Marvel’s big screen success since 2008 has been nothing short of phenomenal. Building the MCU from the ground up was a deeply impressive undertaking, and while DC has enjoyed individual hits like The Batman and Wonder Woman, the brand has struggled to trouble Marvel’s shared universe. Zack Snyder’s DCEU couldn’t do the job, and time will tell whether James Gunn’s DCU will have more joy.
But while Marvel consistently makes cinematic waves, DC has remained the undisputed champion of television. Even back in the 1990s with Batman: The Animated Series, DC has always excelled in this particular arena. Since then, we’ve also had Smallville, Justice League Unlimited, and DC’s real rival to the MCU: the Arrowverse.
In more recent years, however, DC has managed to completely redefine superhero TV with two separate, widely acclaimed releases in the span of just five short years.
Watchmen Was A Superhero TV Series Like No Other
Often overlooked as part of the DC roster, 2019’s Watchmen proved to be one of the decade’s most important releases in any medium. Sidestepping Zack Snyder’s divisive movie adaptation a decade prior, Watchmen served as a modern-day sequel to Alan Moore’s seminal comic. Moore himself didn’t care, of course, but Watchmen nevertheless treated his source material with reverence and creativity.
Like the comic, 2019’s Watchmen was less of a superhero story and more a superhero deconstruction story. That alone makes it unlike anything else Marvel or DC has produced, but Damon Linedelof and his team went further down the rabbit hole. Mixing the original mythology with Twin Peaks weirdness, a dystopian world closer to Moore’s V for Vendetta, and a powerfully prescient political allegory, Watchmen transcended the sum of its parts.
Watchmen‘s message to the wider Marvel and DC landscape was clear: superhero shows don’t have to be about superheroes. You can have Jeremy Irons in a brightly-colored cape and an entity who can end humanity with a snap, and use those components to tell a completely unique story without betraying the spirit and meaning of the comic being adapted.
Watchmen wasn’t necessarily the first to do this. Marvel arguably beat it to the punch with hardly-anything-to-do-with-X-Men series Legion. As great as Legion was, it remained relatively niche during its three-season run. By contrast, Watchmen became a cultural event, with even former president Barack Obama finding time to praise it.
From a giant blue “sword” to Ozymandias’ lake full of babies, Watchmen broke every rule and succeeded despite it, elevating not just superhero TV, but modern TV in general. No one could’ve predicted that when “Watchmen TV show from Lost showrunner” was first announced. Most were likely picturing another Snyder-esque effort. Instead, Watchmen was the kind of unique social experience that only comes to television one or two times a decade.
DC Did It Again In 2024 With The Penguin
Joining Watchmen in the “superhero shows that do everything possible to avoid superheroes” bucket was 2024’s The Penguin, a spinoff of Matt Reeves’ The Batman released two years prior.
Considering DC’s original Penguin is largely known for looking like a bird and twirling an umbrella, it’s astounding that The Penguin pulls so much raw emotion and narrative power from Colin Farrell’s character. The Batman hinted at the potential bubbling within its version of Oswald Cobblepott, but the long-form medium of TV offered space for exploration that The Penguin took full advantage of.
Like Watchmen before it, The Penguin pulled down the borders of what a superhero TV show could be, despite being based on a far more conventional comic. The world of Batman morphed into a classic gangster tale in the mold of The Godfather, Goodfellas, and Howard Hawks’ Scarface. Matt Reeves’ movie had already planted itself firmly on the grittier end of the superhero spectrum, but The Penguin vacated the scale entirely, openly existing as a crime drama free from the trappings of Batman’s universe.
Also like Watchmen, it was The Penguin‘s critical success that made it a revolutionary release for the superhero genre. The soul of DC’s Penguin was still very much present – as was the soul of Gotham City itself – but very rarely has a comic book villain been so unpredictable, so complex, so skillful in dancing the thin line between being loved and being hated.
As another intense character study of a DC villain, Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker would be a comparative work. But by virtue of having more hours to play with, The Penguin balanced its keen characterization with a more gripping thriller plot, creating something that permanently added another string to the bow of superhero television.
This story originally appeared on Screenrant
