WARNING! Contains SPOILERS for Peaky Blinders season 6, episode 5.
Peaky Blinders season 6 episode 5 saw Tommy Shelby (Cillian Murphy) finally admit to a sad fact that Alfie Solomons (Tom Hardy) predicted as early as Peaky Blinders season 3. The globally-acclaimed BBC show is coming close to a wrap-up, with season 6 concluding the TV run before a feature-length Peaky Blinders movie concludes the story. The end seems to be around the corner for Tommy, as he has been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tuberculoma. But there’s a darker side to Tommy’s ending: it took him a long time, but he finally admitted he is a murderous villain like all his enemies.
In the Peaky Blinders season 3 finale, Tommy confronts Alfie for betraying him and indirectly causing his son’s kidnapping. Alfie gets enraged at Tommy for saying that he crossed a line, retorting: “How many fathers, right, how many sons, yeah, have you cut, killed, murdered, f*cking butchered, innocent and guilty, to send straight to f*cking Hell, ain’t ya? Just like me! You f*cking stand there, you, judging me, stand there and talk to me about crossing some f*cking line.” Alfie Solomons (who has great spin-off potential) reveals something Tommy doesn’t want to accept: that Tommy is fundamentally a criminal who will do whatever it takes to get what he wants, just like Alfie, and just like all the enemies that Tommy despises.
Peaky Blinders season 6 episode 5 sees Tommy finally come to terms with this realization in front of fascists Oswald Mosley (Sam Claflin), Diana Mitford (Amber Anderson), and Jack Nelson (James Frecheville). Mosley and Mitford try to humiliate Lizzie (Natasha O’Keeffe) out of her marriage to Tommy, revealing that Tommy slept with Diana as “the English aristocracy’s way of shaking hands” over a deal. Then Mosley insists that Lizzie is not suited to be Tommy’s spouse. Tommy agrees, albeit with a dark twist: Lizzie doesn’t deserve what he is, because, he says, “The truth is, I belong here, at this table, with f*ckers like you.” This is Tommy’s darkest truth: his rise in power has been a means of feeding his evil vice (by amplifying his power), not a means to escape it. Alfie knew it early on, but Tommy has only accepted it now, on the brink of his unavoidable death.
It seems like Tommy’s diagnosis is the element that made him ultimately come to terms with his villain status. In the same Peaky Blinders episode “Road to Hell,” Tommy tells Hayden Stagg (Stephen Graham) what has kept him in the game for so long when he could have quit anytime. It’s his power over life and death, his addiction to criminal power is so strong (“junk doesn’t even come close”), Tommy doesn’t want to “get out.” Throughout the series, Tommy promises those around him (and himself) that he will complete one last deal, then stop. But deep down, Tommy doesn’t want to stop: much like Breaking Bad‘s Walter White, he’s addicted to the power game.
Tommy sleeping with Diana for a business deal in Peaky Blinders season 6 episode 5 confirmed to Tommy that Alfie was right. He confesses to the fascist crowd: “For all I try to hide it, I’m just one of you. Could there be a sadder ending, eh?” It’s a dark ending to the episode, and to Tommy’s story. He hasn’t been carrying out his criminal schemes as a means to a good end, or to escape people like his enemies. He belongs with them, in the “wicked world” that Alfie Solomons urged him to embrace, the world he is addicted to.
The Peaky Blinders season 6 finale will air at 9 PM GMT on BBC One.
