Editor's note: Deadline's It Starts on the Page (Limited) features 10 standout limited or anthology series scripts in 2025 Emmy contention.
The Penguin developer-showrunner Lauren LeFranc delivered two gut punches in the finale of the HBO limited series based on the DC Comics character Oz Cobb aka The Penguin. After establishing that Oz (Colin Farrell) had finally found a trusted partner in Victor (Rhenzy Feliz), LeFranc did the unthinkable and had the Penguin strangle his young charge to death. Oz then managed to get his nemesis Sofia (Cristin Milioti) committed back to Arkham in the episode, titled "A Great or Little Thing," written by LeFranc and directed by Jennifer Getzinger.
In her intro to the finale script, LeFranc explains how she had planned these two shockers before she sat down to write the first episode and how one of them was among the two scenes in the closer that proved most difficult to write.
LeFranc reveals what the other challenging sequence was. She also talks about how she, a half-Mexican woman, got to tell the story of a violently ambitious gangster like Oz and how she surrounded him with strong, complicated female characters like Sofia, something she was looking for but couldn't find in comic books she read as a kid.
Farrell already has won a Golden Globe and a SAG Award for reprising his role from Matt Reeves' The Batman in the HBO spinoff, which also took the 2025 WGA Award for Limited Series.
Here's the "A Great or Little Thing" script with an intro by LeFranc.