#talking pb

In season 1, Polly changes the safe combination to force Tommy to tell her what he’s been hiding.

In season 3, Polly comes straight from the confessional (where she revealed Tommy’s plan to kill a priest) and tries to open the safe. When she can’t get it to open, she declares to the room that Tommy must have changed the combination. In actuality, she couldn’t open the safe because she was drunk. (Thinking her jump to assume that Tommy changed the combination represents her guilt about having betrayed his confidence and what that might do to their relationship).

In that same episode, Polly is surprised to find that Lizzie knows the safe combination, despite the fact that she’s not blood. In fact, she opens the safe for Polly. This clues Polly in that Tommy trusts Lizzie implicitly. (This is also the episode where Lizzie tells the other women that she and Tommy are having casual sex). The following day, when Tommy starts complaining that he can’t trust a lot of their family (Esme, Arthur, Linda), Polly points out that he can trust Lizzie, and he agrees. (As we know, this is also the season where an uncharacteristically vulnerable Tommy tells Lizzie in front of the whole family that she stopped his heart from breaking—no one else).

NOTE: Edited 4/28 with some corrections and additions.

I previously estimated the Shelby siblings birth years in season 1 (1919) as part of a conversation about whether Ada or John is older. Repeating some of my observations and adding some:

Finn is stated to be 10 years old [edit: but about to turn 11] in the first episode of the show in 1919, so I infer his birth year is 1908.

Freddie and Ada are ~3 years apart ("I've loved her since she was nine and I was 12"). Freddie and Tommy were friends since school so probably are around the same age (therefore assuming Tommy and Ada are also 2-3 years apart). I get the impression that Freddie is slightly older than Tommy from the way he talks to him, so I'm going with a 2 year gap between Tommy and Ada (also because of the story about them carrying a bucket together).

John tells Polly in season 2 that by the time he was Michael's age (which was 17) he had watched hundreds of men die. Meaning John was underage for a fact when he enlisted with Arthur and Tommy. (Note: None of the Shelby siblings have birth certificates, and people as young as 14 lied and served in WWI).

A revision and addition: In season 2, Tommy writes to Churchill talking about two battles he was at that took place in 1916. [Note: I previously said Tommy and Greta took a pre-war-Tommy photo in 1915 but I misread and it was actually 1913. This makes it more ambiguous when the brothers enlisted, but at least by 1916]. [edit: In the wine cellar in The Immortal Man, Tommy's narration says he and Arthur enlisted in 1914]

Another addition: I was reminded by littlepeakydevil that we also know the age gap between Arthur and Tommy. It's three years (this is revealed in 6x04 when Tommy tells a story about them fighting).

NOW we have a birth year for Arthur which puts an upper limit on everyone else's age it's pretty wild.

We are told in Immortal Man that Arthur was born in 1895.

Finn's birth year is 1908.

I will assume Tommy (since he's 3 years younger than Arthur) was born 1898. We could fudge this a bit and say Tommy was going to be 10 the year he had that fight with Arthur, so we could make him an 1897 baby.

Ada and John are even more ambiguous, but I suggest: Ada is a 1900 baby and John is a 1901 baby. You can swap their birth order too, but again, partly because of the bucket story, I think Ada is next to Tommy in birth order. If we make Tommy an 1897 baby, we can also push Ada and John to 1899 and 1900, respectively, but that's as close as we can really put everyone in age.

Using primary suggested birth dates for Tommy (1898), Ada 1900), John (1901), and Finn (1908):

In season 1 (1919): Arthur (1895 baby) is 24. Tommy (1898 baby) is 21. Ada (1900 baby) is 19. John (1901 baby) is 18. Finn (1908 baby) is 11.

In season 2 (1921-1922): Arthur is 26-27. Tommy is 23-24. Ada is 21-22. John is 20-21. Finn is 13-14.

In season 3 (1924): Arthur is 29, Tommy is 26, Ada is 24, John is 23, Finn is 16.

In season 4 (1925-1926): Arthur is 30-31, Tommy is 27-28, Ada is 25-26, John is 24-25, and Finn is 17-18.

In season 5 (1929): Arthur is 34, Tommy is 31, Ada is 29, Finn is 20.

In season 6 (1933-1934): Arthur is 38-39, Tommy is 35-36, Ada is 33-34, Finn is 25-26.

Movie (1940): Tommy is 42, Ada is 40, Finn (if still alive? maybe not?) is 32.

If we go with my closer packed together dates to bring John's age in 1919 up a bit (because he has FOUR KIDS and though it did happen, 15 would be SUPER young to enlist, and Arthur does suggest John joined at the same time as him and Tommy in 4x06) then we have Tommy (1897), Ada 1899), John (1900)—Finn and Arthur's ages don't move.

In season 1 (1919): Arthur is 24. Tommy is 22. Ada is 20. John is 19. Finn is 11.

In season 2 (1921-1922): Arthur is 26-27. Tommy is 24-25. Ada is 22-23. John is 21-22. Finn is 13-14.

In season 3 (1924): Arthur is 29, Tommy is 27, Ada is 25, John is 24, Finn is 16.

In season 4 (1925-1926): Arthur is 30-31, Tommy is 28-29, Ada is 26-27, John is 25-26, and Finn is 17-18.

In season 5 (1929): Arthur is 34, Tommy is 32, Ada is 30, Finn is 21.

In season 6 (1933-1934): Arthur is 38-39, Tommy is 36-37, Ada is 34-35, Finn is 25-26.

Movie (1940): Tommy is 43, Ada is 41, Finn is 32.

But I think it more intentionally connects back to this: Tommy in seasons 1 and 2 leveraged Grace and then Lizzie respectively in sexual situations to get ahead. He carries regret for both situations (Grace for planning to offer her up like that to begin with, Lizzie for not reaching her in time as promised). In 5x04, the moment Mosley starts talking about Lizzie, Tommy’s pissed. He jumps into thinly veiled threats to reveal all the people Mosley’s sleeping with to protect Lizzie and basically finishes up with “go fuck yourself”. As soon as Mosley leaves, Tommy starts thinking about suicide again, drops his head in his hands, and begins hallucinating Grace (for the first time without taking drugs first). The trigger is Lizzie in peril. He sees Grace bleeding where she was shot, holding up the cursed sapphire and telling him it wasn’t the jewel that killed her—it was Tommy (his business, his choices).

The only child of his that he spoke lovingly about was Ruby

Okay so like. Idk if this is a movie criticism or a Tommy criticism, but I guess either way... While we most certainly get the picture that some of what Tommy sees is real, when I get asks like this... I just feel the need to say like... We can't analyze Tommy properly or judge him properly without taking the fact that he has pretty severe mental health issues into account. And he knows it, and he knows it has affected his children. One of the reasons Tommy doesn't fight for Charlie (or Lizzie) at the end of season 6 is that he knows he's dying, but another part of it is very much about self-hatred, both because he believes he is cursed (thinks Grace and Ruby both died because of him), and because he is very mentally unwell and he can feel and see the strain that's put on his family. Even back in season 3 right after Grace died, when Tommy went to Wales with Charlie and Johnny Dogs, he told Charlie "I'm not much good" and that Charlie would learn that soon enough.

Right before he goes away to die in 6x06, he talks to Duke but can't even bring himself to say any last words to Charlie, and Charlie doesn't understand this I think and is hurt, but Tommy can't speak because he is so desperate for Charlie not to inherit any part of him because he is cursed. And hell—Duke does get final words, but those words leave him with the weight of inheriting Tommy's dark shadow ("sin" as Duke puts it) while Charlie inherited wealth that was sterilized of Tommy's shadow. But Tommy is... more or less doing the best he can and Duke had already developed a certain ambition and darkness.

Tommy loves his sons. He just thinks the best thing he can do for them is like... not be in their lives. I think the movie also leans into this perspective from Tommy when Ada mentions both Charlie and Duke and Tommy says "I was never a father. I was a form of government". That's what he believes. When Ada stresses that Duke basically needs to be whipped into shape and Tommy's the only person who can do that (not even because he's Duke's dad—because he's Tommy Shelby) Tommy emphasizes to Ada "I see things". He is telling her he can't help anybody, because he is too mentally ill. Ada basically says "You've always been mentally ill." But they both agree it's a lot worse now since Arthur (even though Ada doesn't know the full details of that so can't grasp for example, that Tommy is also probably afraid he is dangerous and that's why he moved out to the middle of nowhere).

All that to say... I think Tommy's hands off attitude with Charlie and Duke is something he sees as both for their benefit and because he feels he just doesn't have the spoons to be there for anybody. Part of the reason he feels too overwhelmed to help is because he keeps seeing Ruby, and he doesn't know whether to believe that's really her ghost or not. It's fucking with him mentally and emotionally. I do think you never get over losing a child, but it's not that there isn't any love he feels for his sons. Just that he's really really mentally ill. And Tommy never really had much of a shot of being a dad to Duke because they met later in life, and by that point Tommy was really struggling. Now Charlie is off fighting in WWII (under age btw like John and possibly also Tommy were when they enlisted in WWI) so the generational trauma he tried to keep from passing on is passed down through another war that Charlie has inherited. And that is probably part of why Tommy doesn't even own a radio.

I think he did a good job fighting those feelings considering everything, you know? I feel so much sympathy for him by the end of the show and into the movie. Like he was SO suicidal in season 5 we watch him contemplate it multiple times and he fights back those feelings every time until the end when he just snaps. It was so SIMPLE what Barney said to him, yk? He just said, "Someday things might get better", and that resonated. "You feel this way right now, but some day you won't be hurting like this so it would be foolish to throw everything away."

It does seem like to me that season 6 Tommy, while he is clearly struggling a lot with his mental health even before Ruby gets sick, isn't actively suicidal anymore (in fact, he tells Ada this in 6x02). He's just very disassociated (to the point it terrifies Lizzie) and also is suffering from (arguably) delusional thinking about curses and devils. These delusions are his mind trying to make sense of all the suffering he's been through and terror and internalized blame/guilt he feels related to all that suffering (simultaneously blaming himself more and less for the ways he and people around him have suffered because of this "curse" if you think about it!)

Halford telling him he is dying is the trigger for him completely shutting everyone out, hurting himself again (via sex with Diana) and wandering out into the wilderness to die. Like even given Ruby's death, I don't know that he would have done all those things if Halford hadn't fed him the story that he was dying. Maybe the sex with Diana, but even that I'm not actually totally sure! Arguably because he was dying, he was extra concerned with making sure he got the family that last bag and got his housing project through (this good thing—trying to be GOOD it becomes this desperate need). We also know Ruby and Charlie also probably connected to this need to be good in some sense, as he tells Esme he is "learning [kindness] from my children". So I don't think you're wrong that Ruby's death represents something connected to his ability to be good (deserving of a happy life?) and that him not wanting to talk to Charlie by the movie also represents giving up on the idea he can be good and just seeing himself as inescapably evil... but he DID keep living after Ruby, taking Halford's trickery out of things sent him right back to wanting to stick around... and I think Ruby coming to him and being the one to tell him to keep going is very significant in that sense, because he blamed himself for her death! He had nothing to do with her death, but in his mind, it became HIS fault because he is this terrible evil cursed person. So he must have maintained hope about change (his season 6 fixation) until Arthur.

He went on to stick around 5 more years. We don't know what he was like in that gap between season 6 and the movie. We can presume he wasn't coping super well with things... but he WAS still alive. We don't know when he lost contact with Charlie, but I would guess that happened after Arthur. It was this other terrible thing that broke him, because he LOVED Arthur and he did this thing he couldn't deal with. It was another one of these signs that he is dangerous and evil and he hid away from the world because of it, but he also was not dead! He was not having a good time, but he actually seemed committed (in perhaps a misguided way) to trying to sort through his head. He was trying to figure out how to make sense of his head which pushed him to write... while seeing ghosts AND hallucinating simultaneously and that had to have been SO frustrating and upsetting because like... WHAT IS REAL? HE DOESN'T KNOW. But he was living! He was trying to figure out what to do with it all! But the answers he was finding were not good, because he was doing all this alone, at arms length from everyone who loved him. He pushed everyone away so all he had was his own self-hatred and self-blame and that was a recipe for disaster... but like... he thought he was DANGEROUS. His alternative was getting committed somewhere and that's a BIG FUCKING NO during the era when he lived.

Like Tommy's just beginning to touch real wealth in season 2 when May shows up, and it's starting to put him in close proximity to all these upper class people whose spaces he never would have been allowed in before. Even before Tommy and May speak, we're seeing the differences in the way them and the people surrounding them approach wealth. Tommy's bidding up on Grace's Secret more than twice what he agreed on with Pol while his brothers tell him to stop, and he's having to do that only because May saw a pretty man dressed like a gangster and wanted to get his attention so she started flaunting her wealth as a way of saying "hello". Money means absolutely nothing to her but everything to the Shelbys (plus their big plan to take down Sabini is riding on the purchase of this horse). And that in itself is a commentary on privilege, though it's one Tommy takes in stride (at first).

Tommy's constantly being reminded in these spaces he's entering by the way people look at him (with disdain and with interest) and talk to him that he is something other. To these people, he is something abhorred and discomfiting or exotic and fascinating, and May is interested in Tommy largely because she's the type of person who sees Tommy kind of like... an exotic horse. And there's a question that ends up posing, about what's the worse form of objectification? Is it being an object to be abhorred or an object to be admired?

Like subtextually, May's bidding on a horse but she's really bidding to purchase Tommy (and she keeps doing that, from telling Tommy she will "win" him as if in a bidding war with Grace, to the end of the season when she flaunts in Grace's face that she can purchase Tommy's affection). "Do you want to fuck me, Mrs. Carleton? Perhaps because I would represent something to you?" Is said in the same episode where Ada tells Tommy mockingly that gangsters like him are seen as some sort of aesthetic party dressing among London socialites rather than seen as real people. The way Ada hopes to rub her brother's nose in this is clear: He might think his wealth comes with upward mobility through class ranks, but he is allowed entry into the spaces of the upper class not because he is seen as one of them but because he is seen as an exotic animal with a coat to admire fleetingly.

The thing is, Tommy already knows this, and he is used to being commodified (and is continuously treated as subhuman throughout season 2 in various ways with his ethnicity and criminal history and experience with poverty all used as justification). He is aware that he represents something to May. She also represents something to him though, which is a chance to do something Tommy really likes doing: rubbing the upper classes' noses in it when he enters their spaces while being who he is. When Tommy goes to get the transport of the horse sorted, he's also being eyed with suspicion because he is a person in a space for the upper class and he's bleeding low class (and organized crime) signifiers despite his fancy suits and cars, and the thing about Tommy is he wears these symbols very proudly no matter how wealthy he becomes. One of the things I am obsessed with is the way he also intentionally brings being gypsy into these conversations so he can add to the discomfort from people he knows will feel even more prejudiced against him to know it. "What is it you do?" "Import/Export. But I also sell pegs and tell fortunes." Is Tommy Shelby saying "Yeah send my horse to the boat yard on the canal and yeah I'm also gypsy. Go fuck yourself."

Like May wants Tommy as her exotic horse/dirty little secret. She knows everyone's probably going to figure out she fucked this guy who is considered beneath her via multiple intersecting socioeconomic dimensions, and that's both frightening and alluring to her in some way. But Tommy is also just as aware (if everyone down to her horse trainer wasn't reminding him) and the allure works both directions and I don't think May's cognizant of that at first. Like yeah she was there to buy a breeding mare... but he was there to buy a horse that would gain him entry into the area of the derby where all the toffs were hanging out so he could kill one of them. May got to use Tommy as an exotic breeding mare (as a conquest), but he also got to use her to gain entry to upper class spaces (and her house and her bed) as a conquest. May finally clocks this when Tommy tells her there's someone else. She realizes she'll be on the lower floors with the horses at the derby, covered in mud, and Tommy will be up above. It's her going "Oh right. I see what this was really about for you. It was about the reversal." But she can't be insanely mad about it because she knows to a degree her interest in him has been motivated by a desire to possess him in a way that commodifies him for being low class and he can feel that, so it was fair for him to in turn commodify her for being upper class as well then say "Hey it's over and no harm has been done, because you didn't even actually like me."

Like I won't go quite so far as to say May never developed any real feelings of love for Tommy. I think there's something to be said about her getting over grief and trying to stop living her life like a shrine to her husband by jumping into a relationship that was dangerous and exciting. But I think Tommy ending things hurts her pride more than anything, because by then everyone knew she'd been fucking around with him, but that was fine as long as she could keep him as something she owned because it was still her who had made a conquest of him. When he made it clear he didn't need her or her wealth and privilege and wanted to end things, he showed he was a person and not a thing she could buy and keep, and she realized she had become the exotic conquest, just like she ended up below at the Derby while he was above.

Season 1 Tommy riding in on the black horse symbolizing death.

Season 1 Tommy buying a white horse but the horse (according to Curly) is cursed by the Lee family because of Tommy, so Tommy has to shoot it. Tommy, high on opium, telling Grace he killed the white horse because it looked at him the wrong way and that's not a good idea.

Season 2 Tommy being forced to carry out assassinations for the government. A little boy who comes to collect him for the meeting where he's forced into the first assassination saying, "Which one of you is the Peaky Blinder devil?"

Season 3 Tommy wondering if he cursed Grace by giving her the blue sapphire and that's why she died, but believing it's really because he created bad blood with the Changrettas. "I pushed some people too far".

Season 4 Tommy talking to Jessie Eden about the man he used to be before the war (someone known for his sweetness, someone with a moral fiber), and then asking Lizzie to be in charge of some goodness he is trying to recapture in himself through charity work.

Tommy killing Dangerous (a black horse) at the opening of season 5 then putting the gun to his own head. Seeing Dangerous at the end of the season while something wearing Grace's face promises his pain can end if he embraces oblivion.

Season 5 Linda and Lizzie talking and Linda saying "There's good and there's evil" and Lizzie saying "and there's box mixed" "And that's you and me and Arthur. What about [Tommy]?" "He's making up his mind." While looking at a picture of Tommy standing next to a white horse.

Tommy warning Arthur and Michael right before Mosley comes into the office "You've both met bad men before. The man you're about to meet is the devil".

Tommy split between the two mirrors at their vanity (the night they put on Swan Lake with it's white and black swan). Lizzie saying, "Tommy, I swear to God you're bad... but [Mosley] is fucking evil." Lizzie saying "You're [spying on Mosley] because you think it's the right thing to do." Tommy being scared of what she's saying—doesn't like being split between these two identities.

Tommy saying "Every time I try to do a good thing people get hurt". Ada essentially saying Tommy's touch is a curse after Ben Younger dies.

Michael blaming Tommy for Polly's death.

Ruby starting to get sick, saying "Devil" in Romani, Tommy taking this as a terrible omen and saying to keep Ruby away from water and away from horses (Tommy has flashbacks where a specter from the war—a devil—is trying to drown him and Tommy always says he is himself a horse).

Season 4 Polly saying when Tommy's PTSD flares at the end of season 4 "We shake hands with devils and walk past them". Tommy split in half after the suicide attempt, half his face caked in mud, the other half clean, saying "they wouldn't let me pass". He is trapped in limbo between good and evil.

Tommy in 6x03 in the sanatorium saying to Lizzie desperately "We have brough on this curse" "They [devils] wouldn't let me pass... they wouldn't let me pass... it is my purpose... to punish me..." Esme reinforcing the idea that Tommy was cursed, because he gave the blue sapphire to the Barwells and the sapphire killed their daughter.

Tommy getting a chest X-ray saying "Only God knows what's inside". Red light all around him like a demonic presence but then a flash of white.

Tommy telling Lizzie "I will change and change for good but not just yet." Begging her to hold on just a little longer.

Michael calling Tommy the devil over and over through season 6. Tommy finding out he is dying then saying "Not the devil just an ordinary mortal man."

Finally, Tommy in that dining room with Mosley, Mitford, and Nelson—three people who are pure evil—and saying he belongs with them. He has given up on the idea that he can be good (his means of escape from limbo) and embraced that he belongs in the presence of evil. This is what he deserves. He deserves to be in hell surrounded by demons, no matter that it destroys him emotionally to the point it has literally contributed to his seizures and his madness. It is a form of torture to even be in the same room as these people but he thinks it is what he deserves.