Four years is a long time to wait. The final episode of Peaky Blinders aired in June 2022, ending one of the most beloved British crime dramas of the modern era on a cliffhanger that left millions of fans with unanswered questions about Tommy Shelby’s fate. Now, at long last, those questions are about to be answered — and from early reactions, it sounds like the wait was worth every agonizing month.
Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man premiered at Symphony Hall in Birmingham on March 2, opened in select theaters on March 6, and will land globally on Netflix on March 20 — the same day as Project Hail Mary, making March 20 arguably the most stacked single day for new releases this year. Here is everything you need to know.
What Is the Film About?
The Immortal Man picks up after the events of the TV series finale. Tommy Shelby, now in self-imposed exile, is dragged back to Birmingham when his estranged son becomes entangled in a Nazi plot. With his family under threat and the fate of the nation itself potentially at stake, Tommy must confront his past, his legacy, and his own demons.
The film is set against the backdrop of World War II — specifically the Birmingham Blitz, a period between 1940 and 1943 during which the city was subjected to some of the most intense German bombing campaigns in Britain. It’s a rich, high-stakes setting that broadens the world of Peaky Blinders considerably, taking it out of the back streets of Small Heath and placing it against the full panorama of wartime Britain.
Creator and writer Steven Knight, who wrote all six seasons of the original series, penned the screenplay. Director Tom Harper, who directed episodes early in the show’s run, was brought back to helm the feature — bringing an intimate familiarity with the material to what is ultimately a much bigger canvas.
The Cast: Old Faces and New
Cillian Murphy, who won the Best Actor Oscar for Oppenheimer in 2024, returns as Tommy Shelby. The role has always been his, and Murphy was characteristically candid about his return: he insisted that if the story wasn’t right, he wouldn’t do it. Clearly, it was right.
Returning alongside Murphy are Sophie Rundle as Ada Shelby, Stephen Graham as Hayden Stagg, Packy Lee, Ned Dennehy, and Ian Peck — familiar faces who give the film its connective tissue to the six seasons that came before it.
But the new additions are what have generated much of the pre-release buzz. Barry Keoghan — Hollywood’s most in-demand character actor right now, fresh off acclaimed turns in Saltburn and The Banshees of Inisherin — joins the film in an undisclosed role that has been kept tightly under wraps. Rebecca Ferguson (Dune, Mission: Impossible) and Tim Roth (Pulp Fiction) round out an exceptional ensemble.
The Soundtrack Is Already Turning Heads
Music has always been as integral to Peaky Blinders as the flat caps and the violence. The show’s unusual habit of pairing period drama with contemporary artists — Nick Cave, PJ Harvey, Arctic Monkeys — became one of its defining stylistic signatures, and the film carries that tradition forward.
The official soundtrack, released on March 6 via RCA Records UK, features 36 tracks including an original score by longtime series collaborators Antony Genn and Martin Slattery. New recordings come from Grian Chatten of Fontaines D.C. and Amy Taylor of Amyl & the Sniffers, with two separate covers of Massive Attack tracks — one by Chatten and one by Girl In The Year Above. The first single from the album, “Puppet,” is already available to stream, and has been receiving strong responses from fans of the series.
Do You Need to Watch the Show First?
This is the question everybody is asking, and the honest answer is: it depends on how much you want to get out of it. The film is designed to be accessible to newcomers, and Netflix has said it can be enjoyed as a standalone thriller. But the emotional payoff — the weight of Tommy Shelby’s arc, the relationships between the Shelby family members, the significance of certain returning characters — is substantially deeper if you’ve watched the series.
All six seasons of Peaky Blinders are currently streaming on Netflix, and a binge of even the first two seasons would give most viewers enough grounding to appreciate the film fully. For those who want a shorter catch-up, Netflix has also published a comprehensive guide to the most important plot points and character arcs from the series, available on their Tudum editorial site.
What Comes After The Immortal Man?
The Peaky Blinders universe is not going away. Netflix has already confirmed a spinoff series is in active development, set in Birmingham in the 1950s and following a new generation of the Shelby family. Two full seasons of the spinoff have been commissioned, meaning the world Steven Knight built over a decade of television is being handed carefully to a new era.
Whether The Immortal Man is truly Tommy Shelby’s final chapter, or whether Murphy’s door remains open for the future, has not been confirmed. Given the film’s reception so far, it seems safe to expect that question will be debated passionately for some time to come.
Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man is in select theaters now and streams globally on Netflix from March 20, 2026. The film runs 1 hour and 52 minutes and is rated R.
Film Plot Hub will have a full plot summary and Ending Explained for Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man available from March 20. Bookmark us — because this one is going to need explaining.