Peaky Blinders Series Return Raises the Stakes for Tommy Shelby in The Immortal Man

Fans of the popular gangland historical drama Peaky Blinders already had plenty of reason to celebrate with the impending release of The Immortal Man, a feature film follow-up to the original television series that will see (now Oscar-winner) Cillian Murphy reprise his role as Tommy Shelby, one of Peak TV’s most enduring and admittedly awesome anti-heroes. But while this movie will likely be Murphy’s last hurrah in the role that helped make him famous, it certainly won’t be our last ride with the Shelby clan. 

To be honest, the news that Peaky Blinders is officially coming back — for two new seasons, no less! – isn’t all that surprising. Creator Steven Knight has been fairly vocal about his extensive long-range hopes for this franchise, from his initial plans for a feature-film coda to the original series to his insistence that The Immortal Man wouldn’t be the end of the Shelby family’s story. But it is extremely exciting, if only because the promise of a focus on a “new generation of Shelbys” means the show will finally be forced to move beyond Tommy, a character who has cast a long and defining shadow over the larger series.

Peaky Blinders (the TV show) ended with a bittersweet twist as Tommy faked his own death, disappearing over the horizon on a white horse after having thoroughly dismantled the life he sacrificed everything to build. Your mileage may vary on whether we really needed to see more of Tommy’s story past this point—after all, he’s not a character who’s particularly likely to get a happily ever after, is he? But now that it seems as though The Immortal Man will likely serve as a sort of bridge between the old world of Peaky Blinders and the new, the film at least feels more purposeful. 

The Immortal Man will reportedly follow the Shelbys through the events of World War II. The new season of the television series will subsequently pick up in the early 1950s as Birmingham struggles to dig itself out from under the wreckage of the Blitz, and a new generation of the family steps forward to take advantage of the opportunities inherent in the city’s reconstruction. 

The question everyone is likely thinking about, however, is which characters the new seasons of the show will focus on. And, to be fair, the answer to that may well depend on events we’ve yet to see unfold in the film. Tommy’s illegitimate son, Duke —whose existence was only revealed in season 6— will likely play a key role there, as his feud with Finn was one of the finale’s major unresolved plot threads. But the time-jump to 1953 means that the new Peaky Blinders seasons will be able to leapfrog past the immediate aftermath of the war. This will still leave some room to explore whatever story is left over from The Immortal Man and feature cameos from OG stars. But it also presents an opportunity for a fresh start. After all, Tommy and his siblings, Arthur, John, and Ada, all had children who would be adults (or close to it) by the 1950s and undoubtedly would have been raised in the (oftentimes violent) family way. 

Either way, the prospect of getting to see more of the Shelbys’ story — both including and beyond Tommy — is a thrilling one, and it will be particularly interesting to see how one of the past decade’s most iconic period dramas reinvents itself for a new era (and audience).