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Let’s Talk About the Pennyworth Season 3 three-episode premiere:
- The series moves from Epix to HBO Max with a five year time jump following the Battle of London which ended Season 2.
- Alfred is now the owner of the pub he frequented, and runs his ‘security’ business from offices above, with Daveboy and Bet Sykes in his employ.
- Alfred also works with Martha Kane and now Prime Minster Aziz rounding up individuals with various types of mechanical enhancements.
- Alfie and Daveboy are hired to locate the missing daughter of prominent government officials.
- Thomas Wayne and Martha Kane are now married with a five year old daughter, Samantha.
- Thomas is now … a doctor (?) and Martha has a ‘desk job’ working with MI5, but it turns out she may not be telling the truth about her duties.
- Alfred’s mother Mary is Samantha Wayne’s nanny … and is finally ready to check out the dating scene.
- Thomas’ father Patrick, and his associate Virginia Devereaux, pay a visit to London under the pretense of mending fences and meeting his granddaughter.
- Bet goes rogue to track down Colonel Salt to exact some revenge.
- The enhanced Gully, now a national hero of sorts for his part in the Battle of London, goes rogue after tiring of being kept under lock and key at a government facility.
- Sandra Onslow has achieved fame as a pop singer, and her new hit single ‘Candelsticks and Caravans’ is having a strange effect on some people.
Alfred Pennyworth is back in the newly titled Pennyworth: The Origin of Batman’s Butler, making the welcome move from Epix to HBO Max, where it will hopefully find new fans and thrive for several more seasons. And while the first two seasons of the series are also now streaming on HBO Max, don’t worry about playing catch up to dive into Season 3 (of course, we highly recommend that you do check out those seasons to be familiar with the characters, but as far as the plot goes this season’s five year time jump is far removed from the past).
A lot has happened to the characters over the last five years of their time. Alfred has expanded his ‘security’ business, now more of a private investigator hired to locate missing persons and the like, but he also works with MI5, Martha Kane and Prime Minister Aziz on rounding up people who have been outfitted with mechanical enhancements, as we saw happen to Gully in the Season 2 finale (which helped save London from the Ravens). This opening scene of Alfie helping to capture one such person almost seems like a throwaway bit to wrap up any questions left from Season 2, but this will come into play later. Alfred’s main case, though, is to locate Jessica Thistle, the daughter of Lord and Lady Thistle who want to keep things hush-hush so they send a nanny to inquire about Alfred’s services. He accepts the assignment because he can charge a Lord and Lady top dollar.
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Meanwhile, Thomas Wayne has somehow transitioned out of his CIA job and into the medical profession — in less than five years! — while Martha has given up her dangerous work with MI5 to focus on her family which now includes five-year-old daughter Sam. Except she hasn’t, she’s been lying to her husband about her field work and her licence to kill. Thomas only learns the truth when his estranged father Patrick Wayne shows up, with his female companion Virginia Devereaux, under the guise of patching things up with his son and finally meeting his granddaughter. But the senior Wayne has actually come to London to seek Martha’s help, somehow knowing more about her profession than her husband, which makes Thomas feel all sorts of ways when he realizes his wife has been pulling the wool over his eyes. Patrick needs the help of MI5 to locate a missing scientist, Dr. Glubb, who has something Wayne claims was stolen from his company, and Glubb has already murdered one CIA agent. Thomas at first refuses to believe his father about Martha, and then refuses to let him involve her in his scheme so he recommends Alfred instead. Thomas asks Alfred about the job first, and he accepts which now gives him two apparently unrelated assignments.
The first of Alfie’s assignments seems rather easy as he and Daveboy were able to locate Jessica in an ashram run by a woman going by the name Sister Susie. Jessica tells them that she does not want to return home to her parents, but Alfred is getting paid so she’s going home. Not long after, Jessica turns up on Alfred’s doorstep, covered in blood, having just stabbed her parents to death. Seeing that Jessica does not appear to be in her right mind, Alfie grows suspicious and refuses to tell Aziz where the young woman is. But he also learns from Aziz that the woman claiming to be the Thistles’ nanny was an impostor as he has the real nanny at the station for questioning.
In the midst of all the drama, Mary Pennyworth, who is the Waynes’ nanny, has decided to re-enter the dating world even though she still misses Mr. P, despite his attempts to try to overthrow the government. She responds to a ‘Lonelyhearts’ ad and meets a gentleman for tea. They get along famously until he says ‘carpe diem’ … which she is surprised to learn is code for ‘let’s go get a room and shag’. Appalled, Mary flees the date and later tells Martha all about it. Martha asks if Mary seriously considered going with the man, but she laughs it off saying she didn’t. But maybe she did.
The two storylines begin to collide when Martha becomes aware of Patrick Wayne’s intentions being in London. After being confronted by Thomas about her lies, she reveals to him she already knows why his father is there and she needs to take care of this job. And that leads her to Sister Susie, who had been the recipient of some major cash for allowing her disciples to be used for some drug testing being conducted by the CIA. Jessica’s odd behavior also led Alfred and Daveboy back to the ashram, but not before the CIA got there. While Sister Susie admitted to the drug testing, the CIA agents arrived, followed by Alfred and Daveboy. The skirmish ended with the agents dead, Martha knocked unconscious by Susie, and Susie taking a bullet to the brain. Now with a nice little bruise on her head, Martha can’t help but come clean to Thomas. Now they all know that Dr. Glubb had invented some kind of mind control drug that caused Jessica to kill her parents, but how and why did she suddenly snap?
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Stashing Jessica at Sandra’s flat — now a happening party spot in London — Alfie realizes that may not have been the best place to hide Jessica. Unbeknownst to them, the trigger for the mind control is a song, ‘Candlesticks and Caravans’ by Sandra Onslow. And when one of the partiers insists on playing the song, Jessica snaps into a trance, picks up a knife and murders everyone in the flat, except for Sandra who managed to hide out under her bed … for a moment. Just as Jessica grabbed her leg and dragged her into the open, Alfred and Daveboy burst in and Daveboy shot Jessica between the eyes. With who seemed to be her current boyfriend dead, Sandra’s spark with Alfred — which she never really lost — has been reignited. Daveboy, however, is feeling a massive amount of guilt for killing the young woman and makes the terrible decision to attend the funeral of her parents, drunk, and tell the assembled crowd that he killed Jessica in a rambling speech. After being dragged out of the church by the authorities, a woman he met inside (he revealed his name is Wallace MacDougal and has no idea why his friends call him Daveboy) tells him that was the best funeral she’d ever attended.
Martha is contacted by Dr. Glubb and he reveals that it was indeed he who created the mind-control drug and he’s willing to sell it to the British government for a hefty fee — he’s worth every penny — and safety from the CIA (and Patrick Wayne, apparently). He also admits that he did murder the CIA agent, but he had no choice. It was either kill or be killed. She promises him she will bring his offer to Aziz, while back at home Thomas is still playing along that Martha simply has a boring desk job. Alone at home when Virginia returns from doing whatever touristy things she’s doing, she begins to inquire a little too much about his relationship with Martha, concerning him that she might know more about what’s going on than she should. While he goes to fix her a drink, Virginia spikes his drink and the next thing he knows, he’s passing out on the floor. Turns out Patrick is not who he has to worry about, Virginia is the one in charge and when Patrick sees what she’s done, she just orders him back to his room while more CIA agents drag Thomas out.
When Martha returns home, Thomas is not there but he returns with some takeaway shortly after and is in a chipper mood. He tells her that they need to put the lies and deceptions behind them and work together as a family unit. Martha agrees but she is a bit suspicious about his behavior, since their last interaction ended with some very terse words and feelings of mistrust between them. Now Thomas is all sunshine and rainbows, and as they sit down to dinner, ‘Candlesticks and Caravans’ begins to play. Thomas’ mood changes instantly, and in his head he sees his conversation with Martha as more of an interrogation, with she in a Raven uniform, their dining room suddenly transformed into some sort of medieval chamber. In his mind the discussion become more heated and he attacks Martha, the two employing their hand-to-hand combat training (he might be a doctor now, but Thomas hasn’t forgotten how to fight). Who has the upper hand switches several times until Thomas grabs a knife … and stabs his wife in the side. Before he can inflict further damage, Mrs. P just happened to return to the house and whacked him in the head, knocking him out and frantically phoning for help to save Martha’s life.
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In addition to this main storyline, there was also a bit in the first episode with Bet Sykes, now under Alfred’s employ (!), going rogue because she wanted to track down Colonel Salt and give him a what for. Unfortunately, she ended up killing two Raven agents (they claimed they weren’t at first) and ended up taking off with their baby. But she has not been seen since then. There was also a bit in the third episode featuring a surprise return by Gully, now a mostly mechanical national hero, but basically kept under house arrest in a posh government-run facility far below the streets of London. Tired of being cooped up, and missing his wife, Gully breaks out and causes havoc, holing himself up in some sort of off-track betting parlor. Lucius Fox and Martha call on Alfred to help bring Gully back in, because they believe he’s the only person Gully will listen to. As they reminisce about that time Alfred screwed his wife while Gully’s hostages look on — and angry that they are losing money in the process — things become heated with one of the gamblers. Gully nearly blows the man’s head off with his death ray attachment but Alfred manages to hit the kill switch on Gully’s neck in the knick of time. And then he has to fight his way out of the establishment as the men inside want to strip Gully for parts and sell them on the black market to recoup their betting losses. Lucius hears the commotion inside and throws caution to the wind, distracting the last man standing long enough for Alfie to take him out as well. Reconnecting Gully’s power just before time ran out, which would have killed him, Gully awakens but it’s obvious he’d rather be dead.
And thus begins Season 3 of Pennyworth. The first episode was a little bit exposition heavy, but watching the three episodes in succession just built more and more anticipation, with both the second and this episodes ending with shocking moments of violence. Hopefully they can keep up this intrigue, bring Bet back, and integrate the augmented humans into the story. So far, we’re on the right track!
What did you think of the season premiere? Start a conversation in the comments section below.
New episodes of Pennyworth stream Thursdays on HBO Max.
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