Gangs of London, Season 3, Episode 7

Gangs of London
Season 3
Episode 7

The prodigal bastard

A thought that I’ve had more than once while watching and rewatching Gangs of London’s third season is that this series would have been better served if it had been conceived as an anthology show from day one.

Something on the model of True Detective, or The White Lotus, resetting with a new conflict and a new cast of characters each season.

All three seasons up to this point have had different showrunners, and you can definitely tell, even if you’re not someone who’s taken it upon himself to write essay-length breakdowns of every episode. The game of telephone starting with Gareth Evans, leading through Corin Hardy to Kim Hong-Sun, has resulted in a series with a very erratic long-term narrative. It’s forever doubling back and disagreeing with itself; abandoning plot elements that seemed like they were going somewhere (where exactly is Jacqueline Robinson née Wallace these days, anyway?), or else relitigating plot points that were already satisfactorily resolved (i.e. the death of Elliot’s family, never remotely positioned as something suspicious in prior seasons).

The kicker is, Season 3 isn’t anywhere close to being the sloppy plie-up of plotlines that Season 2 was. For as much as it has going on, it’s honestly kind of impressive how tightly plotted it is. All of its characters have clearly established, comprehensible motivations, which they act upon in decisive ways. The answers to its whodunnit mysteries recontextualise prior events in ways that internally make sense.

Season 2 was a mess on its own terms. Season 3 makes a mess of characters and plotlines it inherited.

My frustration with Season 3 comes from a different place than my frustration with Season 2. Season 2 was a mess on its own terms. Season 3 makes a mess of characters and plotlines it inherited. From the big details (Sean’s abrupt demise; the dissolution of Elliot and Shannon’s relationship) to the small ones (Faz’s sudden death; Marian has a brother??), it’s hard to escape the feeling that this story is not an organic extension of the story that preceded it. With a few judicious, minimally invasive rewrites, Season 3 could probably have worked as a self-contained plot, involving characters we’d never met before, and would have been a more satisfying viewing experience for it.

To wit: Ed Dumani. Relegated to the background for most of the season thus far, S3 E7 hones in on his perspective, as he tries to track down Zeek, and, by extension, Elliot. Zeek going off-script and letting Elliot go has left Ed in a precarious position; the highly capable, highly motivated man he tried to frame for the fentanyl poisonings is out there somewhere, and it’s Ed’s arse on the line if he can’t silence Elliot before he blows open the truth of the conspiracy with Henry and Asif. Lucian Msamati plays Ed with the same world-weary stoicism as always, but there’s a note of tension, even desperation, in his body-language. The scene where he interrogates Ray (Mat Fraser), an old associate who originally vouched for Zeek, is excellent, progressing slowly from the back-slapping bonhomie of two middle-aged male friends, towards terror and bloodshed, inflicted joylessly. (As an aside, it was cool to see Msamati in an Oscar-winning movie earlier this year. It’s not more than he deserves.)

I just can’t help but be disappointed with Ed, though. Let’s actually try to track his character arc, shall we? In Season 1, he collaborated with the Investors, selling out Sean and Marian to keep the Wallace organisation running smoothly. In Season 2, he finally rebelled against the Investors when their yoke became intolerable, after they drove Alex to suicide. And in Season 3, he’s… back on the same bullshit as Season 1 Ed; collaborating with Asif and his cronies in the UK government, throwing Sean under the bus so that he can prosper in the Brave New World of legalised drugs. He’s arrived right back where he started, and that’s just so unfulfilling. There’s a reason they’re called character arcs, not character loop-de-loops.

As for Elliot, he’s holed up with Lale, after she rescued him from Shannon’s clutches. She sheepishly admits that she was the one to frame him for the fentanyl spiking, having been coerced by Asif holding her baby hostage. Elliot, understandably, doesn’t take this well, and the two of them briefly exchange blows before they come to an understanding. They team up to infiltrate Asif’s mansion; Lale, looking to steal back her infant son; Elliot, looking to interrogate Asif and find out the truth behind his family’s murder.

This temporary alliance goes remarkably smoothly, at first. Lale and Elliot slip past Asif’s guards, and overhear a conversation between him and Henry. Henry’s side of the conspiracy is starting to unravel as well; Simone, in putting together her proposal for drug legalisation, has noticed that a company owned by Asif is prioritised in the list of potential suppliers. She’s begun to realise that, rather than cutting off the gangs’ funding, she’s being made party to legitimising them.

 

(Of all the characters at play in Season 3, Simone’s might just be the arc I appreciate the most. As a politician, she considers herself a firebrand and a radical reformer; she’s determined to make a positive change to society, after her brother Jermaine’s death to gang violence. But, in her legitimately idealistic zeal to change the world, she’s inadvertently made herself a patsy for the kind of people who killed her brother. Her own guilty, covert drug habit makes her that much easier for bad actors like Henry to manipulate. T’Nia Miller plays all of these conflicting impulses beautifully, and Simone emerges as a genuinely well-conceived, well-rounded character for it.)

Simone emerges as a genuinely well-conceived, well-rounded character…

After snapping a couple of guards’ necks, Lale and Elliot make their way into Asif’s inner sanctum. Lale retrieves her son from Ayesha at gunpoint, pistol-whipping her in the stomach. Elliot holds Asif to account.

Asif offers Elliot a bargain: he’ll tell him the truth about what happened to his wife and son, if he’ll just kill Lale for him. Lale pulls a gun, and Elliot smoothly disarms her. She urges him to kill Asif, just as emphatically as Asif urges him in the opposite direction.

It’s a juicy, tense dilemma; one that’s short-circuited when Ayesha (who Lale left alive) hits a panic button, and all the compound’s surviving guards are alerted. Elliot glances around, and while he’s momentarily distracted, Lale draws a concealed knife and slits Asif’s throat with a single stroke. “Fuck you,” she whispers, simply, as his neck gasps out the dregs of his lifeblood.

The most deeply felt enmity and most profoundly earned revenge in the entire show culminates here, and it’s weirdly sudden and brusque. Unlike Sean’s, Asif’s end doesn’t feel inappropriate – Lale deserved this moment – but it does feel unceremonious.

Elliot and Lale shoot their way out through the mansion with her baby in hand, in the episode’s one significant action beat. It’s an OK shootout (Kim Hong-Sun returns to direct the final two episodes), albeit pretty short and perfunctory as set-pieces go. They escape, and make for the Kurds’ hideout.

Unbeknownst to the erstwhile partners, however, Billy and Cornelius have been on the warpath all over London, squeezing low-level gang members as they hunt for someone who’ll point them towards Sean’s killer. And, in the course of their rampage, they find just such a lead: Merwan, Lale’s second-in-command who was already suspicious of her movements. Upon arriving at the Kurds’ base of operations, Elliot is ambushed by Billy and knocked out by Cornelius (I think that’s, like, the fourth time Elliot’s been knocked out in the last three days? To say nothing of being shot by Shannon and beaten to a pulp by Zeek. He’s holding up remarkably well, all things considered.)

I think that’s, like, the fourth time Elliot’s been knocked out in the last three days?

While Elliot is taken away as the Wallaces’ prisoner, Merwan confronts Lale with an ultimatum; her baby represents a liability that their enemies can exploit, and she should step down from her position of command. The clear implication is that he intends to take her place, and that it would be very inconvenient for her relationship with her son if the Wallaces should find out that Sean’s child is alive after all. Lale listens to his proposal. Her counter-proposal is to mash his head to a pulp with a car door.

This is a bit of a clumsy story beat, if you ask me. Merwan’s motives are framed as sinister by the acting and the blocking; Murat Erkek circles Narges Rashidi with a wolfish smile and a cruel glint in his eye, while she bows her head and worriedly clutches her baby to her breast. The situation is presented as blackmail; Merwan exploiting his boss’s weakness to grab for power. This might make more sense in the context of one of the other gangs, but the script seems to have forgotten that the Kurdish Liberation Movement isn’t a for-profit endeavour; to be the commander of its London operations isn’t really a position one covets for its own sake. (Again, Season 3 seems indifferent to the context earlier seasons established.) With that in mind, Merwan’s objections to Lale staying on as leader actually seem pretty germane; cold and ruthless, sure, but the truth is, yes, her efficacy within the PKK is compromised by the presence of her child. And there’s been nothing to indicate that Merwan’s commitment to the cause of Kurdish liberation is insincere or corrupt.

The narrative’s framing is misaligned with the plot’s logic. Merwan comes off as unnecessarily creepy when making a cogent point, and Lale comes off as a psychopath for killing him in a really unnecessarily brutal way.

Meanwhile, it really looks like Elliot’s screwed. He’s hauled in chains before a meeting of all the gangs of London to await judgement. Ed anxiously presses for him to be killed on the spot, even while Luan insists that they need answers first.

Chairing the meeting is Marian Wallace, perched on her stool like it’s the Iron Throne, flanked by her brother and her eldest son. And, with a flourish, she presents the damning evidence that will resolve this rough tribunal: a smartphone that was left on her bedroom windowsill with a note, in the middle of the night. “The order to kill Sean, my son, was sent to this phone,” she tells the room. “And this is the number it came from.”

She presses redial. Ed’s pocket vibrates.

On the one hand, this is genuinely a pretty great plot twist, and a pretty great dramatic flourish. There have been incidental scenes seeded throughout Season 3 that Zeek has a kind of reverence and respect for Marian; for him to hand her the rope that Ed’s used to hang himself is a pretty ingenious plot manoeuvre.

…for [Zeek] to hand [Marian] the rope that Ed’s used to hang himself is a pretty ingenious plot manoeuvre.

On the other hand – and I admit, this is nitpicking – the moment doesn’t make a lot of sense, in context. From the perspective of the onlookers, all Marian did was dial Ed’s phone; they only have her word for the provenance of the handset. It’s not quite the instant, conclusive indictment it’s framed as in the moment.

Still; a cool moment, and one that’s contextualised by the episode’s main revelation. After severing ties with Ed, Zeek goes to visit his mother (Akiko Hitomi) in her care home. She’s confined to a wheelchair, her face badly burned, yet she seems to have nothing but love for her son. He tells her that he might not be back for a while: he has things he needs to do.

“No matter what happens now,” she tells him, “your father would be proud of you.”

In a brief aside, we get a glimpse of the apartment Zeek abandoned, and which Ed found after interrogating Ray. On the bedside table is a framed photograph of Zeek as a baby, with his mother on his left, and on his right side, his father… a young, smiling Finn Wallace.

Which, uh… that’s certainly a revelation, but I still have questions!

• Review Series: Gareth Evans

• Review Series: Gangs of London

Is It Good?

Nearly Good (4/8)

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Andrew is a 2012 graduate of the University of Dundee, with an MA in English and Politics. He spent a lot of time at Uni watching decadently nerdy movies with his pals, and decided that would be his identity moving forward. He awards an extra point on The Goods ranking scale to any film featuring robots or martial arts. He also dabbles in writing fiction, which is assuredly lousy with robots and martial arts.