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By now it is pretty obvious that Marvel got the drop on DC when it comes to a shared cinematic universe, but that came with a couple of drawbacks. DC could have learned from the various missteps the MCU took over the years, yet, as The Penguin is set to debut on HBO and Max, it looks like they’re about to do the one thing Marvel has said they wouldn’t do again.

We have known for a while that The Penguin takes place just one week after the events of The Batman, with Gotham still partially flooded and a power vacuum in its criminal underbelly. Lead writer and showrunner Lauren LeFranc even confirmed recently that the series would serve as a “bridge” between the 2022 film and its upcoming sequel. Collin Ferral’s Penguin has been confirmed to be returning for The Batman 2, which means that you’ll probably need to watch the spin-off tv show to figure out what is happening with the character in the sequel.

This is exactly "bridge" Marvel made with the MCU in the aftermath of Avengers: Endgame. Not sure why Wanda was going a bit mad in Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness or how Sam Wilson got the title of Captain America? Should have watched the Disney+ shows that Marvel pushed out in 2020, really. It certainly makes the world feel interconnected, but it turns out that fans don’t usually like having to do homework before going to the movies. The lack of standalone stories in the MCU became a barrier to new fans joining in and exhausting to existing fans who were struggling to keep up.

It was an issue that wasn’t lost on Marvel Studios and Disney, which is why they’ve taken the steps to separate their tv shows from the movies and allow fans to jump in and out as they want to. “We want to make sure that Marvel stays an open door for people to come in and explore,” Brad Winderbaum, the head of TV, Streaming, and Animation at Marvel Studios, explained. “On the heels of Endgame, I think there was, maybe, a little bit of an obligation to watch absolutely everything in order to watch anything… So part of the rebranding of Marvel Studios, Marvel Television, Marvel Animation, even Marvel Spotlight is to, I think, try to tell the audience, ‘You can jump in anywhere. They’re interconnected but they’re not. You don’t have to watch A to enjoy B. You can follow your bliss.”

That is a lesson that seems to have been hard learned by Marvel, who saw the first real reversal in the MCU’s fortunes during 2023 as fans felt there was just too much to keep up with, so why hasn’t Warner Bros and DC learned from their mistakes with The Penguin? Maybe they think tying the show closely to the films will boost its audience, but history would tell us that fewer people will watch the series than go to the cinema, making telling the story they want to tell with The Batman 2 that much more difficult.

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