The following story contains minor spoilers for The Penguin.
FROM THE VERY jump, what we’re seeing in HBO’s The Penguin is very apparent: Oz Cobb, also known as The Penguin (Colin Farrell), is making moves to rise in power, taking over Gotham City’s criminal underworld. It’s also apparent that there are going to be people in his path—like Cristin Milioti’s Sofia Falcone—who he should get on his side, or risk having a major problem, considering her consolidated power and psychopathic murderous tendencies. But did anyone realize that The Penguin was going to be telling a sort of villainous coming-of-age story?
Because in addition to everything surrounding our titular character’s scheming, plotting, and planning to take control of a criminal empire, there’s also a more sympathetic story at play. That comes into play early on in The Penguin‘s very first episode, as Oz takes a kid named Victor Aguilar (Rhenzy Feliz) under his wing, at first using him to dispose a dead body before eventually sparing his body and making him his driver and unofficial henchman/sidekick/protégé.
Yes, his protégé! We’ve seen all sorts of sidekick and sidekick-adjacent characters through the years, from the obvious Robin to someone like Jimmy Olsen, but it’s rare to see someone like Victor; a seemingly-green kid who learns the ropes from a seasoned veteran, if “the ropes” are how to do and get away with murder and plenty of other illegalities.
The relationship between Oz and Victor becomes core to The Penguin, though, as Oz brings Victor in on numerous aspects of his life, including meeting his mother and occasional love interest. Victor ultimately comes through, getting Oz out of a jam by setting a dangerous crime family up for murder. All in a days work! The two enjoy their success in a less-than-scary manner by having slush puppies. But that’s all in the first episode of The Penguin; we can be certain that things are never going to be that easy, and it’s going to be a bumpy road for both Oz and Victor—and we’re going to learn a lot more about both of them, too.
But for now, let’s dive into some more information about this relationship, and what The Penguin could be setting up.
Is The Penguin‘s Victor Aguilar based on Victor Zsasz or any other Batman or DC Comics character?
There’s no character named Victor Aguilar in the DC Comics or Batman canon; Victor Aguilar would seem to be an entirely original creation for The Penguin and Matt Reeves’s The Batman universe.
But that doesn’t mean there aren’t some potential hints for a direction things could go. For example, one of the most notable Batman villains is a sadomasochistic murder named
Victor Zsasz, notable for carving a tally into his body for everyone he murders (and he’s got a lot of tallies). Zsasz was previously played by Barry‘s Anthony Corrigan in Gotham and Chris Messina in Birds of Prey, and while that could be the direction things are eventually going, it doesn’t particularly seem to be the case here. As is the fact that Batman’s famed adversary Mr. Freeze (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger in Batman & Robin) is actually named Victor Fries; that also doesn’t seem to be totally in play.
While the name Victor doesn’t come in play, it makes more sense to look toward the origin story of Jason Todd—who was Batman’s second Robin, after Dick Grayson—in Batman #408.
In that issue, Batman links up with a young man named Jason Todd after he finds him attempting to steal the rims off of the Batmobile. Sound familiar? Jason Todd has a long run as Batman’s sidekick, but unlike Dick Grayson, the Jason Todd Robin was filled with anger and rage, upset with the world and his place within it. Eventually, Jason is killed by The Joker (in Jim Starlin’s “A Death in the Family,”) and eventually returns as a vigilante named Red Hood. It’s a whole thing!
But it’s interesting to look at Jason’s origin in contrast with what we’re seeing with Victor Aguilar and The Penguin. The two link up in the exact same way as Batman and Jason, and while Victor seems to be a little more pure-at-heart and decent than Jason, he also is clearly open to doing a whole lot of the Penguins bidding, whether that’s disposing of bodies, driving him around, or framing mafiosos for murder.
In that way, we could really be seeing not only Oz Cobb’s rise to the top of the criminal underworld, but also Victor Aguilar’s transformation into a true villain. Hopefully Victor’s path doesn’t turn quite so dark—but we wouldn’t put anything past this dark, gritty drama.
Victor Aguilar is played by Rhenzy Feliz
The Penguin is the highest-profile job yet for actor Rhenzy Feliz, 26, but it’s actually not his first major superhero show. He previously played Alex Wilder in Hulu’s Runaways, based on Brian K. Vaughan’s famed Marvel Comics series of the same name; he was the de facto lead for both seasons of that show.
Feliz has appeared in a few other roles that you may have seen, including leading an episode of Ryan Muprhy’s American Horror Stories anthology series and appearing in George Clooney’s film The Tender Bar alongside Ben Affleck. He also lended his voice to Disney’s hit animated film Encanto.
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