HBO Max’s The Penguin takes place a week after The Batman, with Gotham still underwater

Colin Farrell’s outrageous performance as Oswald “The Penguin” Cobblepot in Matt Reeves’ The Batman was far and away one of the best parts of the film, embodying the exact wackadoo vibe that inspires Gotham City’s denizens to become murderous clowns, or puzzling terrorists, or bat-themed vigilantes. So it’s very exciting—and makes perfect sense—that he’s getting his very own spin-off series set in the The Batman universe. And now we also know a bit more about what to expect from The Penguin, with Farrell sharing some details with Extra (via Variety).

Farrell says the series begins “about a week” after the end of The Batman, with Gotham City still “somewhat underwater.” The first episode apparently begins with the Penguin walking into the office that once belonged to John Turturro’s Carmine Falcone, with his “feet splashing through the water.” For those who weren’t paying extremely close attention to the background details in The Batman that set it up, it may have been a totally inexplicably surprise when Riddler’s social media followers blew up the sea wall and flooded the city, turning the gritty, relatively reality-based comic book movie into full-on superhero spectacle. The Penguin is, evidently, not going to shy away from that big sequence, and maybe the flood will make a little more sense when we can see the Penguin splashing around in the aftermath and talking about the fucking Atlantic Ocean.

Showrunner Lauren LeFranc is writing the series, which Farrell says is “lovely” and “so well-written.” He says he “was greedy” with The Batman and just wanted to “do it more and more and more,” so he sounds pretty excited about getting this chance to do more goofy/serious Penguin stuff. The show doesn’t have a premiere date yet, but as with all HBO Max shows, sooner would probably be better than later. You never know when somebody’s going to reveal that the streaming service is surrounded by flimsy sea walls that could eventually break down, wiping the whole thing out.