Sofia Falcone’s tour de force in this past Sunday’s The Penguin is all anyone can talk about, including a potential Emmy nomination for Cristin Milioti. From the shock and horror of Arkham to her delicious, carbon monoxide-based revenge, it was an incredible episode.
However, it seems like it’s at least possible that something was missed in all the chaos. We know that Carmine is evil for sending his daughter to Arkham for a decade for maybe, possibly talking to the press. But was he evil enough to strangle nearly a dozen women and make it look like suicide? A terrible parent, a mob boss and a serial killer?
This theory did not come up in my mind until I read a thread from Richard Ocelot who explains what may have actually happened here. Now I can’t get it out of my head.
The idea here is that it was Alberto, not Carmine, who was the real Hangman. The theory is the following.
- Sofia and Alberto were playing hide and seek as children, and Alberto is never seen. He may have been hiding where he either witnessed his father strangle his mother, or at the very least, set up her faux hanging.
- That scarred him for life, of course, and this is the reason he grows up to drown himself in drugs and alcohol and all manner of vices, rather than just being some spoiled playboy.
- But it also triggers something darker, and he’s the one who has been strangling the women, not Carmine. It’s never even confirmed Carmine had “relations” with these women, and if he did, who cares? He’s not married at that point, and he’s the boss, why would he need to kill them to “cover that up”?
- Instead, the idea is that Alberto was killing them due to seeing his father kill his mother which broke him for life. Carmine was covering it up with the fake suicides to keep his son out of trouble.
- He was content to manage this by giving family control to Sofia and skipping over his unstable son, but once it at least seemed like she might talk to the press and in turn, the police, he slams her in Arkham. He dies in The Batman and there was no indication he actually wanted to appoint Alberto, he just sort of took over. Hence the family power struggle.
- Alberto is the only one continuing to support Sofia and trying to get her out not just because he loves her, but because he feels guilty that she’s serving what would have been his sentence. But he doesn’t love her enough, of course, to confess to the crime and exonerate her, so this is the next best thing.
- This may all lead to perhaps Oz finding out the truth about Alberto, and convincing Sofia of it. Then, it would be the case that technically he killed the guy who totally ruined her life. Well, the guy besides Carmine. Not that this would lead to her forgiving him, of course.
I think this theory holds a lot of weight. It seemed really strange to me that as cold and calculating as Carmine was, going around slaughtering prostitutes did not really fit with his persona. But Alberto? If he saw his father killing his mother growing up? How he acted as an adult? Yes, I can very much see that, and all of this panning out. But we have five more episodes to go, of course, and we’ll have to wait and see.
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