Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man spoilers ahead.
The much-awaited Peaky Blinders movie The Immortal Man ticks the boxes that fans of the series may hope for: an excellent soundtrack, adrenaline-filled battles and ample amounts of brooding from Cillian Murphy's now-retired gangster king, Tommy Shelby.
But while a huge part of the film's heart is centred around Tommy's ultimate fate and potential redemption, as well as Barry Keoghan's introduction as his badass son Duke, the key plotlines of The Immortal Man are carried by interesting and complex female characters.
Perhaps I shouldn't have been as pleasantly surprised about this as I was. After all, the late and so great Helen McRory's portrayal of Aunt Polly in the series will go down in history – from her iconic furs to her icy stares and general way of manipulating and ruling a family full of (read: male) trauma, egos and violent tendencies.
In a 2016 interview with The Independent, Helen spoke out about the importance of bringing nuance as well as power to female screen roles. “To fill the screens with women who are walking around in six-inch stilettos and telling everyone what to do is as uninteresting to me as filling them with bimbos in bikinis falling into pools and laughing at your jokes," she said. "Neither are particularly interesting.”
Peaky Blinders creator Stephen Knight has also spoken out previously about not needing to “invent” strong women to feature in the series. “Having come from a working-class background, and in Birmingham, the women run the show," he said. “It was never a question of saying, ‘I'm going to deliberately put some strong women in it...’ It was more like, ‘just look out the window,’ you know, ‘look at what really is happening.’”
He has also described wanting to “do justice” to the women who stepped up, worked and kept the country going during WW1, and were baffled and angry at being told to step away from their jobs once the war was over. The series' executive producer Caryn Mandabach also told the BBC that “we’ve always passed the Bechdel Test”, which assesses the representation of women on screen.
Female TV and movie darlings Anya Taylor Joy, Natasha O'Keefe, Aimee Ffion-Edwards and Amber Anderson – who played real-life fascist Lady Diana Mitford – brought plenty of nuance and iconic moments to the series.
While the series did revolve around a gang of violent men and their postwar “issues”, it was nevertheless still empowering and refreshing to see two female leads acting as both moral and immoral backbones to the story – both crucial as the Peaky Blinders story wraps up for now. I cannot stress how many spoilers are ahead in this feminist deep dive of the movie, so please steer away from the following analysis if you haven't yet seen The Immortal Man.
Let's start with Rebecca Ferguson's as Gypsy medium Kaulo, sister of Tommy's first love Zelda, who mothered his first child Duke. She enters the fore with one mission and one mission alone – to make her nephew “King”, and ultimately take over the Peaky Blinders as its definitive leader.
She visits Tommy in his self-imposed isolation and promises that she will help him find peace if he helps Duke out of an extremely dangerous deal he's made with an evil combination of British government officials and Nazis to help Germany win WW2.
The sexual chemistry between herself and Tommy is a treat, sure, but the biggest one is seeing a woman pull the plotline strings of a show so often dedicated to male violence. Kaulo has a plan to save Duke from himself and she has the manipulative means to set things in motion. We love to see it.
Next up, Sophie Rundle's Ada. Oh, Ada. Present since the first episode of Peaky Blinders back in 2013, Tommy's sister Ada has largely attempted to be the family's moral centre – a Herculean effort due to daily events within Shelby Company Ltd. She was interested in politics for idealistic and practical reasons, instead of leveraging more power and money like her brother.
In The Immortal Man, Ada also attempts to bring Tommy out of his own form of exile to deal with Duke's increasingly volatile behaviour. She even appeals to the people of the Peaky Blinders' stomping ground to come forward and present evidence against him.
Without delving too deeply into the plot intricacies, Ava ends up paying the ultimate price for her steadfast attempts to do “good” in the face of all that her family is done. Tommy comes out of hiding too late to help her, and the rest of the movie is driven by both his bloodlust and need to see through the “good” she was trying to do.
Therefore, the entire plot of the latest chapter of Peaky Blinders – reportedly the final one of this part of the story – feels driven by the plotting of one woman, and the bravery and goodness of another. This feels important and true to the show's core.
When I interviewed Peaky star Amber Anderson back in 2022 as the final season of the TV series aired, she told me of the bonds she'd built with the women on set, and that they were the most treasured of all.
“I have to say it's the female friendships that I've taken away from Peaky and treasured the most,” she said.“The women on that show are just brilliant. I love them all.”
So celebrating the empowerment and closeness of the Peaky Blinders women on and off screen feels like the perfect way to round off this part of the show's story, remembering that their impact on key storylines and the heart of the series is a core element of its legacy.
