Fan-Favorite The Penguin Actor Gives Disappointing Season 2 Update & Dashes Hopes For The Batman: Part 2 Cameo

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Oz and Sofia looking off-screen in The Penguin

Published Jan 25, 2026, 9:46 PM EST

An avid comic book fan since she first read "Stan Lee's Soapbox," Allison Hambrick is your friendly neighborhood generalist writer. Journalism, editing, media production, copywriting—she does it all. From her very first blog post about Smallville as a primary schooler, Allison developed a passion for superheroes and the entertainment industry at large.

Majoring in writing and film at SCAD, Allison put her skills to work writing, editing, podcasting, and more. Currently, she moonlights as an editor at the ASHRAE Journal by day and Screen Rant by night. Allison also previously worked for Warner Bros. Entertainment and for Disney.

Through her writing, she hopes to inspire, to entertain, and to empower others to be the best versions of themselves, and her mission in life is to make Stan proud. In her free time, she enjoys reading, video game design, traveling, and spending time outside with her dogs, Loki and Elphaba. Allison is fluent in movie quotes, and her favorite film is Superman II.

Over a year after its release and subsequent widespread acclaim, The Penguin still has not had a second season announced. A spin-off of Matt Reeves' The Batman, the series followed Oz Cobb/the Penguin as he tries to assert his dominance as the leader of the criminal underbelly of Gotham City, with Cristin Milioti playing his primary rival, Sofia Falcone.

While the series bridges Oz's arc between The Batman and its sequel film, it also establishes a lot of lore for Gotham and leaves some major loose ends for Sofia. As a result, Milioti addressed the possibility of The Penguin season two while promoting Buddy with costar Topher Grace at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival (via Deadline).

"Yeah, there's no official word on anything," Milioti said. "And I would love nothing more, truly." In response, Grace expressed disbelief: "Whoever's in charge of making that decision, what are you doing? This is the greatest thing I have ever seen on [television]. We've got to have a season two."

Though Milioti has her "fingers crossed" for the opportunity to reprise her Emmy-winning role in The Penguin, the actress also confirmed she is "definitively not in [The Batman: Part II] which is a bummer." Grace again chimed in to hype up Milioti, urging DC and HBO to renew the series: "You're looking at one of the great performances of our time. Figure it out, guys."

Previously, Milioti opened up about her hopes for Sofia's character in a hypothetical season two of The Penguin. "It just seemed like there are infinite possibilities of where she could go," the How I Met Your Mother actress stated. "Obviously, I would want to see her get out of Arkham. That’s like number one. I don’t want her in there. So I want to see her get out there, and then exact revenge."

As for what Sofia should do once she gets out of Arkham for the second time, Milioti said: "Maybe now she would be even more of a loose cannon, because before it was pretty focused on... gaining power, but depending on what happens to her in there, it could be an even larger target." Notably, Sofia also discovered that Selina Kyle/Catwoman was her half-sister in the final episode, which could lend its narrative weight to a team-up in either The Penguin season two or another The Batman-related project.

Cristin Milioti Sofia Falcone sitting at a table touching her hands together in The Penguin

Rumors that The Penguin would not receive a sophomore season have been swirling for several months. Like Milioti, Farrell has stated he has "no idea if it's happening," though unlike the actress, he is confirmed for The Batman: Part II. For her part, showrunner Lauren LeFranc said: "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."

Reeves himself revealed that Sofia would not cross over into the film side of the Reeves-verse in the fall of last year. "We were so deep into the [Batman 2] script by the time we were in the show," he explained. "But we'll see. I think she's incredible. What she did in the show is just astonishing."

Though Reeves was excited about the prospect of working with Milioti, he and co-writer Mattson Tomlin were "so far along in the story" that they feared "it might upset the apple cart" to rewrite the film to include her. Nonetheless, amid this uncertainty regarding The Penguin, it's clear that Reeves wants Sofia, and by extension, Milioti, in his universe of Batman content, meaning she could appear in a sequel down the line.

The Batman: Part II releases in theaters on October 1, 2027.