How does it all end for Tommy Shelby?
Millions of fans have been waiting for that answer since Peaky Blinders debuted in 2013. Netflix new film Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man finally provides it – and it is as Shakespearean as expected.
It is hard to imagine this ever ending with him riding off into the sunset. Across six seasons, his journey was always marked by tragedy. He builds an empire, but he is often the one responsible for the damage it causes. People close to him are killed. Others are left dealing with the consequences of his decisions.
He is aware of how much destruction rests on his shoulders. The series presents him as full of self-loathing, often ready to give up, but each time finding a reason to continue. That reason is usually his family.
When Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man begins, he is no longer engaging with the outside world. He is living in isolation, writing his memoirs and trying to grapple with his past.
The family around him has changed. John is dead. Polly is gone. Arthur has died by the time the film begins. Ada remains, but the structure that once held them together is no longer there. His estranged son, Duke (Barry Keoghan), has taken control of the Peaky Blinders in his absence.
Tommy dons the cap once more to confront a Nazi-backed plot to destabilise the UK, but his reasons are not only external. Duke is already inside the organisation, following a darker path. Part of Tommy’s motivation is to reach him, to find some remaining sense of restraint, and to stop him from becoming a version of himself.
For as much as this ending matters to fans, it carries just as much weight for the man who plays him – Cillian Murphy, for whom the role has become a defining part of his career.
Murphy tells The National: “It’s very rare to age alongside a character. Normally, you do a film or a play and then move on. With this, I’ve played him from when I was a younger man until now, and that’s a huge benefit. It runs deep.”
But how does it end? Now that the film is out, here is what happens – and what it means.
Warning: this article contains spoilers
What happens at the end
In the film’s climactic sequence, Tommy and Duke move to stop the Nazi collaborator Beckett, played by Tim Roth, from flooding the UK with counterfeit currency in an attempt to destabilise the economy during the war.
To reach him, they need to pass through a collapsed tunnel. The passage is narrow, unstable and partially blocked. Tommy decides to go through alone.
From the beginning of Peaky Blinders, Tommy is defined by his experience in the First World War as a tunneller – a “clay kicker” trained to move underground in confined spaces, often lying on his back and working through dirt in near darkness. He uses that same method here, moving slowly through the tunnel with limited space and air.
He makes it through and confronts Beckett.
In their final confrontation, as Beckett drives his car towards him, Tommy fatally shoots Beckett, but Beckett shoots him first.
Tommy survives the initial shots. Duke saves Tommy before Beckett's car can hit him, but Tommy asks Duke to finish it anyway, using a bullet he'd been given with Tommy's name on it. Duke shoots him, setting up himself to lead the Peaky Blinders into a new series, according to Netflix.
The film then cuts to a montage of Tommy’s memories, largely centred on his family.
As he dies in Duke's arms, his final words are: “In the bleak midwinter.”
The line, taken from the 19th-century poem by Christina Rossetti, evokes a frozen, emptied world where material things fall away, leaving only what a person carries within.
The film then moves to the funeral.
What Tommy's last words mean
Tommy’s voice returns in a note read after his death.
“Give my car to Johnny Dogs, my wine to the Garrison pub, my horses to someone who has no work for them. My bullets to someone who has no names to write on them, and my guns to someone who has no use for them.
“Once, I nearly got everything. But nearly doesn’t count.
“But throughout it all, I had my family. We are reunited now, in whichever place will have us.
“Burn my body. Let the ash blow. I am free.”
“I am free” is the last thing he says.
What does freedom mean to Tommy Shelby? Cillian Murphy explains: “Release and peace. He’s a hyper-intelligent, high-functioning man with an extraordinary amount of trauma, and he’s never at peace. That relentless forward motion comes from knowing that if he stops, he’ll hear that noise.
For him, the idea of turning that off would be freedom.”
That “noise” runs through the entire series. It comes from the war, but also from everything that follows – the decisions he makes, the violence he orders, the people he loses. He keeps moving so he does not have to sit with it.
By the end, that changes.
The note sets it out clearly. He gives everything away, including the things that defined his power. The bullets and guns are handed on with a condition. They are no longer meant to be used. The violence is not something he wants carried forward in his name.
As he's said before, he nearly got everything. He does not claim victory. He does not claim to have fixed what he broke. What he claims is smaller and more specific: He has done enough.
In a sense, he's finally found a form of redemption, though he has not atoned for his sins. He stops the plot against the country. He reaches Duke. He puts him in a position to take over as perhaps a better leader than he once was, and forces a final decision that defines that handover.
It marks a point where he no longer sees himself as someone who has something left to answer for. The guilt that has driven him is no longer active in the same way. The noise is no longer there.
The final act returns him to where that began. The tunnel places him back inside the conditions that shaped him. The confrontation ends with a decision he makes himself.
After that, there is nothing left for him to do.
“I am free” follows from that.
How they shot the final scene
For director Tom Harper, the final funeral sequence – as Tommy’s body is set aflame inside a carriage on a windswept Irish coastline beneath low, grey clouds – came down to stripping the scene back.
“We had a location lined up, but it felt too domestic. At the last minute, I realised it wasn’t right – it didn’t have the scale or the feeling we needed for the end.”
The setting shifts the scene into the open, with nothing around it to contain the moment.
A new location was found, more remote and harder to reach, which shaped how it was approached.
“It was a very challenging place to get to. We talked about how to shoot it, and the conclusion was to keep it simple. It needed to feel elemental – the weather, the fire, everything working together.
In the end, all we needed was a camera and the cast. Sometimes the simplest approach is the best one.”
That decision defines the final image. The pyre burns against an open landscape under a low, clouded sky. Wind moves through the flames. Smoke drifts and breaks apart as it rises. The ash is carried off into the air.
The film leaves it there – Tommy Shelby is finally free.
Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man is now streaming on Netflix
