After nearly four years of waiting, Peaky Blinders fans are finally getting the conclusion of Tommy Shelby’s story. Though the Netflix gangster drama ended its six season run back in 2022, a plan for a film was already in the works and now, after a brief theatrical release earlier this month, the movie Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man is hitting Netflix.
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Along with some exciting new faces joining the Peaky universe, including Rebecca Ferguson, Barry Keoghan, and Tim Roth, the cast includes plenty of returning favorites from the series; most notably, of course, Oscar-winner Cillian Murphy as protagonist Tommy Shelby, Sophie Rundle as his sister Ada, and Stephen Graham as Hayden Stagg, a warehouse worker who had an antagonistic relationship with Tommy in the show’s final season. For long-time Peaky fans, though, one absence is sure to stand out: that of Paul Anderson, who for six seasons played Tommy’s hot-headed brother and righthand man Arthur. It’s something of a surprise, considering that show creator Steven Knight had stated several times through the film’s long gestation that Anderson would return. So why isn’t the character onscreen in the film?
The answer to what happens to Arthur is, “not as straightforward as you think,” Anderson told LadBible. While the star stopped short of spoilers, he revealed that he’s a fan of Arthur’s “end.”
“I think it’s great,” he said. “I mean, it’s such a powerful thing to do. It’s something you don’t see on TV. Everyone thought, ‘well, everyone knows Arthur’s gonna die.’”
He added that he’s been surprised by fan’s affection for the ne’er-do-well Shelby brother. “I [Arthur] was quite nasty sometimes, I weren’t very nice to people in it. But people loved me.”
Though he said that he’s a “firm believer in leaving people wanting more,” he wasn’t certain about returning to Knight’s universe for the previously announced sequel series. “They plan to do another two seasons but I don’t know if [Knight] wants to do it with a younger generation or a new team of Peaky Blinders,” he said. “What I mean by that is, Tommy will still be there and my memory—if I’m dead—will still be in it.”
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