Why did Peaky Blinders kill Grace? She wasn't the one the shooter wanted
Grace Shelby died in series 3, episode 2 of Peaky Blinders (2016), shot at the Shelby Foundation charity dinner by an assassin hired by Vicente Changretta. The bullet was meant for Tommy. And behind the scenes, creator Steven Knight had a colder reason: Tommy Shelby was never allowed to be happy.
The hit that went wrong
The timing was brutal by design. Tommy and Grace (Annabelle Wallis) married in the series 3 opener; one episode later, she was dead in his arms. The Shelbys' feud with Birmingham's Italian Changretta family had already turned violent, and Vicente ordered a revenge hit on Tommy himself — but at the dinner, it was Grace who took the bullet.
Tommy's response was total. Angel Changretta was finished off in his hospital bed, and Vicente was executed in front of his wife — Arthur's quick mercy shot cutting short Tommy's plans for something far slower. That vendetta didn't end there: it returned in series 4 as Luca Changretta's Mafia campaign, which cost John Shelby his life too.
The real reason: Tommy wasn't allowed to be happy
Knight has been open about why Grace had to go. In a Reddit AMA, he explained that a contented Tommy would have ended the story — if Grace had lived, Tommy would have found peace, and peace was never the plan.
"He wasn't meant to be happy."
Grace was the one person who unlocked Tommy after the trenches of the First World War. Killing her slammed that door shut again, and everything that follows — the drinking, the opium, the scheming, the death wish — grows out of that moment.
The cursed sapphire
There's a superstition wrapped around the death, too. Tommy had hung a sapphire from his Russian business around Grace's neck that very evening — and when he was later told the jewel carried a Gypsy curse, he believed it. He blamed himself twice over: once for the feud, once for the stone. That fear of curses comes roaring back in series 6, when his daughter Ruby falls fatally ill.
Did Grace ever come back?
Only in Tommy's head. From series 5 onwards, a hallucinated Grace appears during his laudanum-soaked lowest points — and far from comforting him, she urges him towards the grave. Knight has been clear she isn't a ghost: the show is simply inside Tommy's fracturing mind. Tellingly, the vision vanishes in series 6, just as Tommy starts crawling towards something like redemption.
Fan theories that Grace faked her death never came to anything — Wallis did not return for the final series or the 2026 film.
Married in episode one. Buried by episode three. Peaky Blinders never let Tommy keep anything for long.