“He's a god, he's a man. He's a ghost, he's a guru.” Indeed, Peaky Blinders' Thomas Shelby (Cillian Murphy) is many things. He can be whatever the situation requires of him, be it a respectable family man, a shrewd businessman, a socialist MP, or a ruthless gangster. What he’s not, however, is either a spotless good guy or a callous villain. He exists somewhere in between, in a sort of gray area permeated with a haze like a chilly misty morning on the streets of Birmingham. As a protagonist he falls under the label of anti-hero but beyond that he resists classification, by the viewers, the other characters, and even himself. It is only until the last episode of the final season that the mist lifts, his past goes up in flames and a new man is reborn from the ashes and the rubble.

Everything that makes up Tommy often goes unspoken – the complexities, the ambitions, the emotions, the contradictions, the ghosts. These are not necessarily invisible, they are always there, present in everything from the subtext of his lines to the smallest nuances of Murphy’s spectacular performance. But as a protagonist Thomas does not invite us into his head, in fact, he keeps us out. Even those closest to him find him difficult to pin down, with the one most capable of deciphering him being his aunt Polly Gray (Helen McCrory) but not even she comes close to fully understanding him. Tommy can be different things to different people; to some he’s a savior to others he’s the devil. Does that make him both or neither? The answer is not so simple.

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Peaky Blinders
Image via BBC

Tommy is unpredictable and does not – or cannot – always remain constant in his resolution, which speaks true to someone whose mental health hangs on a delicate balance, something that only shows when he’s alone or behind closed doors. This inconstancy can be understood to have begun even before the events of the series. A clear divide distinguished pre-war Tommy and post-war Tommy. Before France “He laughed, a lot” Polly reminisces to Grace (Annabelle Wallis) in Season 1 Episode 6. Like other men who experienced first-hand the horrific events of World War I, he did not come back the same, or, as Tommy himself would say, “no one came back.” He is aware that he was supposed to have died in France. Not only had he one of the most dangerous and claustrophobic roles during the war as a tunneller, but he also may not have survived if Freddie Thorne (Iddo Goldberg) hadn’t taken a bullet for him. In creator and writer Steven Knight’s words in an interview: “Tommy came back from the war pretty much prepared to be dead. I always imagined that just before the series began, he’d put a gun to his head but decided ‘I might as well carry on, why not?’ […] When he got back from the war, the war was still going on in his head.”

There’s always this “why not” mentality with Tommy. Since returning from the war he has been living on borrowed time, and thus he’s fine and even thrives in getting close to the edge and flirting with the fall. Trauma can redefine one’s path in life and disrupt one’s sense of identity. Thomas’ trauma turned him into a man who has fully accepted his own mortality and is hence not deterred by the fear of dying. His human limitations, or rather, his awareness of them waned to the point where he’s willing to take unbelievable – yet calculated – risks. Thomas Shelby is a puzzle of many pieces that he does not help us solve. It is mainly the other characters' appreciation of him that gives us clues as to how to put together the mystery that is Tommy.

“We live somewhere between life and death, waiting to move on. And in the end, we accept it. We shake hands with devils, and we walk past them.” Polly tells Tommy in Season 4 Episode 6. This limbo that Tommy exists in makes it difficult for anyone to reach him. As a protagonist he’s elusive precisely because his trauma made him lock away his emotions away from both friendly as well as prying eyes. Every time he takes a couple of steps up the stairs of healing, something occurs which pushes him back down like Sisyphus and his boulder. “Tommy was locked up and frozen inside for a long time.” Knight said in the same interview “Then he met Grace and she changed things, she unlocked the doors a bit. Then as soon as that happens, it gets closed down again because she gets killed.” While Tommy cheats death again and again, his loved ones, like Grace, ultimately end up paying the price. This not only sets him back but also adds more layers to his trauma pile. Grace’s ghost haunts him for the remaining seasons, even if we don’t see her, we can hear her breathy eerie sighs whenever Thomas’ faces decisive moments of inner turmoil, revealing how he’s way more emotionally and psychologically burdened than he cares to show.

“Men like us Mr. Shelby” says Inspector Campbell (Sam Neil) in Season 1 Episode 6 “will always be alone. And the love we get… we will have to pay for.” This warning becomes a prophecy over the following seasons. Tommy’s defense mechanism is to shut the door on his emotions, blocking us, the audience, as well as the other characters from truly learning what’s on his heart and mind. Tommy created a persona that he grew to believe in as much as the people around him. He became accustomed to being either respected or feared, and he had to uphold that in order to emerge victorious time after time. Tommy’s sense of identity became dependent on the emotions he provoked in others while he did his best to numb his own.

Peaky Blinders does not care to ask what the most morally sound decision to make is, instead, it shows how a man is capable of both good and bad. “Good and bad, right and wrong seem to be blurred in Tommy’s world because he blurred them himself.” Knight explained. As we see him be charitable one moment and shoot someone in the face the next, he actively resists any moral classification. However, it is his motivations that make him so compelling within this gray area that he inhabits. Although relevant, it is not money nor power that are the main instigators for his less agreeable actions. It is not something nearly as straightforward. Aunt Polly said in Season 1: “Tommy won’t let them. ‘Cause Tommy won’t let them walk all over us. ‘Cause he knows… You have to be as bad as them above in order to survive.” We can understand that the mercilessness Thomas is forced to sometimes adopt is more of defense strategy to keep himself and his family safe than an inherent trait.

As much as he had become acquainted with his mortality before, it’s in Season 6 that he fully realizes that he too is a “mortal man”. In the wake of Polly’s death, Tommy has tried to make some changes to his life, namely, to forswear alcohol. But even so, he’s not content with the way things are even with these changes. When Ruby (Heaven-Leigh Clee) dies, he vows to do better because his work, although it has a charitable side, it also has an obscure one that he’s become painfully aware of. “But in her name and in her memory things will change.” Thomas declares at his daughter’s funeral “And whatever comes down that river from now on we will make good… we will make peaceful and honest and good and send it on down the river better than it was. In her memory we will do this.” Although he indisputably believes these words, he nevertheless goes and enacts vengeance upon the woman he believes cursed his daughter. This turns out to be but another hollow action that brings him no real solace. Tommy may want to change but after all this time, his mind still confronts each day like on a battlefield.

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Imag via The BBC

In Season 6 Episode 4 Doctor Holford (Aneurin Barnard) informs him that he has tuberculoma and has 18 months left at most. Death is not what scares a man who has been living on borrowed time like Thomas Shelby. “How long have we been dead for?” Tommy asks Arthur in the last episode of Season 6. His main concern is setting every record straight because, when faced with the prospect of dying, he is forced to ponder even more deeply about the kind of legacy he wishes to leave behind. After Ruby’s death and his own on the horizon, he is challenged by existential doubts and wonders whether he belongs at the table with vile individuals like Oswald Mosley (Sam Claflin) and Jack Nelson (James Frecheville). “Could there be a sadder ending, eh?” He asks, talking more to himself, and by extension the viewers, than those around him.

To escape this undesirable fate Tommy has to die. Not any regular death, however. He’d thought he would not be gifted with any more second chances until he discovers he’s been misled by Doctor Holford at Mosley’s request. This leads him to confront the doctor with the intent to kill him, as he would have done in the past without a second thought. But similarly to Hayden Stagg (Stephen Graham), the Doctor sees through the hardened mask he’s kept on for most of the series. “You may not have tuberculoma, but you are sick.” Holford tells him “From the backstreets to the corridors of power. You can’t go back. You are a different man. The gun no longer belongs in your hand.” This is the push that Tommy needed to kill his old self so a new a man could be reborn in his place.

Tommy enters the screen for the first time riding on a black horse, and he leaves riding a white one. The Thomas Shelby that has intrigued and captivated us throughout 6 seasons takes his curtain call. We do not need to know where Thomas is riding his white stallion. All we need to know is that he has been unburdened from everything that had been weighting on him. The war is finally over. When the bell rings signaling the eleventh hour and stopping Tommy from shooting Holford, like November 11, 1918, the leader of the Peaky Blinders is free to leave the battlefield. The compelling cipher is gone and in its place is a man of flesh and blood who has retaken the reigns of his life. Armistice Day arrived to free the soldier. “Peace at last.”