Bruce Timm Explains Why The Penguin Is Female in ‘Batman: Caped Crusader’: “There’s a lack of good villains”

‘Batman: Caped Crusader’ recently released to universal acclaim, the show has quickly overtaken ‘The Boys’ when it comes to Amazon Platform streaming, and fans have generally liked the show.

Now, before the show was released, it’s been involved in several controversies that some fans deemed as “woke.” First, Harley Quinn was race-swapped, being Asian in the show, and The Penguin was gender-swapped.

The show’s version of the Penguin is called Oswalda (yes, really.) and is voiced by Minnie Driver.

The show’s creators Bruce Timm and James Tucker recently talked with ‘The Emmys’ and commented on the development of the show, one of the topics that stood out was the fact that the Penguin is gender-swapped. The creators explained that this was mostly due to a lack of good, presumably, female villains:

Timm: James and I were talking about the overview of the show, and we said, “One of the problems with Batman, as he is, is there’s a lack of good villains. You’ve got Catwoman, you’ve got Poison Ivy, you’ve got Harley Quinn. But it would be really good to have more female villains.” And off the top of my head, I said, “We never really could figure out exactly what to do with The Penguin, what the gimmick for The Penguin would be. What if we gender-flip The Penguin?”

James: When he said “Maybe we can gender-flip Penguin,” I just got this flood of ideas. I was thinking of Marlene Dietrich in her tuxedo and Cabaret the musical and the art form of cabaret, and I just started drawing. I instantly got a flood of ideas. Also, I was thinking a little bit of Harvey Fierstein and Hairspray and Divine. It just was like I knew instantly what it could be.

I guess you can argue that Batman has one of the most famous rogue galleries in comic history and some of the most memorable female villains. So the decision to gender-flip The Penguin still stands out as odd.

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