As the public is treated to more and more news about The Batman: Part 2, the showrunner for The Penguin, Lauren LeFranc (Impulse, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.), sat down with The Hollywood Reporter to discuss an uncertain season two for the series.
LeFranc said to The Hollywood Reporter that the future of the series would depend on whether the story of The Batman: Part 2 warranted a second season of the spinoff. “I don’t know,” she said. “There’s no current status update. I think Matt just turned in his script, so I’m excited to read that soon and see what comes of that — if there is anything there that merits a second season or not. I think we’ve said this before, but I truly mean it: We have to feel confident we can top ourselves, and that’s something that’s really important to Colin Farrell and me, especially; otherwise, we don’t want to do something again if it’s not going to be excellent. We were always meant to be a limited series. So, pivoting to a second season is just different — it’s not something we ever really talked about.”
Further, LeFranc reinforced the idea that the original plan for The Penguin was a single, eight-episode limited series, per The Hollywood Reporter. “The intention of our first season always was, we’re launching Oz into the second film, and so we couldn’t air a second season until after Matt’s movie comes out,” she said.
While future seasons of The Penguin are uncertain, LeFranc shared with The Hollywood Reporter that the series’s crew had discussions about the possibility of Robert Pattinson’s Batman appearing in the show. “We always would say, ‘Batman’s up high looking down on Gotham, and Oz is in the muck, wanting to get up there and to achieve a level of power.’ So, yes, we talked about it, but honestly, we just didn’t want to interfere with the story that we had.”