Four years. That's how long Peaky Blinders fans have been waiting, flat caps in hand, for Tommy Shelby to walk back through the door. Since the sixth season wrapped in 2022, the wait for a movie-length follow-up has felt less like a pause and more like an exile — appropriate, given where Tommy ended up. Now, Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man is finally here, landing on Netflix on March 20, 2026, and the question burning in every fan's mind is simple: was it worth it?
Short answer? Mostly, yes. Longer answer? Pour yourself a Shelby family whiskey — this is going to take a minute.
The Long Road to The Immortal Man
Why Did It Take Four Years?
The gap between Peaky Blinders Series 6 and this film wasn't simply a matter of scheduling. Speaking to Rolling Stone in May 2023, Cillian Murphy indicated his willingness to return, saying that it would have to feel "legitimate and justified." In December 2023, series creator Steven Knight confirmed he was finalizing the script, and by March 2024, Murphy's return as Tommy Shelby was officially confirmed. Meanwhile, Murphy won an Academy Award for Oppenheimer, which simultaneously raised the stakes and proved beyond any doubt that this franchise deserved a proper cinematic send-off.
Principal photography began on September 30, 2024, at Digbeth Loc Studios in Birmingham and in the West Midlands, wrapping on December 13, 2024. The whole production was, remarkably, conceived, written, filmed, and delivered to the world in under 18 months. Not bad for one of the most anticipated British films in recent memory.
From BBC Series to Netflix Film
The British television series Peaky Blinders ran for six seasons between 2013 and 2022, and creator Steven Knight had been discussing the possibility of a feature-length continuation since January 2021. Making the leap from beloved TV institution to standalone film is notoriously tricky — just ask anyone who suffered through Sex and the City 2 — but Knight had something most TV-to-film transitions don't: a genuinely unfinished story and an audience desperate to see it concluded.
The film premiered at Symphony Hall, Birmingham, on March 3, 2026, released in select cinemas on March 6, and arrived globally on Netflix on March 20, 2026.
What Is Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man About?
The Setting: Birmingham, 1940
The drama picks up in November 1940, when England is already deep in the Second World War. A munitions factory staffed by women in Birmingham is bombed by Nazi aerial strikes, claiming more than 100 victims. Tommy has long since secluded himself far away, isolated in a remote farmhouse, haunted by wartime memories and what he fears are family ghosts.
If you thought the last time we saw Tommy — gaunt, sickly, wandering through a field and trying to make peace with his own mortality — was a fitting farewell, you weren't wrong. Our first glimpse of Murphy as the older, sadder Tommy — goodbye sharp tailoring and aggressive high-and-tight haircut, hello glum knitwear and wire-rimmed spectacles — sets the tone for what follows. This isn't the swaggering Tommy of Season 1. This is a man who has survived everything and isn't sure that's a blessing.
The Nazi Plot: Counterfeit Currency and Wartime Stakes
After his estranged son gets embroiled in a Nazi plot, self-exiled gangster Tommy Shelby must return to Birmingham to save his family — and his nation. Specifically, the gang's collective brutality is marshaled against a Nazi plot to break Britain via a shedload of counterfeit currency — weaving a wealth of existing Blinders lore into a freestanding wartime resistance storyline.
It's a premise that sounds almost comically grand, and the film winks at that. This has always been Peaky Blinders' secret weapon: taking genuinely ridiculous plots and grounding them in character work so specific and so lived-in that you forget how silly the surface-level story is.
The Cast: Old Faces and Thrilling New Additions
Cillian Murphy Returns as Tommy Shelby
Let's not waste time on this one. Cillian Murphy is magnificent. He is the main reason to return to the property, or to introduce yourself to it if you've never watched Peaky Blinders before. Murphy's performance here is more restrained and reflective than in previous seasons — anchoring a solemn two-hour character study and reckoning, with Shelby confronting the sins of his past, grappling with the possibility of an afterlife, and rediscovering the man he once was.
There's a scene — you'll know it when you see it — where Tommy rides on horseback through bombed-out, mud-soaked Birmingham, and it hit this reviewer like a freight train. When a graying Tommy rides into Small Heath on a black horse, the movie offers a mix of nostalgia and stirring imagery that only this franchise could deliver.
Barry Keoghan as Duke Shelby — The Heir to Chaos
If Murphy is the heart of the film, Barry Keoghan is its wild pulse. Duke Shelby is an unscrupulous loose cannon who isn't picky about his allies, a bratty teenage nihilist at heart. Keoghan, whose unsettling presence tends to cast him as lethal maniacs, hopeless naifs, or somehow both at once, is almost too predictably perfect in the part.
Now all grown-up and recast, he is causing havoc trying to outdo his dad — running reckless operations, pilfering ammunition from British soldiers, and even fraternizing with the enemy. The father-son dynamic between Murphy and Keoghan is the film's emotional core, and it delivers. Watching Tommy look at Duke and see everything he feared he'd pass on is genuinely heartbreaking.
Tim Roth, Rebecca Ferguson, and the Supporting Players
The film also delivers delightful return visits from Rebecca Ferguson, Stephen Graham, and Packy Lee. Tim Roth plays Beckett, a fascist conspirator who tries to wield a paternal power over Duke Shelby. Roth is reliably excellent — watchful, cold, and quietly menacing. The film's one notable weak point in the casting department is that Beckett never quite reaches the legendary villain status the story needs him to. But more on that shortly.
Direction, Cinematography & the Signature Peaky Style
Tom Harper at the Helm
Series one director Tom Harper returns to close out Tommy's story, and his reunion with the material feels genuine. George Steel's cinematography lends a newfound beauty to the film and its bleak, wintry aesthetics on the big screen. The iconic universe of tan-colored leather, suave tailoring, hard liquor, swill, and grime has been carefully restored despite the gaps in the cast.
Harper doesn't try to reinvent the visual language of Peaky Blinders — he deepens it. The industrial ruins of wartime Birmingham look beautiful in a way that only this show could make work. It's the visual equivalent of a jazz musician who knows every note of the standard before deciding which ones to bend.
Does It Look Like a Movie or an Episode?
Here's the honest truth: The Immortal Man feels less like a cinematic expansion than a new one-episode season. Despite its Nazi-plot premise and war-torn backdrop, there is no widening of scope, no great shift of perspective or aesthetic. If you were hoping for a Lawrence of Arabia-scale visual experience, this isn't quite that. But if you wanted the show at its best, running at full speed with a larger budget? That's exactly what you get.
The Soundtrack: Rock 'n' Roll Meets WWII
One of the original show's greatest tricks was pairing period costumes with anachronistic rock and soul music — and The Immortal Man doesn't abandon that formula for a second. The film is faithful to the franchise's customary angst, with riotous needle drops and an obligatory new Nick Cave track courtesy of Antony Genn and Martin Slattery.
The movie is ultimately a steampunk-adjacent jukebox musical, full of emotion, explosive action, and propulsive rock 'n' roll. Whether that combination thrills you or makes you roll your eyes will probably tell you everything you need to know about whether this movie is for you.
What Works Brilliantly in The Immortal Man
Tommy Shelby's Reckoning With the Past
There are daddy issues aplenty here — with Tommy out of the fray, retired to a grandly crumbling rural estate, grieving the deaths of his young daughter and devoted brother, and very gradually writing his memoirs. The memoir conceit is lovely. The film is titled The Immortal Man — and that, we learn, is also the title of Tommy's work in progress. He is literally writing his own legend, trying to decide which version of himself deserves to be remembered.
Trim, accessible, and refreshingly coherent, the film accomplishes what the final two seasons could not: it tells a proper story, it follows a straight line, and it gives its cranky, chain-smoking lead a genuinely thrilling send-off. That's high praise, and it's earned.
Barry Keoghan Steals Every Scene He's In
Barry Keoghan proves to be a terrific addition to the franchise. His Duke Shelby is Tommy's shadow-self — the version of the man who never found anything worth believing in. Every scene between the two of them crackles with the unspoken weight of a relationship defined by absence. Keoghan, fresh off his own career-defining run of performances, brings a live-wire unpredictability to every frame. You genuinely don't know what Duke is going to do next, which keeps you riveted.
What Doesn't Quite Land
A Villain Who Needed More Time
If there's a drawback, it's that Tim Roth's villain never quite becomes as memorable, or as intimidating, as he should have been. In the original series, villains like Luca Changretta or Oswald Mosley were given entire seasons to build their menace. Beckett gets perhaps 25 minutes of meaningful screen time, and while Roth does everything in his considerable power, the film never quite makes him feel like a genuine match for Tommy.
Too Much Story, Too Little Space
The result inevitably feels like the character evolutions, machinations, and plot pivots of an entire series of the show compressed desperately into 112 minutes. Some characters from the original series are mentioned and then tossed aside, which will sting for longtime fans. The film is doing the work of a season in the runtime of a feature, and you can occasionally feel the seams straining.
Critical Reception: What the Numbers Say
The critical community has largely embraced the film. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a 91% approval rating based on 68 reviews, with the site consensus reading: "Capping off Tommy Shelby's story with grit and swagger, The Immortal Man is a satisfying conclusion to Peaky Blinders that also stands tall on its own self-contained terms."
On IMDb, the film carries a score of 7.7 out of 10. The audience response has been enthusiastic, with particular praise for Murphy's performance and the father-son dynamic at the film's core. Dissenters exist — some feel the absence of key original cast members hollows out the emotional stakes — but they are decidedly in the minority.
How It Compares to El Camino and Other TV-to-Film Transitions
The gold standard for "beloved TV show gets a movie sequel" is arguably El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie, and several critics have reached for that comparison here. One reviewer called it "as essential as it gets — doing for Peaky Blinders what El Camino did for Breaking Bad." That's a high bar, and whether The Immortal Man clears it depends on how much closure you felt the show's ending already provided.
Unlike El Camino, which was addressing a genuinely unresolved character arc, The Immortal Man is building on an ending that many fans found satisfying. That makes its job harder — it has to justify its own existence, not just conclude unfinished business. To its enormous credit, it largely does.
Is The Immortal Man Worth the 4-Year Wait?
The film is a far better sequel to six seasons of television than it should have been — everything you want in a Peaky Blinders movie. It's not a perfect film. The villain needed more room to breathe, the supporting cast deserved more time, and it occasionally feels like the show's greatest hits on shuffle rather than a bold new chapter.
But here's the thing: when Cillian Murphy is on screen — which is most of the time — The Immortal Man reaches heights that justify every single day of the four-year wait. This is Steven Knight's gangster rock opera at its finest, and an experience as bloody, tense, and satisfying as fans could ever hope to see. Tommy Shelby gets a send-off worthy of his legend. And in the end, for the millions of fans who have followed this man through six seasons of grief, violence, and impossible survival — that's everything.
Conclusion
Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man is the rare franchise farewell that earns its emotional payoff. It isn't flawless — the runtime strains under the weight of its ambitions, and Tim Roth's villain deserved more space to become truly terrifying — but its strengths far outweigh its weaknesses. Cillian Murphy delivers one of his finest performances, Barry Keoghan announces himself as the franchise's ideal heir, and Steven Knight writes a conclusion to Tommy Shelby's story that feels both earned and genuinely moving. For fans who have been waiting four years in the cold, The Immortal Man is more than worth the wait. By order of the Peaky Blinders.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
1. Do I need to watch all six seasons of Peaky Blinders before watching The Immortal Man? While The Immortal Man is designed to be somewhat accessible to newcomers, you'll get significantly more out of it as an existing fan. The emotional weight of Tommy's arc, Duke's introduction in Season 6, and the returns of familiar characters will all land harder if you've seen what came before. All six seasons are on Netflix — and at six episodes each, they go fast.
2. Where can I watch Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man? The film is currently streaming globally on Netflix as of March 20, 2026. It also had a limited theatrical run beginning March 6, 2026. For most viewers, Netflix is the primary way to watch.
3. How long is Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man? The film runs approximately 112 minutes — just under two hours. It's a brisk, efficient runtime, though some critics feel that a full season's worth of story has been compressed into that space.
4. Is Barry Keoghan good in the Peaky Blinders movie? Absolutely. Barry Keoghan is one of the film's undisputed highlights, bringing wild, unpredictable energy to the role of Duke Shelby. His scenes opposite Cillian Murphy are electric, and he makes a compelling case for Duke as the future of the franchise should it continue.
5. Does The Immortal Man end the Peaky Blinders story definitively? The film provides a strong sense of closure for Tommy Shelby's arc, specifically, wrapping up the central storyline with genuine emotional finality. However, the Peaky Blinders universe is left open enough that future stories — following Duke or other characters — remain possible if Steven Knight and Netflix choose to pursue them.
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