carmine Falcone, and his antics end up setting off a crime war that results in numerous deaths across Gotham City, including Maroni. After Falcone enters into self-imposed exile and Fish is killed by Penguin himself, he takes this opportunity to become the crime kingpin of Gotham. He even receives Butch, a former tormentor when they worked for Fish, as a personal lackey thanks to Zzazz's psychological torture and conditioning of Butch.
Even after becoming a crime boss, Cobblepot was forced to work for Theo Galavan when his sister Tabitha kidnapped his mother, who ends up dead. By working with Gordon and the GCPD, they are able to bring down Galavan. Cobblepot specifically kills Galavan and ends up in Arkham Asylum for the crime, where he's tortured into a more timid state by Doctor Hugo Strange and ends up released into the custody of his wealthy father and nefarious step-siblings.
Eventually regaining his sense of self too late to save his genuinely kind father, Penguin killed his new extended family in a particularly gruesome way (butchering two of them and feeding them to their mother) and took their riches for his own. When it's revealed that Theo Galavant has been resurrected by the Court of Owls to become Azrael, Penguin ends up saving Jim Gordon and Bruce Wayne from him, before he and Butch arrive with a rocket launcher because Gotham is not a subtle show.
When a number of Strange's experiments escape his laboratory at Indian Hill, Cobblepot leads a mob to kill them. Discovering a revived Fish among them, Cobblepot and her have a surprisingly heartfelt encounter. When she tells him that she's proud of the man he's become in her absence, Cobblepot allows her to escape on the condition that she flees Gotham City. Cobblepot is held as a hero for helping defeat the empowered figures, eventually turning that goodwill into a successful bid for the Mayor's office. He begins working with Edward Ngyma, the Riddler, despite the reservations of Butch. Cobblepot actually fell in love with Ngyma during their time working together, but Ngyma didn't reciprocate the feelings.
Instead, he fell in love with a young woman, something that pushed Cobblepot to kill her out of jealousy. Cobblepot inadvertently turns many of his allies against him, losing the mayorship along the way. Ngyma, Butch and Barbara Keane eventually turned on him, and Ngyma eventually shot him and left him for dead. Cobblepot was saved by Poison Ivy, however, and soon embarked on a mission of vengeance.
He slowly rebuilds his power base by working with some of the empowered people of Gotham. Mooney is ultimately killed in a battle with the Court of Owls, but gives Cobblepot words of support before she dies. Cobblepot even ends up getting his revenge on Ngyma, having his new associate Mister Freeze encase the Riddler in a block of ice that he puts on display at his newly opened Iceberg Lounge.
After Cobblepot finally becomes the true kingpin of Gotham, an escaped Ngyma and Butch, now reborn as Solomon Grundy, become targets of his. What only complicates matters is the arrival of Sofia Falcone, who initially tries to manipulate Cobblepot. The two enter into a gang war when he realizes her intentions, which ends with Carmine Falcone dead and Cobblepot back in Arkham. There, he's forced once again to work with a restored Ngyma as well as Jerome Valeska, the proto-Joker. Working together to bring down Sofia, Riddler and Cobblepot find a place friendship again.
The two join with Jerome's "Legion of Horribles," a collection of Gotham's most dangerous villains. But when he learns the full extent of their plans, Cobblepot tells Gordon and helps saves countless lives by flying one of Jerome's blimps away from the city. He also finally gets his long overdue revenge on Tabitha for killing his mother, having Doctor Hugo Strange restore her lover Butch to his full intelligence before shooting him in front of her.
Cobblepot is still in Gotham when No Man's Land is created by the actions of Jerome's brother Jerimiah. Cobblepot becomes one of the main power-brokers in Gotham, even after igniting a war with Barbara Keane when he kills her best friend, Tabitha. Eventually, however, he tries to work with Ngyma and Keane to escape the city. He ends up remaining behind with Ngyma however to help fight for the future of Gotham City against the forces of Bane and Nyssa al Ghul, and loses an eye in the final battle of the conflict. When the show jumps ahead ten years to the time when Bruce Wayne has become Batman, Cobblepot quickly allies himself once again with Ngyma to fight the vigilante.
Gotham introduces two compelling aspects of Penguin's motivation by tying his actions to real emotions. His mother issues play out throughout the early seasons of the show. Gertrude's coddling nature is contrasted by Fish's ruthless (but effective) lessons on how to be strong in Gotham City. The two women have a profound effect on him, and the death of them both ends up pushing him further into crime. It gives him a softer side that makes him almost pitiable in moments. Of course, all of that is washed away the next time he does something vile, but it's an effective way of making him a more compelling character.
His connections with the other male characters of the show also gave him a bit of a new element that previous takes didn't have. His one-sided love/hate relationship with James Gordon is an important element of the entire series, with his wild interpretation of their "friendship" leading to numerous twists and turns across the course of the series. It's his love for Riddler that really stands out, however, as it's a completely new element created for the show. Past versions of the character had been portrayed as something of a leach around women, but the Gotham's Cobblepot became obsessed with one man. Their slowly developing and deteriorating bond becomes a part of the core that makes Gotham so compelling, and its the epitome of how the show rearranged classic characters in new configurations.
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