How Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man lets down Ada Shelby in a big way

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At first glance, Peaky Blinders seems like a show made for men. It’s a tough, historical drama centered on a family of criminals, and it quickly turned Cillian Murphy’s character, Tommy Shelby—a violent, chain-smoking man who always wears a cap—into a popular figure.

Just like Tommy Shelby, who is deeply scarred by the past and plagued by inner demons, the show Peaky Blinders is surprisingly complex. Unlike many other series that focus on male protagonists, Peaky Blinders also boasts a rich cast of well-developed and complicated female characters alongside its tough, rebellious heroes.

Whether it’s Grace Burgess, starting as an undercover agent and becoming a love interest, or the powerful matriarch Polly Gray, the women in this show are complex characters with their own goals and pasts. They’re just as strong and capable as any of the Shelby men.

The female characters were crucial to the success of Peaky Blinders, making it disappointing that the upcoming movie largely leaves them out. Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man features very few of the strong female characters that defined the series, and those who do appear feel like minor additions to the story.

While the show consistently included around a dozen important female characters who greatly influenced the plot, the entire run of The Immortal Man only features two noteworthy women.

Kaulo is a Romani fortune teller with a hidden past and unclear goals. She seems haunted by the memory of her deceased sister, and her character feels underdeveloped and doesn’t really contribute much to the story.

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She seems intended to bring the same mysterious and free-spirited energy to the story that a previous character did, but she mostly exists to encourage the male characters. It’s not surprising she also has a romantic connection with Tommy, although their scene together is surprisingly unromantic.

But it is Ada Shelby who is treated most abominably.

Ada Shelby is the only sister in the family and has a complex history with her brothers and their criminal empire. While she often criticizes their actions, she’s secretly a strong force behind their success. However, unlike her brothers, she uses her intelligence, connections, and understanding of people – rather than brute force – to get things done.

Throughout the series, Ada frequently connected the Peaky Blinders’ rough street life with the higher-level political world Tommy was becoming involved in. She was also one of the few people, like Polly, who wasn’t afraid to tell her brothers what she really thought, and she often provided a sense of moral clarity when Tommy made risky or extreme choices.

In Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man, we discover that Ada has taken on a leadership role after Tommy’s departure, successfully running for Parliament in his former district. She’s the first to publicly challenge her nephew, Duke, for exploiting the Peaky Blinders for personal gain. Notably, she’s the only one brave enough to pursue justice against him for stealing weapons and hurting people in her community.

The developing tension within the family is interesting at first, but quickly becomes pointless when Ada is shockingly killed around the middle of the film by John Beckett, a man working with British fascists. Even more upsetting is that her death serves the story’s focus on Tommy, rather than being about Ada as a person.

A compelling character from the Shelby family is reduced to simply a way to move the story forward, with her death intended to push her brother to fight even harder. However, this feels unnecessary, as Tommy was already highly motivated to defeat Beckett – a dangerous Nazi actively working against his country and using his own son to do it.

Man, Cillian Murphy nailed Tommy’s reaction to Ada dying. There were these two scenes – one where he almost sees it happening, and another where he’s standing with her body, confessing all the terrible things he’s done to the family. You could really feel his grief, and it was clear he blamed himself, at least a little. It really hit me that if he’d just gone back to Birmingham when Ada first asked him to, none of this might have happened.

Her death doesn’t feel significant to the overall story, except for how it affects Tommy. Duke, who is largely responsible for his aunt’s death, reacts with childish complaints when his father confronts him, and he doesn’t even attend the funeral.

Ada Shelby’s funeral was shockingly small, with only a handful of people present: her immediate family and a few older members of the gang. It’s strange that so few people came – did the rest of Birmingham, or even the newer Shelbys the show seems to be setting up for the future, simply forget about her? It’s hard to believe no one noticed the murder of a Member of Parliament. How did things end up this way?

As a huge fan of Peaky Blinders, I get that there were probably lots of practical reasons why Ada’s role in The Immortal Man was limited – maybe they needed space for other storylines, or actors couldn’t film as much. But honestly, after being such an important character throughout the whole series, Ada deserved a more meaningful ending than just being an afterthought in Tommy’s story. It felt like she deserved better than that.

Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man is available to watch now on Netflix.

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2026-03-21 10:20