This episode of Netflix’s The Gentlemen is wall-to-wall action — a crescendo of dead-of-night tension and suspense that ends in a river of blood. Naturally, I’m going to start by talking about an intimate character moment.
Early on in the episode, before the agents of…whoever engage the mostly civilian members of the Horniman family and household in a deadly game of cat and mouse, Lady Sabrina’s son-in-law Nanny appears to pull rank on Geoffrey in a rather snobbish way. Either not detecting how close Geoff is to the family or not particularly caring, he shoos him out of the house back to his own cottage so that the real family members can relax on their own. It’s an uncharacteristically ugly moment from Nanny, whose primary characteristic besides his impeccable manners is being a big sweetheart.
(Nanny’s race does not appear to be something the show is going to bring up, and that’s probably for the best. The Gentlemen has been so good about its grasp always exceeding its reach, not the other way around.)
But later on, I think we find out the real reason why he gave Geoff the high hat. Left alone with the gamekeeper during the siege — Nanny, an old army buddy of Eddie’s, can more than hold his own in a firefight as it turns out — Nanny tells Geoff he knows he’s his baby’s real grandfather. His only question is why he never told him, when he kept giving him opportunities to do so. No one ever says as much, but it seems Nanny excluded Geoff because he felt excluded by Geoff.
A deft bit of character work between two supporting players I never expected to have much of a moment together, in the middle of 40 minutes of action. That’s how it’s done.
The bulk of the episode takes place after a team of highly trained mercenaries infiltrates the grounds, on what we eventually learn is a mission to abduct Tarquin. This is the kind of episode you put Vinnie Jones in your show for; few actors bring his stone-faced gravitas to gun battle. Meanwhile, his chemistry with Joely Richardson as Sabrina is off the charts: Before everything goes wrong, she proposes moving to a house near his where it’s clear they used to fuck, implying heavily they’ll now be free to do so at will. Despite all the guns blazing, it’s the hottest moment of the episode.
In the end, everyone survives, including the poor butler Mister Lawrence (Stephane Fichet), who winds up wounded like Nanny. For his part, Nanny gets one of the coldest kills in the show, dropping a kidnapper at close range like Dirty Harry. George (Richard McCabe), the neighboring gamekeeper, plays a pivotal role as well despite looking about as dangerous as a housecat. Even Charly and Sabrina get in on the act, running over one of the attackers not once, not twice, but three times, just to be sure.
It all looks great, too. It’s not any kind of natural lighting by any stretch of the imagination, but the blue-grey light in which everything is bathed feels airy, crisp, and three-dimensional, rather than slapped on like a dull coat of paint. A freeze-frame on Geoffrey after his final kill that fades into a view of the branches of the trees the next morning is old-school pop-art stuff. It took my breath away.
Only a few hours later, Eddie fends off a similarly well-equipped attempt on his life by obvious pros. The coordination of the three attacks — the plane bombing, the raid on Halstead Manor, the follow-up hit on Eddie — suggests a level of sophistication and resources that only a few players in the Gentlemen-verse possess.
Eddie naturally suspects Bobby Glass, but when Susie delivers news of the raid to her incarcerated dad, his surprise seems genuine. On the other hand, at the urging of the Bannik, he’s about to tell her something he doesn’t think she’ll want to hear when the credits roll, so who knows? Yet he doesn’t feel like the big bad of the piece to me.
For what it’s worth, my money is on Marco Moretti; sacrificing your beloved goddaughter to take out your business partner and assume control of his assets is just the kind of grand act of bastardry the season feels like it’s been building towards.
Whoever dunit, the stage is set for a pretty spectacular showdown in the finale. On one side, the mystery villain. On the other, a fully armed and operational Eddie, back from the wildnerness Bobby banished him to and out to avenge the love of his life. Maybe that’s romantic, in a twisted sense. Or maybe this is just a guy looking for an excuse to go wild, and has been all along.
Sean T. Collins (@seantcollins.com on Bluesky and theseantcollins on Patreon) has written about television for The New York Times, Vulture, Rolling Stone, and elsewhere. He is the author of Pain Don’t Hurt: Meditations on Road House. He lives with his family on Long Island.