The Peaky Blinders sequel/spin-off/continuation — no one’s really sure how to label this just yet — will be set in 1950s Birmingham, a city that’s still trying to rebuild itself after the devastation of the Blitz. As in any period of reconstruction, there’s plenty of money to be made and opportunity to be had, particularly for an up-and-coming group of young men who are willing to break some rules along the way. But with its story set over a decade after the events of The Immortal Man, it’s not entirely clear who we’ll be watching do it.
Let’s face it, the Shelby family, as a whole, has been fairly decimated recently. Tommy, Arthur, Ada, John, and Polly are all dead. Finn has been excommunicated from the family and might as well be dead. Lizzie, Esme, and Linda are all MIA, and most of their kids are too. Technically, Tommy’s second son Charles appears to return for his father’s funeral, we only ever see the character from a distance (and he’s not even identified directly, just wearing a military uniform).
In theory, the sequel could focus on any one of the Shelby siblings’ offspring — perhaps Charles returns to Birmingham after the war, or Arthur’s son Billly somehow finds out who was really responsible for his father’s death and causes another intra-family rift. The brief glances of the two seem to indicate that Ada’s son Karl has finally stopped being such a racist jerk towards his younger sister Elizabeth. And, let’s not forget, John Shelby had seven kids, all of whom, last we heard, were being raised among their mother’s gypsy people.
None of these are necessarily exciting options, but in large part that’s because Peaky Blinders was generally so busy with the larger family’s exploits that it didn’t have time to give characters who were relatively young children much of anything like depth. (Or personalities, come to that.) A sequel could certainly correct that, while honoring the show’s roots at the same time
But What About Duke?
The ending of The Immortal Man firmly establishes Tommy’s illegitimate son Duke as his successor within the world of the show, leaving him in charge of both the Peaky Blinders and the heir apparent to his “Rom Baro” gypsy title. Heck, Duke even performs an uncomfortable act of mercy on his critically injured father’s behalf, shooting Tommy (with a bullet marked for him!) to ease his passage into the next life rather than allowing him to suffer. He’s far and away the most obvious pick to succeed Tommy as the franchise’s next main character, and that before we really get into his lifetime of daddy issues, his guilt over his involvement in both his father’s and his aunt’s deaths, and the fact that he’s already got a built-in Polly figure of his own in Kaulo. But does that mean the spin-off will actually be about him?
