HBO’s hit DC series The Penguin is all about the villains lurking in Gotham City’s underbelly. Penguin (Colin Farrell) and Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti) have lead the story of warring crime families and a city largely closed off from the rest of the world. While those two are the biggest figures in the show’s plot, they’re far from the only Batman villains to appear on The Penguin. Sunday night’s fourth episode brought another, very surprising villain to life. WARNING: This article contains spoilers from the latest episode of The Penguin! Continue reading at your own risk…
The villain in question is Magpie, who plays a key role in Sofia Falcone’s tragic backstory. The majority of The Penguin‘s fourth episode is told in flashbacks, revealing that Sofia was sent to Arkham Asylum by her father when she posed a threat to his operations. Everything about her “psychotic break” and her murders as the Hangman was fabricated as part of the story to silence and discredit her. It’s during her time in Arkham that fans are introduced to The Penguin‘s version of Magpie, who is played by Marié Botha.
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In this version of the Gotham City story, Magpie is a fellow inmate of Sofia’s while she’s locked away at Arkham. Unfortunately for Magpie, she crosses paths with Sofia at a really terrible time. The lies from her family and the experiments being done at Arkham — all while knowing she is completely innocent — do start to take their toll on Sofia after a while.
In the middle of the Arkham cafeteria, Sofia brutally murders Magpie, cutting her time on The Penguin incredibly short. The time she’s on-screen, however, should be a bright spot to fans of the character. From the look to her quirks, Botha and the team on The Penguin created a very faithful live-action version of Magpie.
Of course, this take on Magpie is far from the first time the character has appeared in live-action. This is actually Magpie’s third different live-action adaptation in the last decade, all of which have come on television. Rachel Matthews played Magpie in three episodes of The CW’s Batwoman series, which came on the heels of Sarah Schenkkan portraying the character in one episode of the final season of Gotham.
The character was created by John Byrne in 1986, first appearing in The Man of Steel #3. Unfortunately, due to the events of this week’s episode of The Penguin, we likely won’t be seeing any more from Magpie moving forward.
The main goal of Magpie in The Penguin was to further the story of Sofia Falcone. Ahead of the season, showrunner Lauren LeFranc talked about how the series planned to utilize Sofia’s tragic backstory.
“I thought about Rosemary Kennedy, the lost Kennedy daughter, who they put away in an asylum,” LeFranc explained. “It’s unclear how mentally ill she was or if she just did things that they felt were inappropriate and made the Kennedys look bad. Eventually, she got a lobotomy. It’s a very tragic story, but I thought about that about Carmine and Sofia. What if she came from Arkham State Hospital? Did she deserve to go to Arkham?”
