‘Peaky Blinders,’ Season 3, Episode 6: What Happened On The Season Finale?

Well, they’ve survived weddings, Arthur being born again, cursed jewels (well, Grace didn’t really survive that one), assassination attempts (nope, she didn’t survive that one either), Gypsy vision quests, feminist revolts, Russian Roulette, pedophile priests (though Tommy almost didn’t survive), skull fractures, double crosses, ghost sex, cocaine-fueled Cossack orgies, and finally season 3 of Peaky Blinders, which is currently streaming on Netflix, is coming to an end.

When last we left off, top Peaky Blinder Tommy Shelby had recruited his old WWI buddies to tunnel underneath his cousins’ Gypsy caravan into the exiled Russian aristocrats’ vault to steal the jewels they’d been promised but they figured they’d never be paid in exchange for arms, which the Peaky Blinders took the firing pins out of rendering them useless, to mount a rebellion in the U.S.S.R., which Father Hughes (who molested Tommy’s cousin Michael) and The Economic League want to sabotage to provoke a Soviet act of aggression on UK soil which will further their Right Wing agenda even though they set up the whole thing in the first place, but don’t worry because the Tommy told the Soviets all about it. Got all that? Good.

The finale begins with the grand opening of the Grace Shelby Institute for Children and everyone’s having a fine time until Father McJerkpants shows up to rub it in Tommy’s face that he’s to have his own office there to molest, I mean, give the kids religious instruction in private. But that’s a good thing, because it lets you the viewer know he’s totally going to die this episode. Tommy’s troubles get a lot worse when he discovers that his son Charles, who Father Hughes has already threatened, has gone missing. Now, maybe it’s just me, but if some guy had my head cracked open and told me that if I messed up his plans again he’d take my kid, and then I went out of my way to intentionally mess up his plans, I would give his nanny an AK and a couple armed guards at all times, but hey, that’s just me.  Of course, a few hours later Father Hughes shows up to say, “Yeah, I know about the tunnel. I know you told the Soviets not to blow up the train  so now you’re gonna blow up the train so we can blame the Soviets and after you steal the jewels you’re going to give them to us or we kill your kid.” ARRRGHHH! I HATE THIS FREAKIN’ GUY!!!!

Tommy knows a rat is in his midst. Is it Arthur’s wife Linda? Is it Johnny’s wife Esme? Is it Aunt Polly’s new boyfriend Reuben? Nope, the rat is none other than Alfie Solomons, the Jewish London gangster played by Tom Hardy, who already double crossed the Shelbys in season 2. What do they say? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on the script writers because what successful mob boss makes the same mistake twice? Anyhow, Tommy confronts Alfie, Alfie admits he screwed him over, cousin Michael makes his bones killing one of Alfie’s men, and then they hug it out because, hey, that’s just the game and besides, Alfie didn’t know they took Tommy’s kid. “I know.,” Tommy says, “I saw.” And you can kind of see what he means in Alfie’s remorseful face.

Tommy figures out where the priest is with son Charlie and sends Michael to retrieve him. Meanwhile he goes to help the tunnel rats get the jewels, and Arthur and Johnny set up the train explosion just in case they can’t save the kid and have to go through with Father Hughes’  plans after all. This sets up one of the series most action packed sequences as the three plotlines play out, Tommy digging away frantically, Michael going after Hughes cautiously, and the other two planting the dynamite to blow up the train methodically. Tommy takes the lead, digging away, even though the Thames River is seeping in from above. He cracks the vault and makes off with a couple big bags of jewels. Michael finds Father Hughes and Charlie but anyone that’s ever gone to Catholic school will tell, don’t ever start a fistfight with a priest. The padre gets the best of him, but fortunately Michael’s packing a blade and buries it in Father Hughes filthy throat. Now all they have to do is get the call in to Arthur and Johnny and call off the train bombing and……

Oh well, two out of three ain’t bad.

The finale ends with a couple of twists I truly did not see coming, and I’m usually pretty good at guessing this stuff. Especially when it’s season 3 already and we know the characters and the writers are starting to get a little lazy.

Twist #1: the next day we see Tommy rendezvous with Grand Duchess Tatiana Petrovna, she of the Russian Roulette and auto-erotic ghost sexcapades. Turns out, she was in on the jewelry heist from the jump and is going to take her cut to Vienna where she has a man waiting. Also, she’s kind of a trick, and asks for $5,000 for sex, but still tells Tommy to look her up if he’s ever over in Austria, and shoots the jewelry notary for good measure.

Back at Chez Shelby, Tommy distributes the money to the family and says his amends for accusing his brothers wives of passing secrets and then launches into some existential spiel about how he’s just a criminal and now he knows it and trying to be respectable is just a farce because the powers that be will never let them into the country cub, or whatever they call country clubs in England. It’s all very class conscious and British. Then Arthur’s all “Well, my ship for the Indian reservation in California where me and Linda are going to run a missionary and open up a 7-11 is leaving, ” and Tommy’s very Brit stiff upper lip about it, but that’s really because he knows Arthur won’t be going far because THE COPPERS ARE HERE AND YOUS ARE ALL GETTING LOCKED UP!!!!! OH SNAP!!!!!!!!!!! WHAT A TWIST!!!! I TOTALLY DID NOT SEE THAT COMING!!!!!!!!!!

As far as surprise, twist endings go, this is a pretty good one. Rather then figure out a rosy season wrap-up like The Sopranos used to always do, Peaky Blinders just went full-on Walking Dead and put the lives of the whole gang in limbo. The episode ends with the entire Shelby clan getting carted away, except for Tommy who has of course made some deal with “people even more powerful than our enemies.” The best thing about it is it leaves the door open for season 5 so fear not fans of British period family crime dramas, Peaky Blinders will be back!

[Watch Peaky Blinders on Netflix]

Benjamin H. Smith is a New York based writer, producer and musician who thinks The Damned were better than The Clash, and that Barry’s Irish Breakfast Tea is better than PG Tips. Follow him on Twitter:@BHSmithNYC.