How did Thomas Shelby die in Peaky Blinders? Tommy's final scene, explained
Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man, released on Netflix on 20 March 2026, was billed as the definitive end of Tommy Shelby's story — and Steven Knight meant it literally. If you want to know exactly how Cillian Murphy's gangster bows out, and who pulls the trigger, here's the full picture.
Spoilers throughout, obviously.
The short answer
Yes — Tommy Shelby dies at the end of The Immortal Man. In the final confrontation, Nazi sympathiser Beckett (Tim Roth) shoots him twice in the stomach through a car windscreen. Tommy kills Beckett with a single shot, then asks his son Duke (Barry Keoghan) to finish him with the bullet engraved with his own name. Duke pulls the trigger.
How the final scene plays out
Set during the Second World War, the film opens with Tommy in self-imposed exile following the deaths of his brother Arthur and his daughter Ruby. He returns to Birmingham to save Duke, now running the Peaky Blinders, from Beckett's fascist scheme — after Kaulo (Rebecca Ferguson) promises that helping his son will finally bring him peace.
Tommy blows up Beckett's warehouse operation, takes those two gunshots, and puts Beckett down. Bleeding out, he embraces Duke and whispers his request. On the official Immortal Man podcast, Murphy explained the whisper:
"He's saying, 'Do it with the bullet, I know the bullet exists,'" Murphy said. "It's purely physical. I just want to leave this realm."
Duke initially refuses, then does it. As Tommy dies, he sees the faces of everyone he's lost, and mouths his last words: "In the bleak midwinter" — the phrase that has followed the Shelby men since the very first episode in 2013.
The funeral
Tommy is given a traditional Romany send-off: his body is burned inside his vardo on a rural hillside, surrounded by his remaining family. It deliberately mirrors the series 6 finale, where Tommy burned the wagon and rode away — except this time he's inside it. At the funeral, Kaulo hands Duke the manuscript of Tommy's book.
Who else dies in the film?
The Immortal Man clears the decks thoroughly:
- Tommy Shelby — shot twice by Beckett, then mercy-killed by Duke at his own request.
- Ada Shelby (Sophie Rundle) — killed during the film, one of its genuine shocks.
- Arthur Shelby — dead two years before the film begins; flashbacks reveal Tommy strangled his opium-addicted brother in a drunken rage after Arthur stole from him.
- Beckett — one bullet, courtesy of Tommy.
Was killing Tommy always the plan?
According to Knight, yes. Speaking to ScreenRant in March 2026, he said the death "was always going to happen", pointing to the story's running themes of legacy and succession. Murphy shot the death scene in the very first week of production — with the whole cast watching — and then filmed the rest of the movie afterwards.
It's not the end of the franchise, though. Knight has confirmed two further series set in 1953, thirteen years on, built around Duke and the next generation of Shelbys.
For the record: the film's title comes from Tommy's own line of thinking — the man who survived tunnels, trench warfare, and every enemy Birmingham could throw at him. In the end, the only person allowed to kill Tommy Shelby was a Shelby.