Peaky Blinders fans baffled by 'missing' Oswald Mosley in The Immortal Man – but there's a reason he's not in it
Oswald Mosley isn't mentioned or seen in the Peaky Blinders movie
Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man doesn’t include one of the show’s best villains, Oswald Mosley – but, as frustrating as it may be, it makes sense.
Tommy Shelby has taken on some tough adversaries over the years; Billy Kimber, Luca Changretta, and even his own cousin, Michael Gray, among them.
However, there is one villain he couldn’t beat by the end of series 6: Oswald Mosley, played by Sam Claflin. He was introduced as the tide of fascism started to rise across Europe, hoping (and succeeding) to spark the fuse of far-right politics in the UK.
Despite the Peaky Blinders’ best efforts, Mosley remained a powerful threat throughout the sixth series. You may have expected him to return in The Immortal Man… but he doesn’t.
***Warning: spoilers for Peaky Blinders ahead***
What happened to Oswald Mosley in Peaky Blinders?
After the Peaky Blinders fail to assassinate Oswald Mosley (thanks to the IRA’s intervention), he continues to chart his political course in series 6, meeting with Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler.
Alongside his wife-to-be, Diana, and American gangster Jack Nelson, he puts a lot of pressure on Tommy. Later, Diana and Tommy sleep together, and when Diana tells Lizzie, she leaves Tommy. In Mosley’s eyes, Lizzie (a former sex worker) was never a suitable partner for someone of Tommy’s future stature.
Also, Mosley was part of a plan to trick Tommy into killing himself. His doctor told him he had terminal tuberculoma, but it turns out he’s an ally to Mosley, and it was all a ruse.
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Alas, despite how much he would have deserved it, Tommy doesn’t seek revenge. He lets the doctor live, and Mosley gets away with everything. We even find out that Hitler attended his wedding (at Joseph Goebbels’ home, no less).
Why isn’t Oswald Mosley in The Immortal Man?
Like many fans, you probably expected Oswald Mosley to appear in Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man. After all, it’s set in the Second World War, a conflict directly caused by the rise of fascism. In theory, he should have been a key figure, and possibly the ‘end boss’ of the whole story.
However, there’s something important you need to remember: Oswald Mosley isn’t a fictional character. He was a real man, and things didn’t go well for him in wartime.
By 1940 (when the film takes place), Mosley was behind bars and the British Union of Fascists was outlawed. Three years later, he was released, but as a disgraced political figure, he no longer held any power in the UK.
While former supporters encouraged him to get back into politics, Mosley never gained any momentum.
That’s not to say he didn’t have an impact. He was an early voice of Holocaust denial, he proposed segregation in Africa, and he even called for a single nation-state to cover all of Europe.
Efforts to re-enter politics were ultimately futile, culminating in a 1966 general election in which he received just 4.6% of the vote for his constituency.
So, in short, he’s not in the movie because… he was no longer a relevant figure. Peaky Blinders hasn’t always been accurate, but Mosley’s inclusion in the film as its main villain would have been a substantial change from the history that inspired it.
Peaky Blinders fans think Oswald Mosley should have been the villain of the movie
Regardless of how inaccurate it would have been, Oswald Mosley’s absence from the film has been widely cited as a disappointment among Peaky Blinders films.
And, in their defence, who cares if it wouldn’t have accurately represented history? That’s never what Peaky Blinders has been about, and Tommy had unfinished business with Mosley.
“Where is Oswald Mosley? Why did we spend 2 seasons watching Thomas fight his hardest battle just to never get a payoff?” one user wrote on Reddit.
“Why [didn’t] they tie up anything with Mosley who was such a big character in the last couple of seasons?” another commented. “Not tying up the Mosley storyline was a total misstep,” a third added.
“What happened to Mosley? Wasn’t he supposed to be the main antagonist? Instead the main antagonist is just some random dude that has nothing to do with the show?” a fourth wrote.
“Absolutely no bridge between the end of season six and this movie? Oswald Mosley wasn’t even in this movie,” a fifth complained.
“It should have been [Tommy] against Mosley. Would have tied the series together nicely, instead of introducing a random Nazi sympathiser,” a sixth commented.
Read more: Peaky Blinders fans angry over ‘unacceptable’ missing character in The Immortal Man: ‘A let-down’
