Series / Penny Dreadful: City of Angels

New city, new era, new horrors

"All mankind needs to be the monster he truly is... is being told he can."

— Magda, "Santa Muerte"

Penny Dreadful: City of Angels, a spin-off of Penny Dreadful is a Horror series which premiered in 2020 on Showtime, starring Natalie Dormer, Nathan Lane, and Daniel Zovatto, among others. It was canceled after only one season.

40 years, an ocean, and a continent away from Victorian London awaits 1930s Los Angeles, a city steeped in corruption and tension beneath the glamour of Hollywood magic. Tiago Vega has just been made the LAPD's first Mexican detective when he's brought in on his day off to investigate a gruesome murder, one centered around Mexican-American folklore and a key figure in it, Santa Muerte.

As Detective Vega and his partner hunt for the killer, tensions rise over the construction of California's first highway. Meanwhile, the spread of Nazism reaches America. As the city teeters on the edge, supernatural forces beyond its citizens' belief work behind the scenes as they push Los Angeles towards chaos...

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Penny Dreadful: City of Angels includes examples of:

• All Germans Are Nazis: Most of the German-American or German characters are Nazis/Nazi supporters. Peter's the only (initial) exception; though he heads the LA chapter of the pro-Nazi German-American Bund, he seems to be a pacifist and at least somewhat opposes anti-Semitism. However, by the end of the first season he seems to have embraced Nazism under Elsa's corrupting influence, if reluctantly.
• Artifact Title: Unlike its predecessor, neither the setting, the tone, nor the plot of the show are related to penny dreadfuls. If anything, it's much closer to pulp...which is rather appropriate, as "pulp magazines" replaced penny dreadfuls and dime novels in the early 20th century as the most popular form of cheap literature.
• Artistic License – History:
  • Peter is portrayed as head of the German-American Bund in LA, though opposed to key Nazi doctrines. The organization was pro-Nazi from the beginning, headed by Nazis and begun under their order. Here, it's portrayed more as a kind of German-American fraternal organization, with Nazi sympathizer members but no full commitment to Nazism.
  • The race riots that are portrayed within the series didn't occur in 1938. The last one in season one is based on the Zoot Suit Riots, from 1943.
  • The murder victim Tiago and Lewis first investigate is found in the concrete riverbed of the Los Angeles River. The concrete channel was built after the 1938 flood, so by the time of the events in the show, it should have been still under construction, if existent at all.
• Artistic License – Religion: The series' depiction of the Mexican folk saint of death, Santa Muerte, shares very little with her real-life counterpart. The real Santa Muerte is a fierce scythe-wielding skeletal deity who is known for offering her devotees protection and the granting of miracles, whereas her show version is fully fleshed, rather passive, and claims she has "no heart for the living".
• Asshole Victim: Officer Reilly, who roughs up the Mexicans any chance he gets and violates Josefina in front of her brother Mateo, has his throat slashed repeatedly by Mateo in retribution, and then his corpse is left hog-tied and naked in front of the police department. He's such an evil piece of work that not a single tear is shed by the audience.
• Badass Boast: Rio gives one in episode 3.
  Rio: No one's gonna give us anything, Rico, so we make them. First we make them look, then we make them scared. We are pachuco, we are Chicano, we are Aztec, we are spade, we are wop, we are dago, we are chink, we are queer, we are everything they fear, and we go out dancing.
• Big Brother Instinct: The Vega boys for each other and their younger sister Josefina.
• Bilingual Bonus: City of Angels takes place in Los Angeles, whose name is Spanish for "The Angels."
• Body Horror: Whatever the heck Elsa Branson does with her "son" when he doesn't need to be around, absorbing him into her body through her stomach.
• Clark Kenting: Detective Michener has met Magda in both her Rio and Alex identities and doesn't recognize them as the same person. They are made up very differently. Maria has also seen Magda both in her true form and as Elsa and doesn't seem to fully recognize that Elsa is Magda, though she is very suspicious of her.
• Cop Killer:
  • Raúl shoots four cops dead under Magda's influence during the riot in the pilot, forcing Tiago to shoot him to defend his partner.
  • Mateo becomes a much more knowing one, hacking Reilly's head nearly off his shoulders for sexually assaulting Josefina and being generally virulently racist, among other (hate) crimes.
• The Corruptor: Magda can influence people into giving into their most violent impulses. Her various personae also do this to varying degrees, especially Alex for Councilman Townsend.
• Creepy Child: Frank is definitely one, which is especially apparent when he kills Tom Craft's hamster just by looking at it.
• Cruel and Unusual Death:
  • Officer Reilly gets stabbed repeatedly, his head almost severed, courtesy of a vengeful Mateo. He thoroughly deserves it, however.
  • Diego gets lynched by a group of racist cops in retribution for Reilly's death, which he had taken the fall for.
• Dark Is Evil: Magda wears a lot of black, and is the most malevolent force in the series.
• Deadpan Snarker: Lewis Michener. He is played by Nathan Lane, after all.
• Determinator: Lewis Michener might be the new poster boy.
  Berman: A broken-down cop a couple years from retirement is gonna take down the Third Reich?
  Michener: Goddamn right I am.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: Endemic, casual racism from the nearly all-white LAPD (along with many civilians) is shown toward Latinos (plus other minorities mentioned). It's made clear that Townsend, who's gay, cannot be out about this (and a film of him having sex with a man is made for blackmail if necessary).
• Don't Fear the Reaper: Santa Muerte plays a prominent role in the series. She's depicted as a benevolent figure, and is supposed to be the one who takes people to heaven when they die.
• Downer Ending: The season ends on one hell of a low note. Magda's machinations bear fruit as race riots propel Councilman Townsend closer to his goal of becoming mayor, Peter has started on the path to full-fledged Nazism thanks to Magda/Elsa's manipulations, Molly is dead by her own hand thanks to her mother's actions, thus leaving Tiago devastated, Lewis is forced to shoot Brian, the student he spent so much time protecting, after he finds out he knows how to make an atomic bomb, Magda herself has seemingly set her sights on Tiago, and to cap it all off, the freeway's construction starts, the sight of the neighborhood being demolished rubbing salt in the wound. The only real bright spots are that Mateo reconciles with his family, and that Lewis and Tiago are still in the game.
• Driven to Suicide: In the season finale, Molly slits her wrists after finding out that her mother is a murderer.
• Everyone Has Standards: Councilman Townsend has no problem forcing minority communities out of their homes to build freeways if it advances his political career, but he balks at helping Nazi agents prepare for a takeover of the country, only doing so under threat of death.
• False Flag Operation: Lewis quickly tags onto the fact that a rich white family being butchered, and then decorated with Mexican face paint and left with a message written in Spanish, is clearly meant to shift blame for the crime onto the Mexican community and cover up something else. The murders were ordered by Adelaide Finnister to get rid of James Hazlett, who she saw as a threat for being too close to Molly, and the rest of the family were merely unfortunate casualties to her. It's left unclear whose responsibility the Mexican pageantry is, though.
• Fan Disservice: Skip, the male prostitute Charlton Townsend employs to fulfill his repressed homosexuality, is extremely handsome and ripped compared to Townsend himself, who in addition to being a horrible person is also overweight, sweaty, and sports a classic pedo-stache. This is made even worse when this handsome man is not only conned out of money by Townsend the following morning for sleeping with him, but is then shot to death in the chest and head by Kurt, a hitman and chauffeur for the Nazi party Townsend is affiliated with. This is made even more disturbing in the same episode when Kurt, himself a handsome ripped guy, immediately takes Townsend to a different motel to have sex with him (where Townsend is unknowingly being filmed by the Nazis so they can blackmail him with the footage later).
• Freudian Excuse: Magda is implied to have one related to her sister Santa Muerte not taking her side in something eons ago.
• Freudian Trio: The three Vega brothers — hot-headed Mateo is the Id, police officer Tiago is the Superego, and activist Raul is the Ego.
• Gay Conservative: Townsend, who's a conservative member of the LA city council, is also gay. While this is 1938, so most people wouldn't be accepting of this (including liberals like Councilwoman Beck) he's got no problem working with Nazi Germany, whose homophobia was much worse than in the US then. His lover Kurt, meanwhile, is a Nazi (with the Gestapo) who works for the cause nonetheless. They don't comment on this explicitly, although Kurt mentions that all LGBT clubs have been shut down in Berlin after Townsend takes him to one. Kurt's boss doesn't seem to mind this, even getting Kurt into a relationship with Townsend for blackmail material.
• Gayngster: Fly Rico appears to be bi at least, given he has a casual threesome with Mateo and Rio (which he initiates by kissing the guy). He's also a feared pachuco gangster.
• Gratuitous Latin: Maria, as a Catholic, prays at her son's bedside in Latin.
• The Great Depression: The series is set towards the end of the Great Depression, with the rising prominence of Nazis as a signifier for the imminent war to come.
• Hate Sink: There are good cops like Tiago, and bigots-with-badges ranging from mostly-good like Lewis to moderately racist like Captain Vanderhoff, but the one cop that is completely irredeemable is Reilly. He truly hates the Mexican immigrants and the pachucos, roughing them up any chance he gets. He even goes so far as to sexually violate Josefina in front of her brother Mateo, knowing neither of them can do anything about it. So not a tear is shed in the audience when Mateo kills him with repeated slashes from a blunt blade.
• Hidden Depths: While overall a sleazy piece of work, racist, and a general prick, Townsend, of all people, shows some talent at tap dancing, which he briefly demonstrates while alone at home. He later mentions to Kurt that he'd tried to make a career of it, but was rejected because of his weight.
• Humans Are Bastards: Magda believes this, and that they all just need a "push" to become monsters. She serves in that role, tempting them into violence.
• In Name Only: Quite literally. The name, the same showrunner/head writer John Logan, and the fact it has supernatural elements are the only things it has in common with the parent series. Essentially, it is a take on Central American mythology and pulp fiction much like the parent series was to Victorian literary legends.
• Invisible to Normals: Both Santa Muerte and Magda appear able to render themselves invisible at their choice.
• Kosher Nostra: After he stumbles upon the Nazi presence in LA, Lewis calls in local gangster Benny Berman, namedropping both Murder, Inc. and Meyer Lansky as people Berman works for/with.
• Latino Is Brown: Mateo objects that Rio is white, not Latina (because she's got pale skin), and thus she can't be pachuco. However, she retorts that her parents came from northern Spain to Mexico. Of course, she's just one of Magda's many guises (who's really a demon, though apparently from Mexican culture at least). All of the other Latino characters, however, have olive skin and black hair.
• Loose Lips: Brian is a very smart kid — his problem is once he starts talking, he has trouble knowing when to stop. This winds up getting him killed.
• The Mafia: It's mentioned that the Italians were run out of LA by Jewish gangsters working for Meyer Lansky.
• Magical Jew: Although he's probably one of the least supernatural characters, Lewis Michener is both a mentor to Tiago Vega and very Jewish. He's a bit of an Alter Kocker, and when he sees the burned, assassinated bodies of two of his friends, tears his coat in keriyah and recites Kaddish for them.
• Maligned Mixed Marriage: Tiago's family greatly disapprove of his relationship with Molly, because she's white and he's Latino. He's accused of not thinking a Latina is good enough to be with. Josefina acts personally betrayed, as Molly's her spiritual leader/mentor. Later he breaks off their relationship, because they could never be together publicly (simply holding hands would not be acceptable, let alone anything else).
• Mark of the Supernatural: Tiago has the burned scar of the fingers and thumb of a hand on his left pectoral from where Santa Muerte shoved him away from his father's burning body.
• Master of Disguise: The demon Magda is German housewife Elsa Branson, Councilman Townsend's assistant Alex Malone, and the pachuco 'queen' Rio. While they are all played by Natalie Dormer, even characters familiar with her different identities don't notice any resemblance. It helps that she can actually be two or more people at once, as seen in the season finale when Rio is in the same place as Elsa.
• Motive Rant: Councilman Townsend gives one in the season finale, gloating about all the things he'll do once he uses the chaos of the racial tensions in the city to get elected mayor — segregating all the minorities, shutting down all newspapers or radio stations that disagree with him, forging ties with the Germans, and taking revenge on everyone who's ever opposed him.
• My Beloved Smother: Miss Adelaide, for Sister Molly. Adelaide is incredibly manipulative, controlling whom Molly speaks to and what she does, and has apparently been pushing her daughter into the spotlight since the age of four.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The presence of Rory Kinnear, who played the Creature/Caliban/John Clare in the original Penny Dreadful, could indicate a connection between the series, or it could just be Kinnear and Logan's Production Posse rearing its head.invoked
  • The scene of Maria Vega praying to Santa Muerte is almost a shot-for-shot recreation of the scene in the original show when Vanessa Ives is praying to have her possession lifted.
  • Ethan Chandler and Tiago Vega are both honorable men chosen by a higher power — Ethan as Lupus Dei and Tiago marked by Santa Muerte.
  • During a conversation with Tiago, Lewis mentions The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Dr. Jekyll appeared in the third season of the original show.
  • Characters with the surname of "Branson" appear in both shows: Mina's fiancé Captain Branson in the original, Magda's persona of Elsa Branson in this show.
  • Patti LuPone makes her third appearance in the franchise. She previously played woods witch Joan Clayton and Joan's descendant the alienist Doctor Seward in the original show. Here, she's a torch singer at a gay club that Councilman Townsend takes his lover Kurt to.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Sister Molly shares aesthetic similarities to Aimee Semple McPherson, a radio evangelist based in Los Angeles in the 1930s who founded the Foursquare Church. Her mother Adelaide appears to be loosely based on McPherson's mother, Mildred Kennedy.
• Noble Bigot with a Badge: Lewis realizes that the LAPD sent him and Tiago to investigate the murders because it's purportedly a "spic thing", but he physically defends Tiago against other racist cops and is secretly investigating the Nazi conspiracy in Los Angeles. He's far less bigoted than most white cops too, having requested that Tiago work with him and being generally fair toward Chicanos as well. It helps that he's Jewish, and thus understands what it's like to be the target of bigotry.
• Rape as Drama: Reilly sexually assaults Josefina in the guise of a patdown. She's realistically shaken by this, but Molly gives her very sympathetic advice (for the time) in dealing with it, and relates that her own mother was once raped by some men they met on a trip.
• Reality Has No Subtitles: Latino characters speak in non-subtitled Spanish when not speaking English.
• The Reveal: As we find out in the season finale, Adelaide is the one who ordered the murders from the pilot.
• Scam Religion: Lewis is convinced that Sister Molly's church is this.
• Shame If Something Happened: Goss none-too-subtly threatens Michener's family during their confrontation by revealing he knows exactly where his children (and grandchildren) live.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Peter Kraft served in World War 1 as a medic, and the experience clearly traumatized him, especially when he discusses his past with Elsa in episode 8. Having seen the horrors of war firsthand, he abandoned his birth name of Krupp and emigrated to the US, joining the German-American Bund in a desire to keep his new home country out of another war and the same thing from happening to his own boys.
• Shout-Out: The kidnapping and murder of a girl mentioned in the series is clearly based on the Marion Parker case.
• Soft Glass: Though several characters break through glass windows or have them broken nearby, in only one case is anyone cut.
• Straight Gay: Townsend and Kurt are both gay, with no stereotypical traits (even in private).
• String Theory: Detective Michener has a red string board full of clues linking the Arroyo Freeway project, Richard Goss, Peter Kraft, the SS, and more potential homicides like the Santa Muerte murders.
• Those Wacky Nazis: The series is set in 1938, and many characters have ties to the actual Third Reich.
  • Peter Kraft is a member of the German-American Bund, which actually existed in the real 1938. He has a uniform similar to an SS uniform and a swastika flag in his closet. Played with in episode 8 during a meeting of the Bund, in that he does not seem to quite see eye to eye with the other members on supporting Hitler and their racial views, and does not seem to be a committed Nazi, his main concern seemingly being keeping the United States out of a new war. Double Subverted as of the season finale, as he is seen wearing an Iron Cross and reluctantly giving a Nazi salute, thanks to Elsa's manipulations.
  • Councilman Townsend is an American man... who thinks that Mussolini and Hitler are great role models. However, he is not willing to be an actual Nazi, but has zero problems benefiting from their assistance in making him mayor, and has very fascist ambitions for his mayorship.
  • Richard Goss is the Fuhrer's personal road construction manager, in Los Angeles to measure Wiltshire Boulevard for a victory parade and bribe the head of the city council.
  • Miss Adelaide shows up to a dinner with Goss, Kurt, Alex, and Townsend, revealing that she, if not her entire church, are in on the Nazi agenda.
• Three-Way Sex: Between Mateo, Rio, and Fly Rico.
• Too Dumb to Live: Brian is pretty intelligent in terms of scientific work, but he lacks common sense. For instance, he decides to blab to Tiago, Michener, and Benny Berman that he's not only been working on rockets, but nuclear physics, specifically the atomic bomb. Not only would this be giving away important government secrets in the best of times, all three are horrified to hear of this, and they decide to kill him, with Lewis being the one to carry it out.
• Villain Protagonist: Magda is the primary villain to start with, but also a focus character herself through her many guises.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Councilman Townsend has a very poor relationship with his father, to put it lightly, as demonstrated during their meeting in episode 9. Townsend Sr. bluntly refuses to help his son win the recall, deriding him as a fat, weak "queer" and a "losing horse" to his face.
• What the Hell, Hero?: In the process of interrogating Diego, Lewis figures out that Tiago's brother was the one who killed Officer Reilly. Lewis then lays into Tiago for letting him go. However, he helps cover up that fact by getting Diego to confess to that murder as well as the Hazlett killings.
• Where Everybody Knows Your Flame: Townsend takes Kurt to a secret LGBT club in LA. It has an alarm that goes off to announce police raids — at that point all same-sex couples switch immediately to dancing with opposite-sex partners. Kurt mentions that all such clubs in Berlin have been shut down under the Nazi Party. It's more toned-down than the usual portrayal however, as the patrons seem to be entirely normatively masculine men and feminine women, with nothing more risqué than dancing as a woman sings (which is basically the same as the straight dance clubs in the '30s).
• Would Hurt a Child:
  • Adelaide had a man's entire family, including his children, murdered because Molly's affair with him might be a hindrance to her work.
  • Frank relates the story of a girl whose kidnappers mutilated and murdered her even after being paid the ransom and we see a vision of this later. It's clearly based on Marion Parker's murder.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: In her Rio guise, Magda kills Fly Rico in the season finale, as his conciliatory ways are now a hindrance to her plans.