When Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man was released, the phrase “money to burn” was given a whole new meaning. And one that was ripe with irony when considering that, throughout the entirety of Peaky Blinders, Thomas “Tommy” Shelby (Cillian Murphy) makes it his mission to become as powerful as possible both in the underworlds and upper-crust society of Birmingham and beyond.
To do that, the acquisition of money is as much his superpower as his ability to repress and suppress all the trauma he incurred while fighting in World War I (that is, until it starts manifesting in some unexpected physical ways). Indeed, when the viewer is first introduced to Tommy and his Peaky Blinders (based on a real-life street gang from this era in Birmingham), it’s right after the war has ended. And yet, for Tommy and his older brother, Arthur (Paul Anderson), it’s as if the war never stopped as a result of how they run Peaky Blinders. Almost as if they’re the commanders of a motley group of mercenaries. Which, yes, they kind of are. And this includes their younger brother, John (Joe Cole), and their aunt, Polly a.k.a. Elizabeth Gray (Helen McCrory). It’s the latter that Tommy tends to lean on the most (or at least that’s how it’s positioned in the first episode of season six, when a major plot point occurs to remind Tommy of just that). If for no other reason than, well, she tends to be the shrewdest/most intelligent of the bunch.
Besides that, Polly bears the gift (or curse, if you ask her) of second sight, which makes her prone to having, let’s say, a few “prophecies” on hand now and again. Most notably, her oft-echoed warning to Tommy, “There will be a war in this family, and one of you will die, but which one I cannot tell.” That “one of you” referring to either Tommy or her son, Michael (Finn Cole), who reenters the Shelby brood at the end of the second episode in season two. And, although at first, he seems keen to make himself into Tommy’s righthand man, by the time season four rolls around, it’s apparent he would have no trouble betraying Tommy if it meant he was out of the way, thereby making room for a new “king” to ascend to the Peaky Blinders throne.
But there is one key difference between these two warring family members (apart from Tommy being the cleverer of them). And that is Tommy’s motives for wanting to become rich and powerful are deep-seated, stemming from a childhood spent in abject poverty while roaming from hillside to hillside like the Gypsy he is. It was the kind of deprivation that led him to spend the entirety of his mom’s wages, when he was once (and never again) entrusted with them as a child, on a coconut and a top hat. Profligate and nonsensical items that, as Tommy tells communist leader Jessie Eden (Charlie Murphy), he thought his family deserved. Regardless of the blowback he got from making those purchases, it seemed, from that moment forward, Tommy’s resolve to be the breadwinner, to provide—by any means necessary—for his family took hold in ways that even he couldn’t foresee.
During the pilot episode of the series, there’s a scene where Jeremiah (Benjamin Zephaniah)—before anyone knows who Jeremiah is—can be heard shouting, “God does not care if you live in a slum or in a mansion. God does not care if you are rich or you are poor.” But, of course, it would be a challenge for the denizens of Small Heath to believe that when they see the way the world around them functions. The rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer. So even if “God” doesn’t care about your socioeconomic class, it doesn’t do much to alleviate the pain those without money feel on a constant basis, long before they ever make it to “heaven.” Or, in Tommy and co.’s cases, hell.
Yet for as “evil” as Tommy is made out to be by those both on the inside and outside of his enterprise(s), he’s one of those complex characters (à la Don Draper or Walter White) who doesn’t fit so neatly into a “purely evil” or “purely good” category. In one facet of his life, the good he does is quickly offset by the bad he does in another—and vice versa. At the same time, since most of the “good” he does boils down to meting out cash to his various family members, it’s ultimately “bad” for two reasons: 1) he’s perpetuating the vicious cycle of capitalism’s chokehold and 2) he’s using money to control the people around him; to manipulate and keep them on a tight leash. Even though that doesn’t always result in the kind of loyalty he would like (e.g., Michael).
This, too, is why, over time, even Tommy can’t see himself as anything other than a cash cow. A self-perception crystallized by the final episode of season six, “Lock and Key.” In it, Arthur discovers the medical death sentence Tommy has been hiding from everyone. When Arthur confronts him about it, Tommy is blasé about his imminent demise, boiling it all down to ensuring his financial value will endure even after he’s gone. As he assures Arthur, “When everyone is taken care of financially, I’ll take myself away. On me own.” He then adds, “That will be my legacy. Instead of me, there will be money. Because for most of the people who are close to me, that is what I am. Fucking money. That is my agency.”
Having realized this about himself as the series comes to a close, by the time the Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man takes place (six years later in 1940), Tommy apparently has an epiphany—whether that’s what he would call it or not—about money. De facto, capitalism. And even though the bank notes are counterfeit (part of the elaborate Nazi tactic known as Operation Bernhard, designed to “flood the [British] banking system, crash the economy and win the war for Germany”), the symbolism of Tommy, of all people, being the one to detonate hundreds of millions of pounds shouldn’t be lost on the devoted Peaky Blinders viewer.
What’s more, it was as if, after all those years of flirting with both fascism and communism, Tommy decided to do the most anarchic thing of all by blowing up what means most to all forms of government. Something Tommy foreshadowed earlier on in the film when he tells Ada (Sophie Rundle), “I no longer believe in government of any kind.” And what better way to prove as much by obliterating stacks upon stacks of cash? The value of which, regardless of being fake, would have proven quite real to the many that would have been affected by its distribution.
Thus, for Tommy to climb from Gypsy “guttersnipe” to Birmingham gangster running the entire town to OBE to MP—all in his bid for more power, money and, resultantly, clout—only to end up making this his grand final act is nothing if not chef’s kiss-level poetry. Of a sort that makes the existence of Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man only too, that’s right, valuable (for, contrary to capitalist belief, not everything that’s valuable is related to money). Even for those who can’t quite grasp its importance to the overall character arc of Tommy Shelby just yet.
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