Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man Ending Explained: What Happened to Tommy Shelby in the Last Chapter of His Iconic Story?
Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man acts as the closing of Tommy Shelby’s story, showing him in his final stage, isolated and carrying all the sins of his past. As Europe approaches World War II, a new threat emerges: an operation to destroy the British economy using counterfeit money, promoted by Nazi allies. In the middle of that conflict, Duke, Tommy’s secret son, appears, ready to rise quickly into the criminal world. BEWARE, SPOILER ALERT. Even though World War II is tearing Europe apart and fascism is gaining more and more ground, Tommy Shelby (Cillian Murphy) refuses to return in Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man. The deaths of his loved ones are still not tormenting and there seems to be almost nothing left of the man he once was. However, another painful loss forces him to return from his self-imposed exile to save his family and his country. What’s up with Tommy Shelby? Is it really the end of your story?
The Netflix sequel film, directed by Tom Harper and written by Steven Knight, begins with the prisoners of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp working on counterfeit money with which the Nazis intend to collapse the British economy. The operation is in charge of Agent Beckett (Tim Roth). In addition, the bombing of the Birmingham factories is shown. After the devastation, a new generation of Peaky Blinders, led by Erasmus ‘Duke’ Shelby (Barry Keoghan), shows up to steal ammunition from bombed factories. When someone tries to stop them, they beat them and threaten to do the same to the families of those who intervene. Although he is shown to be a ruthless man, Duke resists his father’s presence. Something that Beckett takes advantage of for his plans.
Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man Ending Explained: Who Dies at the End?
The Nazi, enraged, takes his car ready to flee. If he makes it out alive, maybe he can make a new plan that will help Hitler in the war. But Tommy wasn’t going to allow it. Although the protagonist has the option of letting him go or taking cover, he chooses to face the car, which is heading towards him at full speed. In the middle of the shooting line, Beckett shoots him twice, hitting him in the torso and leaving him badly injured. But the strength of Shelby is out of this world, and she manages to stay standing while finishing, aiming accurately. At the last moment, Tommy pulls the trigger and kills the villain with a well-aimed shot to the head. Thus, he has finally avenged his sister Ada.
The bad guy, Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man, dies instantly, but the car doesn’t stop. At that moment, unable to move due to pain, Tommy accept your destiny. Close your eyes, open your arms, and wait patiently for the vehicle to hit you and run over you. But before this happens, Duke comes to the rescue. His son pounces on him and saves him from the impact. Already on the ground, what the young man discovers is that his father will not get out of this.
With his last breath, Tommy begs Duke to let him kill him. Minutes before, Kaulo, the aunt of Duke, promised peace to Tommy, and he granted Duke a bullet with his father’s name on it. The final plan of Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man was for the new Gypsy King to kill his predecessor. Something that his own Tommy knew and that, finally at peace with himself and his past, he accepts. That’s why he asks Duke to let him do it.
Through tears, Duke pulls your trigger. And, with this powerful scene, Tommy Shelby dies at the end of Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man in the arms of his son. A poetic outcome in which it is shown that only the blood of Tommy Shelby can kill Tommy Shelby, as had already been made clear in the series. The last sequence of the film shows a classic gypsy funeral for the protagonist, who says goodbye to the spectators forever, to the rhythm of Hunting the Wren from the Irish group Lankum.
Who Stayed With the Peaky Blinders in Tommy’s Absence?
With Tommy out of the game, it is Duke Shelby, interpreted by Barry Keoghan, who becomes the new king. Duke is Tommy’s son, but he has a very different style from his father and leads the Peaky Blinders down an even more dangerous path, which creates a lot of problems and eventually causes his father’s return. Tommy decides to return after learning that his son agrees to be part of a plan to help Germany win the war, after being contacted by Beckett (Tim Roth), who is working for the Nazis, who want to destroy the British economy and destabilize the country.
In addition, the Nazis bomb England and Birmingham, the Peaky Blinders’ playground becomes a desolate setting, where Duke and his new generation of criminals do their thing and seek to profit. Part of what makes Duke so ruthless is that he feels like no one cares, especially his father (his mother died years ago), so he decides to react with violence and brutality. Ada, Tommy’s sister, who is now working in Parliament, is worried, and that leads her to look for her brother and ask him to come back.
Who is Kaulo?
Kualo, the character of Rebecca Ferguson, is one of the new characters in this story, and he’s really important. Kaulo is the sister of Zelda, the gypsy woman with whom Tommy had a relationship, from whom Duke was born. Additionally, Kaulo can read the future and claims that he can talk to the dead, and this is what allows him to “influence” other people, including Tommy. She is one of the few people who manages to get close to Tommy and penetrate the walls he has built around him, and also helps convince him to return to the kingdom he abandoned so long ago. Furthermore, she also helps bring to light that Tommy’s brother Arthur did not die the way everyone thought, but that it was Tommy himself who killed him, and that is something that consumes him.
What About Tommy Shelby at the End of Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man?
By the start of the film, Tommy is relatively alone, but he is also surrounded by the people he lost along the way (like his daughter). He is clearly full of pain and regret for the decisions he made in the past, but he is convinced that this is where he needs to be.
Eventually, Tommy returns from exile to try to save his son, who also accepted the plan to kill Ada, which is becoming a big problem for Beckett. Duke regrets it and doesn’t kill his aunt, but Beckett shows up and shoots him. With this, things become even more painful for Tommy, who was also unable to save his sister.
After learning of Ada’s death, Tommy decides to take action and search for his son. Tommy and Duke meet, but it is not a happy reunion; it is a kind of battle between the old and new leaders of the Peaky Blinders, where Tommy proves that he is still a powerful man and gets his son to tell him about the plan. of Beckett and his fight to give the Germans an advantage.
After saying goodbye to his dead sister, Tommy confesses that he wishes he were dead and finally accepts that he killed Arthur, and promises Ada that he will try to make something good come out of all that pain and violence.
In the end, Tommy and Duke decide to work together, and Tommy calls on all the allies he can to try to stop Beckett and prevent him from achieving his plan to introduce a shipment of counterfeit money. To do this, Tommy intends to enter Beckett’s warehouse and blow it up, while Duke tries to convince him that he is still on his side so that he does not discover his plan.
The plan is carried out, but Beckett manages to escape, so it is Tommy who tries to stop him and shoots him dead. But in the process, Tommy is also shot. This time, there is no chance of survival, so he asks his son to finish him off right there. Shelby had survived many assassination attempts up to this point, so it’s poetic that it’s her own son who eventually kills him, but at a time that finally allows her to have that peace she was looking for. Tommy is fired with a funeral worthy of the king he was in the past. Duke is present at that moment, which represents a new era and a new opportunity for him to take his father’s place, but this time in a better way.
What Happened to Ada?
Family continues to be important to the Shelbys, so Duke is unable to murder his aunt. In fact, she tries to warn him that Beckett is after her. However, it is too late, and the Nazi agent murders Tommy’s sister, who soon after sees her sister as a ghost. When he confirms Ada’s death, he confronts his son about his involvement. After the confrontation in the pig pen, Duke explains that he had nothing to do with Ada’s death and accuses Beckett. He also shares the plan of the Nazi agent, who is waiting for Tommy to assassinate him. A fierce shootout ensues, but the protagonist of “Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man” survives.
What Happened to Tommy Shelby and Duke?
The Peaky Blinders need to stop Beckett, so Tommy summons Johnny Dogs, Curly (Ian Peck), Charlie Strong (Ned Dennehy), and even Hayden Stagg (Stephen Graham). Duke is in charge of deceiving the Nazi about his father’s plan so that he can destroy the fascist regime’s shipment with barges loaded with explosives, and Tommy manages to enter the warehouse through an abandoned tunnel.
After losing the counterfeit bills, Beckett tries to escape, but Tommy stops him. Although he is shot twice in the abdomen, he eliminates Beckett with a shot to the head. The iconic leader of the Peaky Blinders is ready to surrender to death. He expects to be hit by a speeding vehicle, but Duke saves him.
What Really Was the Role of Kaulo, the Gypsy Medium?
I’m still not entirely clear about his role in the story, beyond convincing Tommy to return to Birmingham (maybe that’s enough). We never get to meet Duke’s mother in the original series, so Kaulo appears as his identical twin sister to make Tommy see that Duke needs to be saved from himself… and that he is the only man with the power to do so.
The problem is that Tommy needs more than just a warning to convince himself. And the only person capable of doing it would be Duke’s mother. Only she’s dead. But Kaulo proposes a solution: for Tommy to communicate with his former lover from beyond through a rather peculiar ritual, maintaining relations with his twin sister, alive, at that very moment.
It is a deliberately absurd idea, vaguely reminiscent of the parody scene with puppets Team America: The police of the world, when Lisa tells Gary that she will make love to him if he promises that he will never die… to which he responds, with complete emphasis: “I promise”. Overall, the scene conveys a clear feeling of “sexposition”, with a certain air of external imposition: we need a sex scene, Steven; It doesn’t matter where, but put it in, no matter what!
Tommy’s Ending Reflected His Beginning?
Everything about the tunnel —the collapse of the passage, the flashbacks to Flanders, the explosives— works as a clear nod to Tommy’s origin. A constant theme throughout Peaky Blinders is his past as a sapper in the trenches of the First World War. It was one of the scariest works within an already creepy context, and the source of the nightmares that have pushed Tommy into darkness since the first episode.
The Symbolism of the White Horse and the Black Horse?
The same goes for the horse. At the end of season six, the last time we saw Tommy, he walked away towards the horizon riding a pristine white horse, an almost perfect closing moment that symbolized his transition to something better. Therefore, when in the film he returns to Birmingham on the back of a black horse, like a biblical rider from the Apocalypse, the image is reversed: the dark Tommy has returned, and he comes in search of a settling of scores.
The symbolism of the horse is maintained until the end, when Tommy dies in Duke’s arms. “I’m a horse”, he gasps. “Shoot me”.
Beckett Received the Bond-Style Villainous Death He Deserved?
In several aspects, The Immortal Man has features typical of a James Bond movie. At times, it seemed almost like a rehearsal for the possible and most lucrative script that Steven Knight could co-write for the next one bond movie with Denis Villeneuve. Both the beginning and the end have a special “Bondian” air: from the tormented loner sheltered in a ruined mansion to the explosive outcome. And of course, there’s the evil mastermind with a perfidious plan and the mysterious beauty that alternates between helping and tempting our hero (see above).
In fact, the fortune teller Kaulo got it right in exactly half of her premonition: Tommy kills Beckett by shooting him through the windshield of his car at full speed inside the warehouse. Beckett responds by wounding Tommy before crashing into an iron column and bursting into flames.
Tommy Dies at the Hands of the Only Person Who Could Really Kill Him?
Beckett was able to run him over and shoot him in the abdomen, but that wasn’t enough to finish him off. This is key, because although countless villains have tried to bury Tommy, they have all failed. In the end, it falls to the only person truly capable of putting an end to it: his own son. If this is enough for Nietzsche, it is also enough for Knight. As in the eternal struggle between generations that Nietzsche described, where the son must one day dethrone his father, Tommy finds his end at the hand of his own blood: his heir and executioner.
And Arthur?
He was one of the most beloved characters of Peaky Blinders. But after a series of highly publicized personal problems with actor Paul Anderson, Tommy’s brother and right-hand man had to be eliminated from the story. At first, we are told that Arthur committed suicide. But then Tommy reveals that he actually killed him himself, in a fog of “alcohol and rage”. That’s all the explanation we get, other than a brief flashback of the murder in a rain-soaked car, carefully shot so we never see the face of the actor who played Arthur’s double.
