MobLand Episode 9 Sets Up a Seriously Violent Finale

6 min readConsider Tom Hardy’s smile. I know you’ve got a lot to think about right now, like the rising cost of a flat white, celebrity sex criminals, and which brand of pasta to stockpile, but put that on ice for a minute and consider Tom Hardy’s smile.I could count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen him crack a grin on screen. He’s like those actors who’ll go nude only if it’s tasteful and in the name of art. Hardy’s smiles are anything but tasteful. When they happen, it’s as surprising as any jump scare.Take episode 9 of MobLand, when Harry gloriously threatens Frankie. “That fucking face of yours, I’ll ‘ave that,” he growls like Burglar Bill’s psychopath cousin. “I’ll wear it to carnival as a mask when I cut it off with this pint glass.”The eyebrows arch and the lips creak upward and the face cracks like a dam with a hairline fracture, exploding into a horrifying clown grin. Then… suddenly it’s gone, like a split atom, back into the cosmic darkness from whence it came. They say the best actors can tell a story with their eyes. Hardy can tell one with just his teeth, and it’s brilliant and it’s terrifying.Anyway, that was my highlight of episode 9.What else? Well, the cold open, where Frankie gatecrashes Kat’s ambassadors’ convention disguised as a waiter to threaten her. Kat is ready: “Under the 1961 Vienna Convention, unlawful entry into a sovereign embassy is not seen as trespass but as an attack on the nation. I call Black Flag and you do not make it off this fucking rug.”Hold that thought.Luke Varley/Paramount+Imagine having a pint with these guys.Fake death, real shadeTalking of smiles, Gina wipes one clean off Maeve’s face with an exit straight out of RuPaul’s Drag Race. You’ll recall Maeve’s dastardly scheme: persuade Gina to fake a suicide attempt, thus breaking Harry’s spirit and forcing him out. Instead, Gina sashays away, leaving a message in lipstick on the mirror: “Suck my balls, witch.”Meow. I don’t think Ru could have put it better herself.Maeve turns back to Eddie. “You want to be a Harrigan, there’s one last task: Harry.”Conrad sees dead people (again)It’s not long before the smile returns to Maeve’s face, when she wakes to find Conrad in his pants, strapping on a bulletproof vest. “What are you doing, man? It’s not Friday. Friday night is bondage night!”Actually, Conrad has pried a tasty piece of intel from JoJo, the Frankie henchman he tortured to death: a large shipment of drugs is landing at Tilbury Docks, ripe for the nicking. Off they drive with a boot full of weapons, soundtracked not by a true-crime podcast but by the bloodcurdling recording of JoJo’s torture.Trouble is, just as they arrive, the ghouls of Conrad’s past start stalking the corridors of his mind again, whispering. “Leave me alone,” he cries, swerving the car. Maeve shows an almost uncharacteristic amount of empathy. “It’s okay,” she soothes.Still, the heist is off. Conrad is in no fit state to add to the ranks of the ghosts he’s made. They drive home.Eddie’s got bombs on the brainIf there were an award for the weirdest scene of the series, it would go to Eddie asking Paul on a date. “Wondered if you fancied popping out for a pint later.” He might as well have asked him to go dogging in a Chipping Norton lay-by.Really, he wants a bomb to kill Harry. Paul laughs it off with a monologue on the history of bombmaking, until Eddie plays his ace: “What if I tell you I know it was you who told Harry that I was in Ireland? I wonder what Maeve would think.” Paul’s smile dissolves. Maeve would have his guts for sausages. Or, in Eddie’s words: “How does it feel to have your bollocks in my briefcase?”When Harry meets FrankieAnd so to the meat and potatoes of the episode: Harry and Frankie’s tête-à-tête.It starts at Harry’s home. Jan has returned to him, having realized she’s safer in his giant hands than in anyone else’s. He wants to whisk her to a safehouse, urgently. So she does what anyone would do when their life is in imminent danger: run a bath, throw on some Damien Rice and soak her troubles away.Trouble is, those troubles are literally downstairs with assault rifles, with Frankie close behind. Naturally, Harry keeps an even bigger gun under the sofa, so he festoons the walls of his home with their brains before leading Jan out to the car. Gina has just arrived. So, alas, has Frankie.Still in his dressing gown, Frankie kidnaps Gina and spirits her off to the panic room/prison cell beneath his London home.Smoothie criminalsThere, Gina and Frankie bond over a spot of smoothie play, hurling their drinks in each other’s faces, followed by a round of Nerf. It’s sweet. He likes her. Maybe he even gets her. She is, as he later tells Harry, “spunky, full of spunk.” That may just be what keeps her alive.Kevin’s at the end of his (John) WickOver at Kevin HQ (a shipping container on an industrial estate), Harry, Jan and Kevin await news of Gina. Kevin pitches a new plan: go John Wick on the lot of them.“You call Frankie and tell him we accept on the condition he returns Gina safely… then we meet Conrad and Maeve and blow their fucking brains out.” Then Eddie, then Frankie, then, through Bella’s nous, defenestrate Kat McAllister via legal channels.Conrad, whose marbles have been rolling under the sofa all episode, is not expected to put up much of a fight.“I’m taking over tonight,” fumes Kevin. “You’re either with me or against me.”Luke Varley/Paramount+What will happen in the MobLand season 2 finale?Harry’s master plan: look scaryWell, no need for that just yet. Harry has a plan to save Gina. Leverage? Another child he can senselessly murder? No, no. Simply the good old-fashioned threat of violence.At the parley, they’re yin and yang: Frankie the exuberant chatterbox, Harry the man who’ll never use two words when one will do. Frankie squeezes Harry’s arm: “Cor, feel those muscles. I mean, I’m tasty, but if we got in an actual ruck, I wouldn’t stand a snowflake. I bet you could kill me with your bare hands…”Which is roughly what Harry has in mind.“You’re not gonna kill her,” he growls wearily.“You mind testing that?” And Frankie orders a goon to blow Gina’s head off with a shotgun and film it so they can watch.He hands Harry the phone for the tersest of chats with his gaffer-taped daughter: “Try to stay calm. I’m gonna get you out of this as soon as I can.” Click. Frankie can’t believe it. “Is that it? Unless you’ve got some brilliant plans, that is actually a bit shit. What are you up to, Harry?”Harry’s reply is considered and simple: “If I was you, I would’ve had some really big, scary fucking geezers in here with you to keep you safe, to prevent the exact scenario that is unfolding right here.”“B-b-b-but I’ve just got to pick up the phone,” stammers Frankie.“Go on then. I fucking dare you.”The tension is suddenly tighter than a celebrity sex criminal’s grip on the prison soap.Harry’s purring now: “It took me seven seconds to walk through those doors from the car… No more cutting around in the old burgundy tracksuit, that’s for sure. Not without wearing a fucking colostomy bag hanging off your limp arse.”Then the scary smile, the face-mask line and the clincher: “Speaking of seven seconds, that’s all you’ve got left to call your mate Joey and let Gina go. Three... two...”Frankie calls. Gina is free.Black Flag downBut Frankie has one more trick up his tracksuit: he gets Kat McAllister on the phone. Remember the black flag stuff at the top of the episode?She’s offering Harry another chance: “As of tonight there is no Harrigans. But the good news: you have a new job. Thank you for what you’re about to do for us. I am looking forward to you working for the team. Black Flag, motherfucker.”In other words, Black Flag has been called, and the Harrigans are its target. It’s a fitting phrase. Pirates flew a black flag to tell ships to surrender or else. In motor racing, it means you’re disqualified. And it’s a snarling late-seventies hardcore punk band, whose “Nervous Breakdown” gives this episode its title. Kat’s version is all three at once.Cut to the Cotswolds, where police are dredging the lake. They’ve pulled out a body. Is it Richie’s? It’s someone’s, and I’d wager they didn’t die smiling. Hardy, on the other hand, lives to smile another day.The chips are down, the traps are laid, and there’s one episode left. Does Frankie have one last plan up his tracksuit? Will Conrad pull his brain back from the brink? Will Maeve get the last laugh? Or will it be Harry, God help us all?As Shakespeare puts it in Macbeth: “There’s daggers in men’s smiles: the near in blood, the nearer bloody.”Smile if you dare.