'Pennyworth' is a rare prequel where knowing the ending makes it better

There are two ways to watch Pennyworth on Epix.

The first is to take it at face value as a television show about a dashing former soldier starting his postwar life as a security consultant and running headfirst into a dark, sexy conspiracy at the heart of London. The second is to recall that Pennyworth acts as an origin story for Batman's butler and revel in that fact at every possible moment.

The second way is much, much more fun.

Unlike Gotham, the now-finished Batman prequel series about Jim Gordon also produced by Pennyworth team Danny Cannon and Bruno Heller, Pennyworth thrives on the audience knowing the end state for its main character. Gotham was a prequel that reimagined the origins of several Batman villains, Bruce Wayne, and the city of Gotham itself, which spread the focus of the show's inevitable ending across dozens of bizarre and surprising stories. Pennyworth is laser-focused on Alfred, Thomas Wayne, and Martha Kane (soon to be Wayne), which makes it easier to concentrate on what eventually happens to all of them.

In many TV series, a character talking about wanting to have children is a normal and plausible thing to do. In Pennyworth, hearing Alfred muse about his future kids is unintentionally comedic — sure, he'll raise a kid one day, but he'll spend the rest of his life waiting in a basement to see if his violent, depressed son has tripped off the side of a skyscraper or captured an evil clown. It's funnier still to watch Martha Kane, the assumed future Bat-mama, develop an attraction to Alfred, knowing that one day her husband will hire her fantasy man to serve cookies and answer the door.

Pennyworth has some great touches outside of its prequel status, many of which should be familiar to fans of Gotham. Stylistic touches like weird, ahistorical technology and off-color depictions of history abound, as well as fancy, symmetrical nightclub scenes and goth/punk villain costumes. The show also benefits from its Mature rating, higher than that of the Fox-friendly Gotham, by allowing Heller and Cannon to go absolutely bonkers with the hyper-violent parallel reality an adult Batman show deserves. We're talking dripping entrails, headshots, and a funky twist on public hangings involving an oversized wooden mallet. The world of Pennyworth is a bloody, horny mess, and that's wonderful.

Halfway through its first season, the delight of watching the hot man who will soon pray every night that Bruce Wayne doesn't drag another crime-fighting orphan home and name them after a bird has not worn off Pennyworth. As the show's plot picks up and the original circumstances that bring young Alfred into Thomas Wayne's inner circle come together, there's a lot to enjoy in sitting back and watching the madness happen. There's just so much more joy in knowing who it happens to, and what is coming for him in the future.