Few side characters from Peaky Blinders loom as large or as iconic as Tom Hardy’s Alfie Solomons, the brooding, cunning Camden Town kingpin. A shrewd Jewish gangster, his every gravelly grunt and rum-soaked rant quickly turned into pure TV gold. That signature Hardy growl, paired with his unpredictable menace, made his frenemy dynamic with Tommy Shelby unforgettable. And just when fans thought they had seen the last of him, Alfie nearly made a return in Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man.

Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight, while chatting with The Hollywood Reporter, dropped a bombshell idea he had kept under wraps.

"Ever since he was shot on the beach at Margate [in season four]," Knight said, "you’ve only ever seen Tommy and Alfie together alone."

He continued, "I thought, Maybe [Alfie] appears, and we realize he’s been dead all that time."

Tommy Shelby is no stranger to chatting with the dead. Think of those eerie season five moments when his late wife Grace, played by Annabelle Wallis, popped up like a spectral reminder of his guilt. Alfie's last two seasons mirrored that—no bystanders crashing their broody hangouts, just Tommy and the Camden kingpin trading barbs.

It screamed setup for a twist where Alfie was pure hallucination, fitting Tommy's fractured mind after all the battle scars and betrayals. Tom Hardy and Cillian Murphy already had that unspoken spark from Nolan flicks like Inception, The Dark Knight Rises, and Dunkirk, but Knight cranked it up with Peaky's unforgettable face-offs—clips that still rack up views online.

While Knight ultimately ditched the ghostly Alfie twist, the new film still delivers plenty of haunting family echoes.

Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man brings emotional closure

Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man picks up in 1940 amid WWII, six years after the TV series finale. Cillian Murphy reprises Tommy Shelby, now self-exiled in isolation after his brother Arthur’s apparent 1938 s******, haunted by visions of his late daughter Ruby. Back in Birmingham, Tommy’s son Duke has taken the Peaky Blinders helm, veering into reckless violence under agent John Beckett’s influence.

The gang raids a factory for munitions to distribute counterfeit cash across Britain, aiming to cripple the nation. Ada Shelby, now Birmingham South MP, warns Tommy of the dangers, pulling him back when Duke’s path turns deadly, culminating in Ada’s m***** by Beckett. Tommy rallies the Blinders for a high-stakes showdown, destroying the fake money with a landmine and gunning down Beckett’s forces.

Fatally wounded, Tommy urges Duke to end him with a special bullet, dying while reciting In the Bleak Midwinter for peace at last. This epic closure echoes Knight's teased Alfie twist from earlier seasons, where ghostly encounters like Tommy's with 'dead' allies hinted at mind games, now fully realized in The Immortal Man's spectral family ties and ultimate Shelby sendoff.

What do you think about Steven Knight teasing the wild Tom Hardy twist he ditched? Let us know in the comments.

Written by

Pratham Gurung

Edited by

Hriddhi Maitra