Director explains why Batman didn't appear in The Penguin

HBO's The Penguin exists only because The Batman was so successful, and audiences were so captivated by Colin Farrell's revolutionary portrayal of Oswald Cobblepot, or "Ozzie" as it's known in this universe. So why was Robert Pattinson's Caped Crusader missing from the eight-episode series' look at Gotham City's criminal underworld? The director of the upcoming Batman 2 says he had bigger fish to fry.

"The city was in extreme turmoil at the time, to be exact, that week after (the events in the movie)," Matt Reeves said. "Most parts of the city were in despair, the police couldn't take care of everything, crime was everywhere, it was an extremely dangerous period."

The 2022 Batman movie ends with a series of explosions destroying Gotham City's seawall. As a result, the city center is flooded and the crime-ridden metropolis is plunged into deeper chaos. "(Batman) is struggling to deal with the aftermath of everything that happened, and in a way, he blames it all on himself," Reeves added.

This provides a reasonable explanation within the context of the plot setting for the fact that Bruce Wayne never showed up to try to control Cobb during the twists and turns of the entire plot of "Penguin" and the conspiracy of Penguin to establish a criminal empire. The show's producer Lauren LeFran previously said that not arranging Batman to appear helped focus on the "grime, mud and filth" of Gotham City's streets and the gradual rise of Penguin in it.

But that doesn't mean Pattinson has never been considered for a cameo. "In the process of writing the script for this season, we discussed many times whether it would be possible to arrange some logical crossover plots." Reeves previously said, "We tried several different ideas conceptually, but none of them ended up in writing, and it seemed that no idea could be integrated in a way that made sense."

As it stands, fans who watched The Penguin Season 1 last Sunday will have to wait until The Batman 2 is released in 2026 to see Pattinson don the black bat mask again. After that, if The Penguin series is eventually renewed, he may still appear in Season 2.