MobLand Season 2: Four Episodes In, It’s Never Been Better

Spoilers for Season 2, Episodes 1–3. By Reagan Hall for Follow No One Entertainment

Season 1 of MobLand set a bar that most crime dramas never reach. The open question going into Season 2 was whether Guy Ritchie, Jez Butterworth and Ronan Bennett could top it, especially after a summer of headlines about Tom Hardy’s clashes with producers. Three Fridays in, the answer is a resounding “yes”. The show isn’t just holding its pace. It’s accelerating.

And for those of us who care about music, every episode shares its title with a song from the likes of The Stooges, Blur, and the Ramones. If it weren’t obvious already, these people know what they’re doing.

Episode 1 – “I Wanna Be Your Dog” (Sept. 18)

Ritchie directed the premiere himself, and it shows. Conrad (Pierce Brosnan) and Maeve (Helen Mirren) are out of jail and acting like nothing has changed. Their first stop is a dog track to close a heroin deal with Turkish boss Gakbu Ruzgar. Gakbu doesn’t show, but his men do, and within ten minutes they’re all dead, cut down by a husband-and-wife team firing like Bonnie and Clyde while Conrad bellows “We are the Harrigans!”

That’s the problem in a nutshell. The old guard is celebrating while the empire rots underneath them, and Harry Da Souza (Hardy) is the only one who can see it. He has Zosia tail Maeve and learns she’s been secretly in touch with Eddie all along. He takes his Kat McAllister theory to Kevin (Paddy Considine), who listens a little more than his father did. Meanwhile, retired DCI Colin Tattersall (Toby Jones) finds Kat the weapon she’s been looking for: a lowlife drug lord named Frankie, played by Johnny Flynn. The episode ends with Harry waiting outside Gakbu Ruzgar’s gate and riddling his car with bullets. By this point, the message is clear: don’t two-time the Harrigans.

Episode 2 – “Song 2” (Sept. 25)

If the premiere lit the fuse, then “Song 2” is the blast that follows. Harry shadows his daughter Gina as she parties with Eddie, while Donnie deliberately rear-ends Jan’s car. Then the coordinated hit lands, with Donnie walking into a pub and subsequently snuffing out Fergus, Paul’s nephew, right in front of him, before promptly strolling out. Across town, Frankie storms Kevin’s house at McAllister and Colin’s bequest, guns down Bella’s bodyguards, and corners her while she’s on the phone with Kevin. Zosia gets taken too.

In just one night, the muscle is gone, the leverage is gone, and Harry’s morale is gone. The worst part of it all: the Harrigans didn’t see any of it coming.

Episode 3 – “Bonzo Goes to Bitburg” (Oct. 2)

This is the best hour of the season so far. Paul skips grieving and goes straight to cleanup, strong-arming a pub owner for the CCTV recorder. After a health checkup that explains his rages, Conrad lies to Maeve about it, and she is none too pleased with his continuous secret keeping. Her conclusion: he’s having an affair, so she plans to kill his dogs. Only on MobLand.

Frankie sends Zosia back unharmed with terms: Bella lives if Harry, Kevin and Conrad sit down with him at a midnight meeting. Harry keeps Conrad away, knowing his temper could blow the whole thing; but Seraphina wedges herself into the meeting and slips up by naming Frankie, a detail she could only have gotten from Donnie. Of course, Harry clocks it.

Then Frankie rolls up alone on an electric scooter, lets Dog pat him down, and slides his helmet under the table. His offer is pure audacity: he takes the whole business, keeps Harry as fixer, keeps Kevin as the face, and Conrad and Maeve retire with bullets. Understandably, Harry refuses, and Kevin nearly shoots the audacious London crime boss; but Harry is quick to put a stop to this, and Frankie simply hands Bella back before walking out. Too easy, or so it seems.

Later, Dog goes to lock up, picks up the forgotten helmet, and the whole office goes up with him.

Why It Keeps Getting Better

Where Season 1 was a war between two families, Season 2 has become a war on every front at once. Frankie’s in the streets, Kat’s pulling strings, Tattersall’s feeding them info, Seraphina’s leaking from inside the family, and Conrad and Maeve are too busy with each other to even notice the widening cracks in their once untouchable operation. Hardy plays Harry with more restraint than ever, and it makes every outburst land that much harder. Brosnan and Mirren remain gloriously unhinged, which makes for nail-biting drama and can’t miss television. What’s more, Johnny Flynn is a genuinely unsettling new villain. Calm, smiling, and always one move ahead, he is more than a fitting addition to a cast with the chops to put lesser actors to shame, without a doubt.

Episode 4, “Blank Curtain” dropped last week, with Episode 5 set to release today. The season runs ten episodes through the finale on Nov. 20, and Paramount+ has already renewed MobLand for a third season. With so much left to be uncovered as this season goes on, however, one thing is crystal clear to viewers: the Harrigans still have plenty of time left to bleed, and we’ll be watching every minute of it with bated breath.

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