THE GENTLEMEN RETURN FOR THE SECOND SEASON

THE GENTLEMEN returned for Season 2 at the beginning of September, bringing us back into a world where aristocracy and organised crime make surprisingly comfortable bedfellows. This time around, however, the stakes are higher, the ambitions are bigger and the line between those in control and those being controlled is becoming increasingly difficult to see. We caught up with the cast to talk about what the new season has in store for our favourite characters, the new faces entering their dangerous world and, above all, what happens when ambition begins to take over.

all images courtesy of NETFLIX

A year has passed since Eddie and Susie first found themselves on the same side, and their partnership has only grown more ambitious. Now firmly embedded in Bobby’s criminal operation, they’re no longer simply navigating his world, they’re looking to build something bigger within it. But with Bobby’s leadership beginning to raise questions, the balance of power becomes increasingly uncertain, forcing Eddie and Susie to consider how far they’re prepared to go to protect what they’ve built, and how much they’re willing to risk in the process. And if there is one thing Season 2 makes clear, it is that unfettered ambition rarely ends well.

For Theo James, Eddie’s evolution is at the heart of the new season. The relatively moral aristocrat we met at the beginning of the series has become increasingly comfortable in a world he once found himself reluctantly pulled into. Now, rather than looking for a way out, he wants more. “Power and ego” become defining forces for Eddie, James explains, particularly as the character begins discovering what power can offer him, and what it can turn him into. “He starts off as a good person, a moral person, in Season 1, but in Season 2 he’s tested because he’s extremely ambitious and he’s getting tempted by what power brings and how it changes your sense of self,” James says. “It leads him down a dark path and probably will lead him down an even darker one eventually.”

That transformation allowed James to explore what he calls Eddie’s “moral duplicity.” Eddie might still believe there is a good man somewhere underneath it all, but that no longer means he is incapable of making dangerous choices. “He’s not just a good person. He can also have parts of his personality which are dangerous and terrible and make huge mistakes, because any compelling character makes mistakes along the way,” James explains. Those mistakes become an essential part of Eddie’s Season 2 journey: “It’s about making mistakes, overreaching and failing, and then trying to build himself back up again.”

There is also a noticeable difference in what drives him. “I think he’s ravenous and very hungry for everything,” James says. “In the first season, he wasn’t. In this season, he is.” And Eddie’s appetite may be growing faster than his ability to control it. “His ambition, his reach, is getting perhaps beyond him. And that’s kind of what defines him,” James adds. “He looks to the legacy of what the British Empire once was, and I think he wants it all back.”

Eddie’s growing ambition inevitably changes his relationship with Susie, too. Kaya Scodelario has previously described Eddie as an “investment” for her character, but Season 2 puts the value, and danger, of that investment under much greater scrutiny. Susie has always recognized Eddie’s ambition. In fact, it is one of the qualities that initially made him stand out.

“She’s worked with a lot of the people in his position and he’s the first one that’s stuck, that she really sees something in, that she feels like she can work with,” Scodelario explains. The problem is that the qualities that make Eddie useful could also make him impossible to control. Susie finds herself caught between her father’s assessment of Eddie and her own instincts about the man she has chosen to work alongside.

By the middle of the season, Scodelario says, the question becomes whether Eddie remains someone Susie can control and use to her advantage, or whether she has “ultimately created this monster that now she’s not in control of anymore.” It adds another layer to one of the show’s most compelling relationships. Eddie and Susie may be partners, but in their world, partnership and power are rarely separate for long.

As Eddie pushes further into criminality, Geoff remains one of the few people capable of reminding him where he came from. Vinnie Jones sees Geoff’s concern in relatively simple terms: the bigger Eddie becomes, the greater the danger that his own appetite will consume him.

“The bigger the animal gets, the easier it is to eat himself,” Jones says. “I think he wants him to slow down, stand back and look at everything, otherwise he’s going to get into some serious trouble.” For Geoff, the pattern is obvious. Power creates a desire for even more power, and eventually that hunger becomes destructive.

“You get the power, then you want more power and more power, and you end up destroying yourself,” Jones says. “So I think that’s Geoff’s worry.” But Geoff’s role goes beyond being a voice of reason. His loyalty to Eddie and the wider family is deeply rooted in his history with Eddie’s father, and that makes him one of the few constants in an increasingly unstable world.

“There’s not a chance in the world that Geoff would go against him,” Jones says. “The loyalty is just so brilliant.” Season 2 puts that devotion back into action, particularly later in the season when Geoff once again steps in to protect the family. Amid characters constantly calculating their next move, Geoff’s unwavering loyalty makes him something increasingly rare: someone Eddie can actually trust.

If Eddie is becoming more powerful, what does that mean for the man who has been sitting at the top all along? Ray Winstone believes Bobby’s behaviour this season deliberately leaves room for doubt. As some of his decisions become increasingly questionable, those around him, and the audience, are left wondering whether power has finally begun to take its toll.

“When you’re watching Bobby in this, you’ve got to think: is he losing his mind?” Winstone says. “Power eats away at a man. Or is it a game? Because he wants people to think that he may be losing it a little bit.” Winstone himself leans toward the latter interpretation.

“I kind of think that it’s a game,” he says. “It’s a test. It’s a test for the people around him, how loyal they are to him. And that goes for family.” Eddie is an especially interesting part of that test. Bobby initially sees him as a duke he can manipulate, but over time that perception begins to change. He starts to recognise qualities in Eddie that he respects: courage, leadership and an ability to operate under pressure. “He begins to start to like him and quite admire him because he’s quite ballsy and he’s a great organiser, because he’s been a captain in the army,” Winstone explains.

But admiration comes with another realisation: Eddie is dangerous. That leaves Bobby with a dilemma. Does he eliminate a potential rival before Eddie becomes too powerful, or continue nurturing someone who could become an invaluable player in his organisation? “Is it someone you want to get rid of, or is it someone you want to nurture because he could be a really good soldier at the end of the day?” Winstone asks. Despite Eddie’s rise, Winstone does not believe Bobby considers himself threatened.

“I don’t think Bobby feels threatened at all,” he says. “I think probably he’s in full control of what he’s doing. And the business he’s in, there’s always going to be threats. You’ve got to stay ahead of the game.” Even Bobby’s apparent weaknesses may therefore be calculated. “If I’m showing a weakness, I’m showing it on purpose because I want to see what the feedback is and I want to see who makes a move,” Winstone explains. “I think he’s pretty much in control,  in his own mind, anyway.”

Giancarlo Esposito’s Stanley Johnston has also noticed that Eddie is no longer the inexperienced aristocrat he first encountered. Their dynamic has shifted from a straightforward power imbalance into something much closer to a chess match, with Stanley becoming increasingly fascinated by Eddie’s potential. “I think that you have to earn respect,” Esposito says, pointing to Eddie’s refusal of Stanley’s original offer as an important moment in their relationship. Rather than simply frustrating Stanley, that rejection made Eddie more interesting. “He became someone who had a potential that wasn’t revealed early on in the first season,” Esposito explains, “and someone that the chess game dictated that he was interested in seeing how this man would turn out as a man, as a person, as a human being, and what ends would he go to to get what he wanted.”

Stanley’s influence, however, has never entirely disappeared. “The seeds were planted by Stanley Johnston,” Esposito says. Eddie eventually finds himself returning to Stanley, sometimes for favours and sometimes for advice, creating something resembling a mentor-protégé relationship, although whether Stanley is a good mentor or a dangerous one is another question entirely. “To be a mentor, either a good mentor or a bad mentor, is connected to the investment that I made in a pseudo business friendship,” Esposito explains. For Stanley, watching Eddie discover exactly who he is, and what he is capable of, has become its own kind of game. “I enjoy that cat-and-mouse play,” Esposito says. “Ultimately, inside of me with every scene, there is something that I want to see in him. Will he show it to me? And if he doesn’t show it to me now, maybe he’ll show it to me later.”

Season 2 also introduces Bella, played by Benedetta Porcaroli, another character with close ties to the criminal world, although her relationship with it is very different from Susie’s.

As the stepdaughter of a powerful Italian crime boss, Bella understands the environment she has grown up around. “She knows the world. She knows the rules,” Porcaroli says. Knowing those rules, however, does not mean Bella necessarily wants to play by them. Porcaroli sees her as someone who has deliberately chosen to remain slightly removed from that world rather than trying to compete with the people at its centre. “I think she decided to stay a step back. She’s not really interested in that sense,” she explains.

That distinction is particularly important in a series already populated by formidable women. Rather than attempting to create another version of Susie, Bella brings a different kind of presence. “We already have the strongest female character possible, so she’s another thing, which is different,” Porcaroli says. In other words, Bella belongs to this world precisely because she does not fit neatly into it.

If Season 1 was about Eddie discovering the criminal empire hidden beneath his family estate, Season 2 appears far more interested in what happens once he realises he might actually enjoy being part of it.

The reluctant participant has become a player, and perhaps even a future kingpin. But nearly everyone around him can see the danger that comes with that transformation. Susie wonders whether she can still control the man she invested in. Geoff fears Eddie will consume himself. Stanley wants to discover just how far his potential can take him. And Bobby may be quietly testing whether his newest protégé is destined to become his greatest asset or his biggest threat.

At the centre of it all is the same question that seems to follow every character through the new season: once you have power, how much is enough? For Eddie, at least, the answer increasingly seems to be: more.