Picture Credit: Netflxi
In one of the final scenes from the 6-season run of Peaky Blinders, Thomas Shelby toasts what remains of his loyal friends and family by saying: “To Family. Sometimes, it is shelter from the storm. Sometimes, it is the storm itself.”
That has always held true for Thomas. In many ways, his family was the only thing holding him together following the horrors of wartime France, giving him purpose, guidance, & a reason to live in a drug, booze, and rage-filled period. But, he could also be the cursed one of the family, the devil on the shoulder, & the one putting his loved ones in danger by making one move too many. Further still, we’ve also seen his own family try to take him out.
When the series faded to black, Thomas was in the wind. A caravan meant to be his final resting place was on fire. He had been saved from taking his own life by the spirit of his departed daughter Ruby. We don’t know what he’ll do or where he’ll go. We just know he’s alive.
With Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man, we join Thomas in self-imposed exile, living his days alongside Johnny Dogs in a house as beaten & withered as the remainder of his soul. No family aside from the ones that he sees in whispers on the property or the ones that are buried on the grounds. He’s not a ghost himself, but he may as well be. He doesn’t leave, he never has guests; yet, he still hasn’t found peace from his past.
The film brings us back to Birmingham several years after the end of “Blinders”. With Thomas away, his bastard gypsy son Duke (played by Oscar nominee Barry Keoghan) has taken over the Peaky Blinders, running roughshod over the city with a reckless abandon far worse than that of his father & uncles. He operates without morality or mercy as a man with no loyalties. He lives in his father’s shadow even without him around.
Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man. (L to R) Cillian Murphy as Tommy, Rebecca Ferguson as Kaulo in Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man. Cr. Robert Viglasky/Netflix © 2026.
Set in 1940, Duke and the Blinders run their business in a climate of disarray & despair. Birmingham has been bombed and ravaged in a new wartime era as England is trying desperately to hold off Germany in the time of fascism. Worse yet, the Germans have devised a plan to implode the British economy by flooding the streets with millions in counterfeit money. They will need to enlist the most powerful & most corrupt street level men to push this money out into the hands of the British people; people like Duke Shelby.
When a German operative (played by another Oscar nominee in Tim Roth) approaches Duke with the deal of a lifetime, the young Shelby finds himself putting the remainder of his family in the crosshairs and his nation on the brink of collapse; something that may bring the mythical figure of Thomas Shelby back to the streets he once ruled.
The Immortal Man functions as the only thing we never got from the 6 seasons of the original series: closure. It serves as a way to show what Tommy would be like if he didn’t have Pol or Arthur or Grace in his life; what a Shelby without guardrails would do without them and how far they would fall. It’s a Shakespearean dynamic with bittersweet tragedy on the horizon; delivered with a level of brutality, mysticism, & redemption that could only be expected from the pen of Steven Knight.
Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man. Barry Keoghan as Duke in Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man. Cr. Robert Viglasky/Netflix © 2026.
The focus may be on Tommy & Duke, but the conscience & moral compass of Ada is actually the catalyst for everything because of course it is. While many figured the only thing to kill Tommy Shelby is Tommy Shelby himself, the series consistently showed the one thing that could reason & guide Tommy Shelby is a strong willed woman. Unfortunately, Duke learns the hard way that he should heed the same counsel.
For Tommy himself, the fans of the show are treated to a far truer & far more sentimental ending of his story. The series and this new film speak of peace; a peace Tommy gives the Doctor who betrayed him at the 11th hour, the peace Duke’s gypsy aunt (played by the always spellbinding Rebecca Ferguson) tells Tommy she can give him after saving his son. Thomas Shelby wants to be freed from the guilt, the blood on his hands, the curses upon his family, the burdens of his patriarchal position, & the horrors he can’t shake.
In the end, the decorated soldier returns to his former glory. The tactical genius outwits his enemy and brings peace to himself, his family, and his home. He makes good on the promise of “From this bad will come some good” that he made on his family’s death bed because Thomas Shelby knows what made him feel immortal: “But throughout it all, I had my family.”
The Immortal Man may not entirely live up to the heights that Peaky Blinders soared to at its peak, but, in a way, it’s not supposed to. It’s a reminder that Thomas Shelby achieved what he could because he had a family to back his play, set him straight, and give him something to live for. This movie gives him redemption; a taste of what he was before the war and a glimpse of what he could have been as a father if he wasn’t destroyed by the war.
Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man. (L to R) Cillian Murphy as Tommy, Barry Keoghan as Duke in Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man. Cr. Robert Viglasky/Netflix © 2026.
Watch Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man If You Like
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- House of Guinness
- A Thousand Blows
- El Camino
- The Many Saints of Newark
MVP of Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man
Cillian Murphy as Thomas Shelby
Of course he is. He’s Thomas f-ckin Shelby.
Oscar winner Cillian Murphy has been hailed for many attributes over his long, celebrated career: his striking facial features, his piercing blue eyes, his calm yet seductive nature, his strong intellect as a son of two educators, and his artistic soul. But rarely does Murphy garner a role that encompasses so many of these attributes at once and, in Thomas Shelby, he does.
The intensity, the tenderness that lies beneath, the chess master, the architect, the tortured genius, the patriarch … All of this fits in the wheelhouse of Murphy, who performs with command & burden simultaneously better than the majority of his peers.
Ironically, in The Immortal Man, Murphy gets his Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne in The Dark Knight Rises story arc in many ways: a man removed by his own design from the society he once ruled, haunted by what he couldn’t accomplish in his prime, and thrust back into his fabled hero life to save his community from extinction. Even after 4 years away, Murphy slides back into Tommy Shelby flawlessly with the same brooding passion and presence that he had over 6 exceptional seasons.
If you’re a fan of the show, I encourage you to see this fitting ode to Thomas Shelby … by order of the Peaky Blinders.
