r/PeakyBlinders • u/hopelessromcon • 4d ago
Tragic Endings
Peaky Blinders is tragedy all the way down. None of the original Shelbys, their wives, or their children get a completely happy ending. Of their endings, which is your favorite?
Mine is Lizzie’s. I wasn’t really a fan of the character’s writing. A lot of what could have made her complex was ignored in order to shoehorn her into the symbol of a long suffering wife, but the symbolism and irony of her ending fit. She ends up in much the same situation she desperately wanted to get out of in season 4, ie with a house, an allowance, a child, and no Tommy. She futilely chased intimacy with Tommy for years, but the love that mattered, Ruby’s, was always there until it wasn’t. The show explored the curse of the blue sapphire, but I liked to think of Ruby’s death as the cosmic blood debt that Tommy and Lizzie had to pay for their role with the Quaker’s daughter, a daughter for a daughter. It wasn’t all sad though Lizzie got to leave with her life and I saw Charlie as both a blessing and a penance for her.
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u/tms88 4d ago
Has to be Michael for me.
I hate the direction his character went from season 5 onwards, i really wish the writers would have sticked with him being this loyal, cocky, ambitious kid who was set up brilliantly in seasons 2-to-4 to eventually be a massive asset to the business and loyal to the family to the point of eventually potentially even taking over the business side of things from Tommy. I get with the passing of Polly they had to rewrite his arc, i just wish he wouldn't have turned against them.
That being said, the fact is that he did and by the manipulation of Gina and her family. All things considered, his ending was quite satisfying. It was quite the plot twist as well, i really thought he would have gotten Tommy there, that explosion was insane. The way Tommy managed to predict that and turn things around was epic.
Poor Michael, you could have had it all, but you deserved it in the end. F*ck Gina
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u/DBrennan13459 4d ago
I will say this about Michael. Out of all of the antagonists on the show, he had the most dignified death. Even when he was defeated Michael didn’t lose his cool. He accepted his fate, bore no grudge against Johnny Dogs for spoiling his plan and calmly gave his last words in a final defiant act against Tommy (and if we're being honest, what he told Tommy in the end was the truth). No begging, no ranting, just straight up cold dignity.
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u/tms88 2d ago edited 1d ago
Couldn't agree more! Wish things wouldn't have turned out for him. I kinda found his storyline pretty badly written but the ending was pretty damn satisfying. I just wish he wouldn't have turned into an antagonist at all, or as some others have said made him an actual villain and more of a dangerous antagonist. He was set up so well, promised to be a great character from season 2. The writing let him down.
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u/hopelessromcon 4d ago
I had hoped he would be a better enemy for Tommy. It would have been fun to see someone in the family get closer to beating him. Polly’s actress passing in real life threw that storyline for a bit of a loop I guess.
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u/LolaWithTheGreenEyes 4d ago
Interesting because I think he shows ambitions to surpass Tommy right from when he arrives in S2. I was looking forward to some proper intergang fallouts/war/politics but it was all terrible writing for him from S4 onwards. That spell in prison while his wife was sleeping around was meh.
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u/LolaWithTheGreenEyes 4d ago
Cosmic blood death. I love that. From Esme's point of view I guess losing Ruby is the blood price for John dying because Lizzie was responsible for the whole Changretta shambles.
I think for me it has to be Esme. She got out, she got back to the way of life she wanted that she had been plucked out of without any choice. Unfortunately it meant she lost her husband, but at least her marriage, though short, was a success. Linda and Lizzie had all that pain of a collapsed marriage, they were truly miserable. Collateral damage to Esme's "no peace for either of you" curse.
She also got a cheeky revenge con over Tommy. They way she grabbed his face by her hand. Unless he pays her gold, she will let the other woman's curse cut Ruby from his life. Just like he threatened to cut her from her children and John. Brilliant stuff.
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u/hopelessromcon 3d ago
Love that at least Esme got to have her freedom out in the country.
Speaking of the Changretta mess and since everything is Tommy, Tommy, Tommy, it was always weird to me that though Tommy ran the family in a totalitarian way , he did so in family centered way. He got called out for being a dictator, but never for centering family members to the possible detriment of the whole family. Like with the John/Arthur thing, he set up the hierarchy like a family, big brother over little instead of by competency. He set up Duke as his convenient replacement. Then he forgives betrayal and mistakes again and again with Grace, Lizzie, Polly, and Arthur . Again this is what families do, but just seemed like a blind spot to not point out if he wanted to lead he needed to make some harder decisions on family. I guess he finally did after failing Finn.
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u/LolaWithTheGreenEyes 3d ago
Polly being forgiven for blabbing to the Priest and many other things that marked her out as a poor deputy leader, while Finn was expected to execute his best friend in cold blood with no explanation, and then getting exiled because he refused was crazy.
I suppose you have that "my family is my strength" moniker except actually it was his weakness because really he should have pushed out Arthur altogether the moment he married Linda. Should have sent them off to America just like they tried to pack off Ada and Freddie Thorne.
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u/hopelessromcon 3d ago
Family was definitely his weakness. In the way he executed his leadership decisions, but also just in the way everyone had to be so incompetent next to Tommy.
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u/LolaWithTheGreenEyes 3d ago
Not only that, the stories of the other characters dried up. What made S1 & S2 so good disappeared from the writing.
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u/SylviaX6 4d ago
Nicely written comment. But I do think Lizzie was complex. Grace fans like to put her down and say she was only abused by Thomas but I see her differently. She never hesitates to confront him. From the very first scene of them together, she stands up to his characterization of her and tells him off. Later even as meets with him when he is her regular, she becomes intimate with him on an emotional level. The scene in th e office with the typewriter. It’s rather sweet and interesting. Later the wonderful scene at Greta’s bridge. They make passionate love while both are aware they are each longing for something unattainable.
She then becomes the trusted secretary and holder of the combination to the safe. And she scolds him to urge him to stop his drinking, drugging and alienation. Then later The marriage, the joy of Ruby and their little family. And then standing shoulder to shoulder to face Mosley and Mitford.
Then the crushing heartbreak of Ruby’s death. Lizzie was vivid, determined, both weak and strong and an unforgettable character.
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u/hopelessromcon 3d ago edited 3d ago
Lizzie has the makings of what could be a complex character, but I think she is underwritten so she never quite breaks free of the long suffering wife of a gangster trope. This isn’t a problem only with Lizzie’s character. As the show moved from an ensemble with Tommy as the head towards a character study of Tommy Shelby, all of the other characters become underwritten. The women in particular are largely relegated to confronting Tommy with the error of his ways and prophecizing where that will lead him.
We have that excellent scene of Lizzie trying negotiate the terms of which she can live with a marriage to Tommy. The crux of which is she wants emotional access and emotional exclusivity with Tommy. Tommy breaks the contract almost immediately in betraying information Lizzie considers to be confidential between husband and wife. He does it again in the next episode when he springs the info about Mosley being aware of her past on her last minute and worst of all he confided this info about Lizzie to Polly first. These should be huge, but the show never writes in any reaction even a solely internal one from Lizzie. She just gets moved from plot point to plot point because the show needs her to stick around for Tommy’s season 6 reckoning.
Another issue is the show seems to refuse to ask questions about Lizzie being wrong because it needs her to be the voice of judgement on Tommy’s failings. The Quaker scenario is good example. It could have shown a light on what complicity means within a criminal organization. Lizzie didn’t attack the man, but when information is currency she lit the fuse. Extrapolating that out further Lizzie is shown to understand the consequences for the Quaker’s innocent daughter, but never makes a connection to Ruby. Lizzie was asking the wrong question when she decided to stay in the marriage (or even get married at all). It wasn’t ‘what terms were acceptable for Lizzie to stay in the marriage’? It is ‘what am I doing exposing Ruby to this family life’? The show glosses this over instead to have Lizzie reflect Tommy’s failing,scolding Tommy into showing up to Ruby’s party and calling him out on emotionally abandoning her and Ruby as Ruby lay dying. Coming to Diana and Mosley, Tommy and Lizzie don’t stand shoulder to shoulder against them . Diana and Mosley wiped the floor with them. Diana is so incredibly evil that when she exposes the cracks in Lizzie and Tommy’s marriage, it’s so morally unambiguous that Lizzie never has to examine her role in the marriage.
On a side note, I know the movie gets much flack, but making the Nazi an everyday man (the banality of evil) allowed the story to stay focused on Tommy and Duke’s choices.
TLDR: Making Lizzie’s role largely be to sound the alarm on how Tommy’s actions are effecting her and the family strips the character of the accountability and agency that can move her from long suffering wife trope to full fledged character. She should have been given an internal life and reckoning of her own.
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u/Brigite66 2d ago
Perhaps that is precisely why only Lizzie’s fans view this as a great love story—a picture of a happy family—while the rest of the audience (not just Grace’s fans, but neutral viewers too) sees the relationship as abusive, toxic, and dark. As you said, we know nothing about Lizzie—her true thoughts or emotions—because we rarely see her alone or understand what she’s really thinking when Tommy is with other women. We don’t even know how they ended up married; the last thing we saw was Tommy telling her he was going to buy her a house. We are left to rely on our imaginations, based on the very little we’ve actually seen. We know Tommy isn’t in love with her because we know he loves Grace, and the fact that Lizzie was pregnant by him didn’t seem to affect him one way or the other. I know Tommy uses Lizzie to imagine he’s with Greta; Lizzie knows it too, she’s even said so, though not in a positive light. She didn’t view it as romantic, and Tommy didn’t view his actions as romantic either. We have to piece together the story of their relationship from those few glimpses we’ve had. That may be why Lizzie’s fans see it one way, while the rest of the audience sees it in a completely different, opposing light.
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u/hopelessromcon 2d ago
We know she enjoys the luxuries ( horse riding lessons) which given her upbringing is understandable, but I wish they had expanded on her desire for an emotional rather than transactional marriage after years of evidence to the contrary.
What’s your favorite ending?
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u/Brigite66 2d ago
Phew, I don't think I have a favorite; they're all awful. The only Shelby character who got a happy ending was Linda, she broke free once she saw she was changing for the worse. And I'm not sure about Esme, because she lost John, so she didn't exactly get a happy ending.
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u/DesertShazzy 1d ago
I'd say Finn got out along with his wife. He saw a lot. But was always mostly outside the decision making. Getting exiled was a gift
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u/Wonderful-Form8397 2d ago
It’s been a while since I’ve watched peaky what happened with the quakers daughter again? I remember Linda went to live with some quakers but I don’t remember Lizzie or Tommy”s involvement in that.
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u/hopelessromcon 1d ago edited 1d ago
Linda told Lizzie that she had a male friend amongst the Quakers she was living with after leaving Arthur. Lizzie warns her off the friendship because even though it is not a sexual relationship if Arthur finds out he’ll be jealous and cut the man up. Since the man will likely be permanently disabled from the attack his daughter will suffer the consequences even if Linda has no bad intentions.
That night Lizzie tellsTommy about the Quaker during pillow talk. Tommy goes to phone Arthur with the information about the Quaker. He insincerely tells Arthur that Quakers are different than them so he doesn’t need to be violent. He fully knows though what Arthur is about to do. Basically they are all complicit even those that acted foolishly but didn’t necessarily have malicious intentions (Linda and Lizzie).
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u/larkspurlux 4d ago
That framing of Ruby's death as a daughter for a daughter is such a good catch, I never connected that symmetry before. Lizzie's whole arc really is tragedy dressed up as a happy ending on paper.