The Penguin, featuring Colin Farrell as the titular Batman villain, debuted on HBO and MAX on Thursday, September 19. It garnered an impressive 94% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a score of 72 out of 100 on Metacritic. HBO has since released the U.S. viewership number for the series across all platforms and it’s no less incredible. On MAX, the series had the biggest four-day launch since The Last of Us.
Colin Farrell’s The Penguin reigns supreme on HBO & MAX in 2024
The Penguin premiered with an amazing 5.3 million U.S. viewings, as per HBO. This is the total viewership number across all platforms and includes the viewings that the series garnered on MAX and through repeat airings on HBO. The performance of The Penguin’s premiere episode is better than the first episode of the fourth and final season of Succession (4.9 million viewers) and the Season 2 debut of The White Lotus (4.1 million). Further, The Penguin Episode 1 brought in only about 400,000 fewer viewers than the premiere episode of True Detective: Night Country.
The success of this magnitude for a series premiere generally leads to the network mulling over Season 2 plans. However, it’s unclear whether that will happen as The Penguin has been widely reported as a miniseries. According to Matt Reeves’ plans for The Batman Universe or The Batman Epic Crime Saga, the actions of Farrell’s character would be “one of the entry points” into the sequel to The Batman (2022). Conversely, Farrell seemingly implied in a recent interview that there had been conversations about a sophomore season of The Penguin.
The Penguin was created by Lauren LeFranc as a spin-off to The Batman and takes place a week after the events of the movie. Besides Farrell, the cast includes Cristin Milioti as Sofia Falcon, Rhenzy Feliz as Victor “Vic” Aguilar, Deirdre O’Connell as Francis Cobb, Clancy Brown as Salvatore Maroni, and Mark Strong as Carmine Falcone.
