Peaky Blinders thoughts - Duke the Duplicate Shelby. *SPOILERS*
So I was giving my thoughts on The Immortal Man and I hit this vein that I think should be its own post.
SPOILERS FOR DA MOVIE BELOW:
I feel like The Immortal Man was designed to kill off Tommy and the other major characters because Stephen Knight wants to make way for the "new gen" of the Peaky Blinders and establish Duke as the new lead, and, just my opinion, he failed at the second half.
I was thinking about why and it's simple: I don't care about Duke Shelby, and I also think that Duke wasn't originally going to exist.
Let me cook:
Stephen Knight CLEARLY wanted to kill Tommy in this specific way for the entire show. There is so much foreshadowing laid down for it, all the way back to Season One - the golden bullet with his name, Polly's line about "it's his cleverness that'll kill him" (he planned his own death), his lines in Season Five about someone coming to take his crown, the amount of times a gun is pointed at him, Tommy calling himself "already dead", Freddie talking about shooting mad horses and Tommy calling himself and being associated with horses, etc.
But I don't think Duke was planned from the start because there was zero foreshadowing I can think of that Tommy might have had a kid he didn't know about running around - Peaky Blinders loves foreshadowing. Nor do I think Duke was originally going to be the one to kill Tommy - I think it was supposed to be Michael.
Michael had all the elements to make him the successor, as well as the fact Peaky Blinders also loves a Godfather shout-out. He's family but he's always going to be an outsider because he wasn't raised with them. He lacks the psychosis of Arthur, Tommy and John because he was too young to serve. In Season Two, Tommy and Michael have a lot of very emotionally charged scenes where we get Tommy appraising Michael and clearly seeing something in him he doesn't in Arthur and John - "You've got smart eyes", but Michael is still a kid, so the focus is first to integrated him into the family slowly and let Polly get used to having her son back. (Also, notice how Isaiah was there acting as Duke's number two in the movie when previously he was shown to be basically Finn's best friend in the early seasons and then he becomes Michael's because they're the same age. It's funny how Isaiah is always there with one of the younger Shelby boys, like he's meant to be the Arthur to whichever one of the three is meant to be Tommy.)
I actually feel like Finn would've made more sense in Duke's role than Duke, at least with Finn he was both an established character, had reasons to both love and hate Tommy and seeing him finally become the gangster his brothers were would've been more interesting, but I always got the impression the writers had no idea what to do with Finn when he got older, plus the show like to emphasize that any man who didn't serve will never understand those who did. Like you'd think they'd let his character step up after John's death but Finn continues to be a deadweight as an adult.
It's funny, I always got the sense Michael was meant to be Duke, but for some reason the writers disliked Michael's character so they changed direction with him and had him turn against Tommy and killed him off (and I think Polly's death meant the writers were kind of forced down that route, but they'd already planted seeds of Michael turning against Tommy by Season Four), but then they didn't have anybody who would fill in the role of a younger man taking Tommy's crown - they certainly couldn't use Charles, who stopped being important after Season Three because he exists because the writers needed a reason for Tommy to get back with Grace and then Charles is shielded, coddled, and kept out of the way for the rest of the show. It wouldn't have made any sense for Charles to kill Tommy when he's barely a character and to me it's always been a bit ambiguous about whether or not he's actually Tommy's biological child when he doesn't look anything like him.
Do you know what would have been more interesting than Duke appearing out of nowhere in Season Six? If Ruby became the true heir to Tommy - not Charles, not Michael, not Duke, but his daughter. In a show where female characters are often underestimated (often at the peril of the people around them), it would've been great if Ruby took in all the lessons from Tommy, Lizzie, her aunt Polly and aunt Ada and used all her family's combined experience to become the new queen. But nope! A dead daughter is peak tragic angst, WAY better than a dead best friend/girlfriend/mother/wife/brother, so all Ruby gets to be is Tommy's angel of death because god forbid he has a single female character important to him (except for May) who doesn't get killed off to fuel his manpain. I know the show had no choice with Polly because of Helen McCrory's passing, but Ada was such a blatant example of fridging. It only happened to force Tommy to stop pouting in his house and for Duke to want to atone. (Also before anyone tries to add in Grace - she was narratively a dead end. After Campbell died she had nothing to contribute to the plot anymore except being a trophy Tommy won. And killing her off is narrative symmetry, which the show loves - her poorly thought-out, selfish actions ultimately cause Danny Whizzbang's death in Season One. Then John's poorly thought-out, selfish actions cause her death in Season Three. The show loves doing that, like how Polly was the one who got Ada and Tommy to reconcile in Season One and then Ada gets Polly and Tommy to reconcile in Season Four.)
Anyway, I've heard that Peaky Blinders has already been greenlit for another two seasons, but I personally have zero interest in watching it. Why should I? I don't care about anyone anymore. None of the Shelby children have ever been properly fleshed out enough for me to really feel invested enough in them to keep going. Take Karl - he's the first baby of the Shelby's and he's been in the show since Season One, his birth was a huge plot point, but after that? Nothing. I totally get that given how violent Peaky Blinders is, they didn't want any child actors being exposed to anything, but even when Karl is in his late teens, we barely see him. Then you have Ada's daughter who was seen in the movie for like two seconds, John and Arthur's kids aren't mentioned, Charles wasn't even at his own father's funeral, Ruby is only present as a ghost, etc. The only one left is Duke and I don't give a shit about Duke - he spent the entire movie making his daddy issues everyone else's problem. I don't have much opinion on Barry Keoghan as an actor, but would I want to watch several episodes of him being the new Peaky Blinders lead? No, not really.
To me, Cillian Murphy was Peaky Blinders. I read somewhere that Jason Statham was going to originally play Tommy and to be completely honest, I don't think the show would've been what it is in that case. And I don't have beef with Jason Statham, I like him in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, but...Cillian Murphy's Tommy is one of a kind.
