Why John Shelby Had to Die

Unpopular opinion: John Shelby was my favorite of the Shelby brothers. 

I think it’s supposed to be Tommy—anyone’s favorite; he is the center of the Peaky Blinders universe, smart, cutthroat, handsome, even seems to believe in true love, even though he can be a royal shit about it all.

But John was the one for me—a loyal Shelby family member, a dad, a husband, rarely rocking the boat (though often rocking the bed), and a soldier to the end.

Which is, of course, why he had to die.

Juxtaposing Tommy

Just to be clear, I’m not presuming to know the minds and moods of the Peaky Blinder’s writing team, nor can I admit to having done any research on Joe Cole, the actor who plays John, to see why John Shelby the character was killed off. I’m speaking from purely a story-writing perspective.

And from that perspective, John Shelby simply didn’t contribute to Tommy’s character in the way that any of the other Shelby's did.

Each one of the Siblings Shelby serves to offer a different possible outcome for Tommy—a reminder that Tommy himself has come to be a truly unique man—whose brains and brawn combine to lift him and his siblings from poverty to power over 6 seasons (and potentially a movie).

Arthur is Tommy… if Tommy were to succumb to his anger and addictions the way any man might with the same traumas, dramas in his upbringing.

Ada is Tommy…if Tommy were a woman of the 1920s who, no matter how tough, would not be able to leverage violence and autonomy the same way that a man could. Who, despite being Tommy’s trusted advisor and business-lead, must frequently play second fiddle to Tommy in the public eye.

And even Finn is Tommy…if Tommy had grown up further along in the family tree, had the destabilizing experience of a familial savior. Who had not needed to fight as hard as the rest, and whose own identity was, in many ways, unclear for that very reason. 

But John… 

John was too violent himself to meaningfully juxtapose Tommy’s own violence. He attacks Lizzie’s Italian lover unprovoked, essentially starting a gang war. He approaches his and Arthur’s parlay with the Italians at the docks with such biting hatred, in a way that even Arthur admonishes. He doesn’t show the hesitance that someone like Finn shows at the boxing ring, when he’s forced to get his hands dirty and instead frequently metes out violence with what seems like excitement.

When John has a chance to stand up to Tommy, protecting his former school teacher or admonishing Tommy to Lizzie at the racetracks when she’s nearly raped by an enemy at the instruction of Tommy, he doesn’t take it far enough to be Tommy’s moral opposite.

And when John has a chance to be the family man that Tommy refuses to be, standing with his wife Esme as she begs Tommy to consider the women and children of the family every time he comes up with a new scheme, John limits his exposure, at times agreeing with the safe majority, and at other times sticking with Tommy in the minority.

Unfortunately for John, where his failures could have been an opportunity to stand out in the family—as the non-violent one, as the moral one—Arthur had largely already taken the spotlight. Arthur swears off violence and alcohol for a time being. He takes on faith. Refuses to do bad things. And so John is left without a hole to fill or a comparison to make. The only way for him to juxtapose Tommy was, perhaps, in his early death.

The Re-write

That’s not to say that there weren’t opportunities for John to survive the series as a meaningful reflection of Tommy. 

In Season 3, Episode 3, where John refuses to kill his former school teacher, Mrs. Changretta, the writers could have kicked off a series of events where John leaves the gang or defies Tommy—becomes the Tommy that doesn’t have the full allegiance of the Shelby family.

Or, in Seasons 2 and 3, where Esme begins to defy Tommy, begging for legitimacy of the business and stealing money for cocaine, John has the opportunity to stick by his wife’s side in opposition to Tommy. To perhaps become the legitimate version of Tommy, or the family-man version of Tommy.

And in some ways you might argue he does. In the very first episode of Season 4, we know that John and Esme move to the countryside with their children, where John meets his ultimate demise. 

And this is where I would—if we’re to assume that the writers made all of the other choices they did for a reason—request one small but meaningful re-write: expose to the audience more of John and Esme’s choice to move to the country and the life they had there. Show us that John wants to become the family man that Esme is asking him to be—that Tommy refuses to be, that Arthur can’t figure out how to be. Prove that country life looked good on him. Demonstrate, clearly, that the gang-life was the true risk to that family, and not John’s own philandering or disdain for his wife’s anti-Tommy sentiment. (By the way, it’s not lost on me, on the cusp of my own wedding, how feminine this request is—“clean him up and make him a family man!” I make it nonetheless.)

Then if you have to kill John, make it worth it. Show that he has sworn off that life and that the Italian-Americans attack on their little homestead was quite unprovoked. Instead of having John and Esme ignore the calls from the Shelby clan because of hard feelings, show them missing the call because they’re out living a happy life. Instead of having John meet the Italian-Americans with a massive gun—gang-member to mob-men—have him unarmed, shocked even, that his past life had come back to bite him.

In this way, you’d force the rest of the Shelby clan to come to terms with the fact that they’ll never be safe because—look at John—he had done it all right, had become the non-violent family man, and even he wasn’t safe from their common enemies. You’d better justify the choice to re-rally together and meet violence with violence. You’d make John the rallying cry that the writers seem to want him to become and you’d further justify Esme’s choice to take the kids and move as far away from the Shelby’s as she could. 

Instead, John’s death feels a bit like an order of business. We didn’t get the depth of heartbreak we could have. We didn’t get the storyline of revenge and familial chaos that I think we deserved. And later, in the last season, when a lovely portrait of John is referenced and we know that Arthur is on the cusp of losing yet another brother, the heartbreak feels really limited to the issue at hand—Tommy’s pending doom—and not the larger story of a family who has lost so much in the fight to come out of poverty and create legitimacy. 

If John couldn’t juxtapose Tommy meaningfully in life, let him juxtapose him much more meaningfully in his death, so that John lovers like myself (rare, I’m sure, but real) were robbed only of John, the character, and not robbed of John, the storyline, too.