Spoilers below.
The final scene between The Penguin’s warring mob bosses Oz Cobb (Colin Farrell) and Sofia Gigante (formerly Falcone, played by Cristin Milioti) ends with flashing police lights instead of a smoking gun. Sofia, kidnapped by Oz and lured to a secluded patch near the river, turns around to accept her fate. She had spent the whole season fighting: for the legacies of her dead mother and brother, the only real family she feels she had; for her reputation, which her father marred by sending her to Arkham Asylum for the Hangman murders he committed; and for respect from an extended family that believed her false conviction. Sensing the end, she finally lets go.
But Oz has other plans. A close-up of Sofia awaiting the bullet in her back is suddenly lit by a spotlight. The score drops out and police sirens rise, and before she can even realize what’s happening, Sofia is cuffed. She’s headed back to Arkham. “It’s a fate worse than death,” Milioti tells ELLE.com in a phone interview, referencing the 10 years her character spent at the Gotham City mental institution depicted in the excellent fourth episode “Cent’anni.” “As someone who’s obsessed with Sofia, it’s a horrific twist that that’s what happens to her.”
The self-proclaimed “massive Batman fan”—Milioti was Catwoman for Halloween in past years—has been waiting for a role like this. “It was such a delightful onion to peel back,” she remembers about her first reaction to the pilot script, which is all she received when she was first auditioning. “There were a lot of unanswered questions about who Sofia is, but I was already hooked.” After a Zoom interview with showrunner Lauren LeFranc and executive producers Matt Reeves and Craig Zobel, Milioti didn’t hear anything for weeks. Then, they flew her out to screen test with Farrell, after which she officially landed the role.
Her subsequent performance is the unequivocal standout on HBO’s latest limited series, even as she shares the screen with a dynamic Farrell, caked in a slew of prosthetics. As a performer known for bubbly roles on shows like How I Met Your Mother and Made For Love and films like Palm Springs, Milioti’s turn as the livewire scene stealer and an unpredictable antihero is a surprising one—but it’s part of what made the role so appealing to her. “I really try to choose as many different types of roles and genres as I can, to the extent of my ability to control that,” she says. “This certainly was very different, and I was very aware and excited by that.”
Sofia’s arc, from a wounded and obedient heiress to the devious and vengeful mob boss, is kicked off by the death of her brother Alberto. His demise (at the hands of Oz, she finds out mid-season) ignites a dormant feeling of sadism inside her as she seeks revenge against both Oz and her remaining living family who stood by while life as she knew it was ripped away from her. “Something that I really love about Batman, and specifically the villains, is that it really explores what happens to people’s pain when it’s not treated with care. Sofia becomes who she becomes because she is completely fueled by grief and rage and loneliness,” Milioti explains. “I think that’s such an interesting allegory for our world too. That’s what fuels people to do terrible things.”
Cristin Milioti as Sofia Falcone.
Beyond grief, Sofia is also fueled by a righteousness and need for the truth—an understandable reaction to her plight. “It’s one of my favorite parts about her,” Milioti reveals. “She doesn’t tolerate bullshit. She just wants the truth because she was gaslit for so long.” The irony is that she sentences her niece Gia to the same fate by orphaning her, perpetuating the cycle that doomed Sofia herself. “She has this villain code of ethics: I will not kill a child. I will spare a child, even though I’m sentencing this child to a life that is, you could argue, worse,” Milioti explains. “Until that final moment [with Gia in the orphanage in the seventh episode “Top Hat”], she doesn’t see that she’`s repeating the actions of her father, and that she has become the person that she hates the most in this world.” When I ask if she thinks her father would be proud of the person Sofia became, Milioti laughs and says, “Probably. They’re so connected and she’s being completely savage.”
The finale “A Great or Little Thing,” which aired Sunday, provides Sofia with a long-awaited moment of catharsis in regard to her family. She burns down the Falcone home, burning everything it stood for along with it. “There’s nihilism there, like why would she want to live there? Her life was ruined in that home, her mother was killed in that home. It’s like a cleansing,” Milioti reasons. “She’s like a phoenix rising from the ashes.”
Throughout the season, Sofia’s descent is noticeably marked by her styling: her hair gets shaggier and more mulleted, her eyeliner becomes thicker and sharper, and her costuming features bold pops of color that mirror her volatility. Milioti’s two favorite outfits are the yellow dress paired with the gas mask that closes out “Cent’Anni” and the head-to-toe red number she’s wearing in the finale showdown with Oz that sends her back to Arkham. “It feels like she’s blossomed into a dark flower,” she says of those outfits.
But the way Milioti carries herself also plays a role in telling that story. When she first emerges as Sofia Gigante in “Homecoming,” she’s cloaked by a thick fur jacket that sits just off of her shoulders to ensure her scars are visible. “That was something we discussed—what are the ways in which she will now bear these scars to remind everyone of where she came from?” Milioti says, though she’s reticent to share her process for tracking Sofia’s changes beyond that, hoping that the work will stand on its own.
Milioti as Sofia and Colin Farrell as Oz in The Penguin finale.
The Penguin is titled in reference to Oz, but it’s really about the relationship between Oz and Sofia. The shifting power dynamics between them—Oz was Sofia’s driver when he worked for her father; he also tattled on her meeting with a journalist, which led to her father framing her for the Hangman murders—come to a head in the series. What’s clear is that the duo, now engaged in a cat-and-mouse game to seize power and control over Gotham, are more alike than they are different.
In the flashback that opens the seventh episode “Top Hat,” we learn that Oz is responsible for the disappearance and deaths of his brothers after they teased him. It’s not dissimilar to Sofia’s turning her childhood home into a gas chamber and locking her entire family inside. “They are kindred spirits. They’re so smart and they are so dismissed and overlooked and they both seek power,” Milioti says about their parallel journeys. “I think that’s also what makes them such brilliant adversaries.” With so much history, they know how to hit each other where it hurts the most: before Oz orchestrates Sofia’s arrest, she twists the knife by telling Oz’s mother the truth about her two other deceased sons.
Milioti isn’t focused on awards buzz—she says she stays away from the Internet and doesn’t read reviews, though friends and family keep her updated—but her turn across the eight-episode limited series is no doubt award-worthy. She’s slated to return to Black Mirror in a sequel episode to “USS Callister,” but beyond that, she’s choosy about her roles and wants to try a genre she’s never done before, like a Western or period piece. The Penguin also hasn’t been officially renewed for another season, even as the finale sets up two ties to the larger Batman franchise: the Bat signal, and a letter to Sofia from Selina Kyle a.k.a. Catwoman, claiming to be her half-sister (Milioti calls the letter a “pin prick of hope” for Sofia).
Until then, Milioti is happy to sit with the success and love for Sofia Falcone Gigante. “It’s so rare that you make something that you love, and that people then also love it,” she says. “It’s been beyond my wildest dreams. [Sofia] is my absolute favorite.”
Radhika Menon is a freelance entertainment writer, with a focus on TV and film. Her writing can be found on Vulture, Teen Vogue, Bustle, and more.