Protest: Does “Penny Dreadful” Really Belong to Eva Green?

When Showtime’s deliciously sensual and morbidly horrifying cult show “Penny Dreadful” returned for a second season in May, Entertainment Weekly made the statement, “’Penny Dreadful’ belongs to Eva Green.” It was a bold statement. So I’m here, a month later, to make an even bolder statement. “’Penny Dreadful’ belongs to Billie Piper.”

Don’t get me wrong, please don’t misunderstand: Eva Green is a rare gem, a magnificent sight to watch and not just because she’s basically the most beautiful woman on earth, but because she commands the screen and those sitting on the other side of it. But there’s someone else who lurked in the background of season one who’s pushed her way through to the foreground in season two as a major player and a driving force behind all that is emotional, beautiful, innocent, terrifying, and puzzling about “Penny Dreadful.”
Brona Croft.
Piper, who plays Brona/Lily Frankenstein, channels something on the show that no other character has channeled for me, a pure sense of heart and soul. The only other character that comes close to this is Caliban, but he also has his typical Frankenstein’s Monster anger issues. There was one character that also channeled what Piper brings to “Penny Dreadful” but he was killed in the second episode of season one: Proteus. It seems clear to me that the show wanted to make this correlation between Brona Croft’s pure soul and Proteus’ similar soul during the scene where they first met. At the time, it felt like nothing, looking back, now that Brona is Lily and has all of the attributes of Proteus, it feels very monumental.

Proteus: “Enjoy the fairy lights.”

Brona: “I always do.”

As Brona, Piper played a rough-around-the-edges, but intensely sweet and giving tortured soul. Still portraying one of the loveliest characters on the show. As Lily, she carries all the attributes of Mary Shelley’s famous Monster minus the “I’m going to murder everyone you love if you don’t do what I say” part. She exhibits trust, love, pureness, intelligence, loneliness, and a charming heart of gold. She is essentially everything that Vanessa Ives is not.
I’m not purporting that the show doesn’t belong to Eva Green because she isn’t pure at heart. But what I think is going to happen is that Lily is about to steal the show. She’s about to become one of the main reasons people watch it and a favorite character to boot. I think this fact is becoming increasingly clear to viewers, but what was not so clear is that she’s been stealing our hearts since the beginning of season one.
She was captivating when she so boldly came on to Ethan, her excitement and wonder at the theatre was absolutely child-like and delightful, her appreciation of the city on her first night out with Ethan could teach us all a lesson in gratitude, and when she tried to push Ethan away because of her own insecurities, she slayed us. These subtle scenes that didn’t seem to play too much of a part in the grand scheme of “Penny Dreadful’s” first season plot, were toying with our subconscious, preparing us for the second season and her return as Lily Frankenstein.

All this in addition to the fact that she channels a new take on Mary Shelley’s Monster. She is, as I’ve previously mentioned, a completely pure and charming version of the classic Monster. But she will also be (what I am completely assuming) a very feminist version, one that Shelley would be so proud of. Ives challenges the patriarchy all the time, it’s in her blood, she practically is the patriarchy. So it doesn’t make as much of an impact on the viewer. But Lily is learning things as a grown adult female that she wasn’t able to learn as she grew up, because she didn’t grow up, she popped into existence and now she has to figure out how to be a female in a dominant, patriarchal society. This is something viewers need right now, especially now. We look at Ives and think, “What a badass female! She is completely respected along with these men; they admire her, they need her. She’s such a great example for females!” And we’re not wrong… But with Lily, we will see the process. We will watch her transform and become the exact thing that we all want in modern day society. Watching that transformation, in my opinion, will be much more powerful than just seeing it already developed in Ives.

“Penny Dreadful” is a dark and dreary show without much to hope for (in the best way possible, it is horror after all). While the evil characters and the characters that sit somewhere between good and evil are absolutely necessary, there has to be a light. There has to be something to guide us through to the end. If not, we lose hope and the show starts to feel daunting. Brona was, and Lily is, that light.
Postscript: Not to mention, Lily is going to steal all of the men’s hearts and this is going to add such a sexy, lovely, and energizing element to the show!