A Final Date with Tommy Shelby

Thomas Shelby in a suit. He faces the camera but looks just to the side of it. The room is shadowy, but for bars of light streaming through the blinds, and the yellow glow of a lamp.

Image from Wikimedia Commons.

I remember our first date. I started watching Peaky Blinders because, in addition to the dark, atmospheric setting, the opening credits uses the song Red Right Hand by my favorite band, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. I watched until the third episode before I stopped. Something about Thomas and the gang was not resonating.

Years later, after recommendations from several people, I gave the show another go. I overlooked our rocky start, and by the end of the first season, I was hooked. I spent the next handful of seasons watching an antihero commit exceedingly unredeemable acts. By the beginning of the final season, he seemed like the devil that many characters referred to him as.

Without tipping my newsboy hat to spoilers, Thomas performs a number of horrible deeds that could make viewers lose interest in ever rooting for him again. It’s the show’s phenomenal writing that saves him, becoming a magnificent study in how to create and maintain a compelling antihero. Despite all of Thomas’s evil actions, characters more ruthless than him always rise to stand in his way. His only means of overcoming them—of protecting the family and livelihood he gained from his successes—is to become something stronger and meaner and worse. This is the show’s cycle, how it constantly raises the stakes to make viewers understand Thomas’s actions, regardless of if they agree with him. The final season hits a tipping point, and you wonder if Thomas has become that unredeemable devil, or if there is hope for change.

Despite their moralistic flaws, I’m glad I gave Tommy and the Peaky Blinders another chance. I enjoyed our relationship, and we ended on good terms. I’ll miss them.

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