The Penguin‘s Rhenzy Feliz on That Absolutely Bonkers Season Finale
Warning: Major spoilers ahead for The Penguin season finale.
The moment Oswald Cobb put his arm around Vic in The Penguin season finale, I knew something was off. While the relationship between this seasoned gangster and his protégé has grown over the course of eight episodes, this expression of physical affection seemed like a weird direction for the show to take. My instincts were right. Oz’s grip grows tighter. Vic struggles, but it’s all in vain. The scene closes with Vic’s lifeless body slumped over on the ground.
“That was probably the third-to-last day of shooting,” actor Rhenzy Feliz tells StyleCaster. Oh, so he had to die and then come back to life? He laughs. “Yeah, I think my last day of shooting was the airport sequence when the tables turned on Sofia.”
The grim scene takes place on a park bench overlooking Gotham. In the real world, that’s Roosevelt Island with its expansive views of Manhattan. There was time for Colin Farrell and Feliz to rehearse, of course, but “We didn’t know how the actual death was gonna happen,” Feliz says. “It was actually Colin’s idea to put his arm around me.” Not one to do things half-assed, Farrell tested whether Feliz was actually able to escape his grip. “He’s like, ‘If you had to, could you get out?’ I was like, ‘I can’t reach you. I can’t reach your face,'” he explains. “So that’s why we know it worked.”
Oz has made a career of screwing people over to get out on top, but according to Feliz, this is not one of those moments. In fact, it’s Oz’s affinity for the kid that ultimately leads to Vic’s undoing. “He doesn’t want to have any weaknesses,” Feliz observes. “He saw what they were able to do to his mother and what that made him do, and what he was willing to give up to save his mom.”
Feliz then explains Oz’s thought process: “‘If I have Victor here, this kid that I actually kind of care about, and they take him, I’d be weak again. I’d be vulnerable. So if I just take him out now, as hard as that might be, I become untouchable.'”
Shows like this have a history of bringing characters back to life. What if Vic is just knocked out and at the opening of season two, he regains consciousness? “I think in this show, I’m definitely dead,” he says. “I always knew it was a limited series. In my mind, that’s the coolest way to go out, to go out with a bang.”
The Penguin is available to stream on MAX.
