If anything’s become clear over the first two seasons of Gangs Of London, it’s that nobody is safe. Seemingly major players can be offed with a moment’s notice – and, in rare cases, they even come back. Season 2, which saw Corin Hardy take over as showrunner from Gareth Evans, featured a particularly big shocker early in its run. MAJOR SPOILER ALERT FOR SEASON 2…
Still here? Then you’ll know that Paapa Essiedu’s Alex Dumani didn’t make it out of the end of the first episode alive, throwing himself off the edge of a building. And it turns out, it wasn’t always going to go down that way.
Speaking to Empire in the latest issue, Hardy opened up on the secrets of Season 2 – including the fact that, originally, Alex was due to play a much bigger part in this batch of episodes. But given Essiedu’s rising profile, scheduling issues arose. “We had to adjust the whole storyline around the fact that he wouldn’t be in the whole show,” Hardy laughs. “So it was a sad, but exciting, revelation. We actually don’t want to kill off these people, because as characters you get really close to them. So we had to go back and forth on it.”
Where some characters bowed out early, others re-emerged from the shadows. Later in the series, it emerges that Joe Cole’s ruthless Sean Wallace isn’t actually dead – swooping in to save his younger brother Billy (Brian Vernel) from a sticky end. That, says Hardy, was always the plan. “We knew from the end of Season 1 that Sean Wallace would be coming back,” he says, noting the moment in the first rune that Cole's character was shot in the face by Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù’s Elliot. “I shot that ending very specifically, in terms of where he gets shot.” Not that audiences should get used to characters making that kind of comeback. “Brian is so good in that moment – it’s like a vision has saved him, but it’s his brother,” says Hardy. “But we don’t want to make a thing of bringing characters back!” With Season 3 officially confirmed, get ready for many more violent delights to come.
Read Empire’s full Gangs Of London Season 2 breakdown with Corin Hardy in the world-exclusive Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania issue – on sale Thursday 19 January and available to pre-order online here. Gangs Of London Season 2 is out now on Blu-ray and DVD, and streaming on Sky and NOW.