DC’s most acclaimed TV show in years may be done, and Colin Farrell’s Penguin might be running out of road right along with it.
Scooper Jeff Sneider is reporting that HBO and DC Studios have decided not to move forward with The Penguin Season 2, and that the show will remain a one-off limited series.
Notably, he delivered that news in the same breath as another detail: that Farrell is only in two small scenes in The Batman: Part II.
Put those together and the math is grim for Oz Cobb. No second season, and barely a presence in the movie, which leaves one of DC’s best characters with almost nowhere left to go.
What Jeff Sneider Is Reporting
Sneider’s claim, posted to X, is blunt: he’s told that DC and HBO will not move forward with a second season of The Penguin, which will remain a limited series.
The usual caveat applies, as this is a single-source rumor, not an official announcement. Neither DC nor HBO has commented, and realistically, they wouldn’t unless the answer were yes. So nothing here is confirmed. But Sneider has a solid track record, and the surrounding context lines up uncomfortably well.
This Reverses Months Of Development Signs — Including Sneider’s Own
Here’s what makes this interesting. For over a year, every signal pointed the other way.
We tracked the development activity ourselves, the quiet writers’-room work, and registration that suggested a follow-up was genuinely being explored.
And it wasn’t just us. Sneider himself reported in early 2025 that showrunner Lauren LeFranc “has a take for Season 2 and DC is down to do it.” So this isn’t a case of a rumor finally being debunked; it’s Sneider reversing his own prior reporting, which is worth keeping in mind before anyone treats this as settled.
The key distinction: development was real, but a green light never came.
The Penguin was conceived as a limited series bridging the gap between Reeves’ two films, and the tells were always there.
HBO submitted the show in the “Limited Series” category at the Emmys — a quiet signal of how the network viewed it — and Warner Bros. Television chief Channing Dungey said last year that while everyone was open to revisiting the characters, it was “very much designed as a limited series” with “nothing in the works at the moment.”
Colin Farrell’s Penguin Is Running Out Of Road
The Penguin wasn’t a minor spinoff, it was the most prestigious thing DC has put on screen in years, pulling a 95% Rotten Tomatoes score, strong viewership across its run, and an Emmy for Cristin Milioti’s Sofia Falcone. Farrell’s unrecognizable, acclaimed turn as Oz was the engine of the whole thing.
Now Sneider says that engine gets two small scenes in The Batman: Part II and no series of his own.
If Farrell really is down to two small scenes, it reshapes the latest villain rumors for the sequel and who actually carries The Batman: Part II.
That tracks with what Farrell himself has been saying — he recently admitted he doesn’t have much to do in the sequel — and it tracks with the actor’s long-standing complaints about the brutal three-to-four-hour makeup process required to become Oz.
If Farrell isn’t itching to spend months back in the chair, a quiet retirement for the character starts to make a certain sense.
It’s still a deflating outcome. You build one of the genre’s great character performances and then more or less shelve it.
The Bigger Question: Is There A DC Left To Continue It?
Zoom out and this is about more than one show. With no Season 2, Reeves’ corner of DC — the so-called Batman Epic Crime Saga — effectively shrinks to a single active project: The Batman: Part II, with Reeves himself seemingly looking beyond DC once it wraps.
And it’s all unfolding as Paramount moves to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, a deal that raises real questions about whether the current version of DC survives in any recognizable form.
A studio quietly trimming its slate is exactly what you’d expect from a company in limbo waiting on a sale to close. Every sign points to a DC reset once Paramount takes over — we break it down here.
The Batman: Part II — starring Robert Pattinson, Colin Farrell, Jeffrey Wright, Andy Serkis, and more, directed by Matt Reeves — hits theaters October 1, 2027.
