No television scene is as crude and mythological as the one where Thomas Shelby is kneeling in front of what he thinks is his grave in the second season of ‘Peaky Blinders’.
For fans, it’s unforgettable. For villains? It’s perfect. And to Cillian Murphy, it is his favorite Tommy Shelby scene of all time, a classic that has changed the character forever.
Tommy Shelby’s Near-Death Scene Is Still The Greatest ‘Peaky Blinders’ Twist
The finale of season 2 leaves Tommy in the hands of hired assassins after his war with Inspector Campbell goes out of control. Powerless, alone, and with a gun barrel in his face, Tommy finally looks small. Humans. Mortal. It’s a rare sight. He asks for a cigarette. He takes a breath. He prepares to die. Then the twist comes: one of the gunmen betrays the others and shows the orders of Winston Churchill.
Tommy is not supposed to die; he is meant to be useful. This was lightning in a bottle for a show that is based on tension. The villain triumphs, but not as anyone would have guessed. Campbell is dead, but the system he embodies strangles even tighter. The state does not destroy Tommy; it takes him. That’s what makes it a villain’s favorite moment.
Power doesn’t just defeat him. It recruits him. You can almost feel the chill when Tommy realizes he’s not escaping death; he’s being drafted into something darker.
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Something changes after that graveyard scene. Tommy does not simply survive; he grows. The near-death experience makes him tough. It nourishes the illusion that he later expresses so coldly: he has no restrictions. He walks with the silent arrogance of a man who has died once, whether it is Luca Changretta or Oswald Mosley.
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And that is what makes this moment Murphy’s favorite. It isn’t loud. It isn’t violent. It’s internal. You see anger turn to acceptance, and then to something colder, ambition without a ceiling. There’s a strange beauty in it. The music swells. The sky hangs heavy. Tommy shuts his eyes like a soldier who is about to die.
When the gunshot doesn’t come for him, the world feels different. From then on, he is a man who cannot be touched, and that illusion of immortality turns into his strength and his curse. It’s the kind of scene that proves a terrifying truth: sometimes the most dangerous man isn’t the one who wins. It’s the one who survives.
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