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The ending of Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man left the franchise at something of a crossroads. With Tommy Shelby, the singular power behind both the series’ fictional gang and the show’s larger emotional narrative, dead for real this time, where would its story go next? What could be as compelling as what had already come before? And how would the show – already greenlit for two new seasons post Immortal Man — reorganize itself without the singular presence of its (now Oscar-winning) star, Cillian Murphy?
The answer is: around the family’s next generation. The new seasons will shift their focus to Tommy’s illegitimate firstborn son, Duke, though thanks to a fairly significant time jump, he’ll look a bit different than when we last saw him. Jamie Bell, probably best known for playing Abraham Woodhull on AMC’s Turn: Washington’s Spies, will take over the role from Barry Keoghan (who himself stepped in for Conrad Khan following Season 6) as the show moves into the 1950s, playing a Duke who is older, presumably wiser, and likely even more dangerous. (No pressure, though!)
To be fair, in the wake of the events depicted in The Immortal Man, there really only seemed to be one path the show could follow, and that was to focus on Tommy’s son. The film pretty much established Duke as both the new leader of the Peaky Blinders and the heir to Tommy’s gypsy title of “Rom baro” (a.k.a. king), and much of its plot revolved around repairing their relationship and putting Duke back at the center of the family he seems to have once rejected.
The two new seasons of the show will be set a bit over a decade after the events of The Immortal Man, in a Birmingham ablaze (figuratively) with the opportunities that post-war reconstruction represents. In the aftermath of the Blitz, there’s clearly plenty of money to be made and power to be grabbed by a group of enterprising young men wiling to break some rules along the way. Which, let’s face it, has always been the Shelby family’s mantra.
Given that most of the characters from the original generation of Peaky Blinders are now dead, the show will almost certainly have to introduce some new faces to help Duke in his ongoing quest for Birmingham domination. Netflix has also announced former Stranger Things star Charlie Heaton as something like a co-lead, but offered no real details as to who he might be playing. Could he be Tommy’s other son, Charles, returned from the war a different man than when he left? There would be something neatly symmetrical about two brothers leading the gang again, much as Tommy and Arthur once did so long ago.
Of course, there are plenty of other Shelby offspring left to help carry on the famly dynasty. Heaton could be playing any of Tommy’s siblings’ kids — there’s still something poetic about two Shelby cousins in charge, after all. Arthur’s son, Billy, Ada’s son, Karl, and any one of John’s seven kids could all be in the mix, though only Karl and his sister, Elizabeth, made an appearance in The Immortal Man.
But the secrecy surrounding Heaton’s character — the press release is not coy about revealing Bell is playing Duke — certainly offers a strong hint that a sibling rivalry between Tommy’s sons is the show’s most likely choice. This has always been a show about family after all, and what could more Shelby-centric than Tommy’s boys either building or battling for their future?
The post The Peaky Blinders Sequel Will Get a New Duke Shelby appeared first on Den of Geek.
