The MobLand Season 2 Premiere Is Explosive as Hell. I Love It.

5 min readA miracle happened in MobLand, UK last Thursday. Tom Hardy, Pierce Brosnan, and Helen Mirren participated in a three-way hug at the world premiere for MobLand season 2, with the veteran actors embracing Hardy like disappointed parents who just found out their son’s true passion is doing impressions of Batman villains while reciting Shakespeare.Earlier this summer, reports of Hardy’s off-screen feuds with the Paramount+ drama’s stars and producers stated he had been fired, never to feel the sands of MobLand’s beaches in his toes again. But Paramount later confirmed that the rumors were false. All three stars will return for seasons 2 and 3. If there’s any bad blood left between Hardy, Brosnan, and Mirren, it’ll be between their on-screen characters. Namely, how Conrad Harrigan (Brosnan) and his wife Maeve (Mirren) start off MobLand season 2 by murdering a bunch of Turkish drug dealers that they were supposed to meet on friendly terms. So, it’s up to family fixer Harry Da Souza (Hardy) to clean up their mess.While the Harrigans make the mistake of murdering one of their allies, Harry makes the mistake of ruining his life at home. Turns out a job where you’re constantly leaving to kill other gangsters for a living doesn’t blend well with raising a child or spending quality time with your wife. Ironically, the first season ended with a way to kill off either Harry Da Souza or his family if they needed to. His wife Jan (Joanne Froggatt) “accidentally” stabbed him in the chest with a kitchen knife in the season 1 finale. But instead of removing either of them, they open season 2 with Harry’s wife Jan (Joanne Froggatt) serving him divorce papers. Like a caricature of a clueless British man, Harry literally responds asking, “All right, what’s this, then?”Luke Varley/Paramount+It’s one problem after another for the Harrigans in season 2.Despite Harry’s busy schedule and constant eye-rolling, he’s picked up a decent new squad to help him run his criminal clean-up crew. Finch (Warren Brown) looks like he runs for forensics for the police department. Zosia (Jasmine Jobson) runs tech and cars. Paul (Emmett J. Scanlan) drives, and his nephew Fergus (Jack Archer) is a young idiot who’s way out of his depth.But this isn’t a task force show, and I sure as hell don’t want to see MobLand become as complicated as Lioness nor as formulaic as Marshals. MobLand is at its best when it’s just pure, Guy Ritchie-directed chaos, and that starts in the season 2 premiere as Brosnan guns down at least a dozen guys. The Harrigan family’s particularly graphic language also continues, when Brosnan describes his backstabbing son Kevin (Paddy Considine) as a “lousy, fucking bucket of pig spunk.”Naturally, Harry can see the walls closing in. His benefactors are senior citizens who claim they can still drive a car, even though they just got themselves into a massive pile-up. They’ve pissed off Turkish crime lord Gakbu Ruzgar, who sounds like a guy you’d find on Tatooine. But Harry believes there’s someone else pulling the strings. Plus, Kevin is attempting to take over the family even though he doesn’t possess the know-how to run a criminal empire. So, Harry’s stuck between a rock and a hard place. Or, as Maeve describes it, “You can’t ride two horses with one arse.”Sophie Mutevelian/Paramount+There’s a succession crisis heading MobLand’s way, with Kevin, Eddie, and Gina all vying to take over the family.Of course, there’s two more Harrigans in the picture. First up, we have Kevin’s son Eddie (Anson Boon). Though as you may recall from the season 1 finale, one of the biggest plot twists of the show so far was the reveal that Eddie is not actually Kevin’s son. He’s Conrad’s, because he slept with his son’s wife. So, Eddie’s grandfather is his father and his father is his step-brother. It seems House of the Dragon alum Paddy Considine can’t escape the incest plots.Eddie is also in love with Gina (Teddie Allen), Harry’s daughter. They’ve worked out a honeypot scheme where she poses as a YouTube streamer fangirl and then threatens them into giving the Harrigans a percentage of their earnings. Maeve is thankful for the secondary funds, but she’s against his relationship with Harry’s daughter. “My plans for you are big, Eddie,” she tells him. “You don’t want any complications snagging you up along the way.”Anyway, we don’t have to worry about Star Wars canteen barkeep Gakbu Ruzgar much longer. Harry wakes up from his new, terrible motel the next morning and simply guns down the Turkish crime lord and all his bodyguards right outside his home.Harry also coerces one of the witnesses to the earlier shooting into retracting his statement in one of MobLand’s most dryly funny scenes yet. He kidnaps the helpless lad right off his bicycle and drives him out to the middle of nowhere to very politely threaten him. “You went to the police?” Harry asks him, confused. “You were warned not to do this.”Next up, Harry investigates the real season 2 villain, Kat McAllister (Janet McTeer), the U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, whom he believes is the mastermind behind the Harrigans’ latest troubles. Seraphina Harrigan (Mandeep Dhillon), the last family member to mention, struck a deal with McAllister to help her take over the family instead of her brother Kevin.Luke Varley/Paramount+What is Kat McAllister really after?I’m not sure why McAllister is so hellbent on ruining the Harrigans. She seemingly operates a criminal empire in Boston, and is now out to rule London as well, but maybe season 2 will delve deeper into her grudge further down the line. Despite her curt wits, however, she offers undercover detective Colin Tattersall (Toby Jones) to act as her intermediary with London’s other crime bosses. So, at the end of the season 2 premiere, he sets up his first meeting with a man named Frankie.Tattersall saying Frankie’s name is the last line of the premiere, announcing his character like he’s some sort of Marvel villain I should be familiar with. But unlike Nick Fury approaching Iron Man in The Avengers, Frankie is rather unassuming for now. He’s played by Johnny Flynn, who is Jerome Flynn’s (Bronn from Game of Thrones) half-brother. So, it’s possible that MobLand is setting him up for something big.The real kicker? Pete & Bas’s “T Pain” plays over the end credits. If you haven’t heard of these guys, they’re two of my favorite people on the Internet. The London hip-hop duo are in their seventies, but they went viral over the last three years or so for their uncanny gift of gab. It’s as if two Peaky Blinders henchmen lived to see 2026 and then dropped a killer mixtape.Over one infectious single after another, Pete & Bas have traded fours and rapped creative bars like, “Servin' it up like Canapés/Trunk full of green like a can of peas/Missing the top, no canopy” and “The bigger the back, the bigger the butt crack/The bigger the chance the bird's up in me contacts/Her figure's a big deal, a pen on a contract/Sign me up, baby, give a tip of me top hat.” They’re a musical act so Guy Ritchie-coded that it’s unbelievable he didn’t create them himself. But now that he’s found them, all I want is to see Pete & Bas on the actual show. Kat McAllister? I’m not enthralled yet. If not for season 2, I need Brosnan and Mirren up against Pete & Bas for season 3.