In the comic books, Alberto Falcone is revealed to be the Holiday Killer in the pages of Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale's classic Batman: The Long Halloween.
However, The Penguin sees Oz Cobb gun Carmine Falcone's son down about 15 minutes into the premiere! The door is now presumably closed on that iconic storyline being adapted by Matt Reeves, but according to director and executive producer Craig Zobel, Alberto's death was always the plan.
"It was always the plan for Alberto to die," he told Screen Rant. "It was an addition, I would say, to Colin's Penguin. With Oz in the movie, you don't see this as much just because there's not as much time, but here we get to see him in a [new] scenario."
"In my mind, the thing that's interesting is that Oz is a guy who, in order to try to win people over and do things, puts his foot in his mouth a lot. Some part of his brain makes a rash decision that pushes him into action."
"That can mean a lot of things, but in this case, the thing that pushes him into action is that he makes a terrible decision of maybe shooting the head of the crime family and then is like, 'Now I have to solve this. Now I've got a problem to solve.'"
Zobel added, "But what is fun about the show and what's attractive is that you like to see him make a mistake, and then you'd like to see him problem-solve his way out of the mistake. Both are kind of charming in a way. Considering he is a narcissist and a bad human, you still want enough charm to stick with the character and watch him for eight hours."
Alberto's death is likely to be Oz's first move in taking over Carmine's criminal empire and there's still a chance for Reeves to revisit the Holiday Killer concept in The Batman - Part II.
While Alberto admits to being Holiday on the page, readers of The Long Halloween are also given reason to believe that Two-Face or Gilda Dent were responsible for some, if not all, of the murders. Based on what we've seen so far, though, Reeves plans to tell largely original stories.
Elsewhere in the interview, Zobel teased what fans can expect from The Penguin's second episode.
"In episode 2, Oz continues to sort of be burdened by the bad choice he made at the beginning of episode 1. He's still in a situation where that is very tenuous, and he is trying to cover his tracks and figure out really what the next step is going to be."
"At the same time, although we've met Sofia Falcon, the real introduction to her in terms of [where] we get to know a lot more about her and how she fits into the Falcone family and what her point of view is."
Read our recap of The Penguin's season premiere by clicking here.