Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man Ending Explained: Who Lives, Who Dies, and What’s Next for the Shelby Family

The following contains major spoilers for Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man

For better (and sometimes worse), Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man is a much more definitive ending to the decade-long saga of the Shelby clan than the final episode of the television series that preceded the film. A cinematic, often literally explosive conclusion featuring a tour de force performance from star Cillian Murphy, the film is one part fan service, one part action drama, and one part emotional coda that ties up many of the outstanding relationships and arcs from the TV show. 

The sixth and final season of Peaky Blinders saw Murphy’s Tommy Shelby fake his own death, literally riding off on a white horse to a future of his own choosing. But if The Immortal Man teaches us anything, it’s that you can’t escape who you are. This film is Tommy’s reckoning with a lifetime of violence, trauma, and loss, a story that is haunted by ghosts both literal and figurative. Drawn out of self-imposed isolation to rein in his illegitimate son, Duke, who is now running the family gang in service of his own ends, Tommy must face down his own failures as a father and work to stop a dangerous Nazi plot to spread counterfeit currency across the U.K. 

Here’s a rundown of the major moments from Peaky Blinders’ big screen debut, including who’s left standing when the dust settles and what it might all mean for that spin-off series Steven Knight’s working on.

A Definitive End for Tommy Shelby

Maybe it was always too much to hope that Tommy Shelby was ever going to make it out of The Immortal Man alive. If his obsession with “In the Bleak Midwinter” has taught us anything, it’s that even he believed he was always only ever on borrowed time. And in this film, the clock finally runs out, and Tommy breathes his last. But his death is probably not one any of us expected. 

Tommy ultimately succeeds in his revenge quest, thwarting a Nazi plot, killing the man who murdered his sister, and just generally saving the day. (Or, at least, the war effort.) He even faces down the trenches that have haunted him for most of his life, heading into the abandoned tunnels under Liverpool’s docks in the same claykicker-style outfit he would have worn in the war to take out the Nazis’ counterfeit stash. But he is badly wounded in the process, and ends up begging Duke for mercy, insisting that his son kill him quickly rather than allow him to suffer from his wounds. 

“You’d do it for a horse,” Tommy tells him, which is surely in no way traumatizing for a kid who’s already suffering from some serious daddy issues. But Duke steps up and grants his father’s wish, shooting him in the chest,  holding him as he dies, and essentially cementing his new position as both the leader of the Peaky Blinders and the Gypsy king known as the “Rom Baro”. It’s a surprisingly moving moment, given that the two men were wrestling in literal pig shit earlier in the film.

Longtime fans may wonder how this squares with Aunt Polly’s frequent prediction that it would never be a bullet that ended Tommy Shelby’s life, but, then again, this movie also pretty much ignored Tommy faking his own death at the end of Season 6, so there are certainly bigger fish to fry when it comes to potential plot holes. (And, again, it’s hard to imagine any true ending to this story that didn’t include his death in some form or other, so it’s poetic, if nothing else.)

The Secret Behind Arthur’s Death

One of the earliest revelations in The Immortal Man is that Tommy’s older brother is dead, having passed away at some point in the six-year gap between the movie and the TV series. This news probably isn’t all that shocking, given that it’s almost a miracle the troubled eldest Shelby survived this long, given his struggles with drink and a variety of mental health issues. That someone killed him isn’t all that shocking. But his death seems to have unmoored Tommy, who spends hours of his self-imposed isolation talking to Arthur’s grave.

The reason for this becomes clear about halfway through the film, when we learn that Arthur’s death wasn’t a suicide, as the story initially implies, but a murder, and his death ultimately came at Tommy’s hands. Your mileage will likely vary when it comes to whether you think Tommy could ever truly lose control enough to harm the brother that meant so much to him, simply for what sounds like getting on his nerves. But no matter the reason it happened, it’s clear that Tommy deeply regrets what he’s done, so much so that he can barely talk about it (and only manages to confess to another family member’s dead body).

Ada Is Murdered

By the time Tommy dies in the film’s closing moments, he’s essentially the last of his kind. The lone surviving Shelby adult from the original series, he’s managed to outlive almost all of his siblings, most of his friends, and the aunt who had long been his emotional rock. (To be fair, it’s not entirely clear what’s become of the youngest Shelby sibling, Finn, who was essentially excommunicated from the family during the TV series after a traumatic betrayal. But it wasn’t like he was living a particularly safe life, either!)

But it is Ada’s death that lands the hardest (and may well be the most unnecessary). The only female Shelby sibling, she’s always been the family’s moral center, as well as one of the few people capable of going toe-to-toe with Tommy and coming out on top. By the time of The Immortal Man, she’s become a politician in her brother’s place and holds the same seat in Parliament that he once did. None of this is enough to protect her, and she’s brutally gunned down in the street by fascist sympathizer John Beckett, who is acting on information Duke provided.

Her death is the motivating force that kicks the back half of the film into motion, and, quite honestly, edges dangerously close to fridging. It is Ada’s murder that makes Tommy’s battle against Beckett personal, motivates Duke to reevaluate his own behavior, and ultimately gets the erstwhile father-son duo to join forces to bring down Beckett and his counterfeit plot.

Duke Shelby Inherits His Father’s Criminal Empire

Given that Duke was pretty much already running the Peaky Blinders, this twist isn’t all that surprising. When the film begins, Duke is selfish and amoral, using the gang to steal weapons meant for the troops and the front and morphine from local hospitals. After Ada’s murder, Duke joins forces with his father to bring her killer to justice and takes tentative steps towards repairing their fractured relationship in the process. Unfortunately, for them both, Tommy is mortally wounded by Beckett and begs his son for release. Duke, despite insisting he could never kill his own kin, respects his father’s wishes and, in doing so, becomes the leader he always wanted to be. 

Duke not only takes over his father’s gang but also inherits the title of “Rom baro” among the gypsies, which establishes him as a sort of king and protector over their people.

That Nazi Plot Was Real

Though the idea that the Nazis were plotting to turn the tide of the war by flooding the British economy with fake money certainly sounds far-fetched, it’s actually a true story. Called Operation Bernhard, the scheme involved forging British banknotes and airdropping them across the country in the hopes that they would flood and crater the U.K. economy. And, shockingly enough, the project managed to successfully duplicate the rag paper used to create the currency, fashioned near-identical engraving blocks, and figure out the algorithmic code that came up with the serial numbers used on each bill. Fortunately for everyone, the project was shuttered in 1942 when its creator fell out of favor with the German government.

It was later revived, with the new aim of using counterfeit cash to pay spies, buy supplies, and generally finance the German intelligence operation. Estimates of how much money was actually printed range from £132.6 million up to £300 million.

Which Peaky Blinders Characters Are Still Alive?

Duke is not only still alive, but seems poised to graduate into the franchise’s next main character, now that he’s essentially taken over his father’s role in both the Peaky Blinders and among the gypsies who have long revered the family. 

As for everyone else, several of the Peaky Blinders old timers make it through The Immortal Man, including Johnny Dogs, Curly, Charlie, and Stagg. Duke’s mysterious aunt Kaulo also survives, along with Ada’s children Karl and Elizabeth, and Tommy’s second son Charlie, though it seems as though the kids will have limited roles in the gang’s world going forward.

What’s Next for Peaky Blinders?

Creator Steven Knight has long insisted that The Immortal Man wouldn’t be the end of the Shelby family’s story. The BBC has already greenlit two additional seasons of the TV series, which will catapult the clan into the 1950s, some thirteen years or so after Tommy’s death.

While it’s unclear if this series will still be called Peaky Blinders or something else, the sequel series will reportedly be set in the early 1950s and follow a new generation of the family as they step forward to take advantage of the opportunities inherent in Birmingham’s reconstruction after the Blitz. No casting announcements have yet been made, but speculation is already rampant about which characters the series might follow. (Which is, admittedly, a smaller pool post-The Immortal Man than many of us might have initially guessed.)

Obviously, Duke is the most likely character to lead the continuation, and The Immortal Man goes a long way to place him at the center of the family’s future. He already even has his own Polly Gray in the form of Rebecca Ferguson’s Kaulo, and has been running a version of the gang full of much younger members for what appears to be some time during his father’s absence. 

Whether Barry Keoghan could be convinced to reprise the role is another open question, but since the sequel series is set over a decade in the future, it would certainly be easy enough to recast Duke, who would be well into middle age at this point in the story. (Keoghan took over from original Duke Conrad Khan, after all.) And, who knows, maybe this is how we’ll finally discover what actually happened to Finn!