Gangs Of London – Season 1 Episode 2 Recap & Review

Revenge

A flashback starts episode 2 of Gangs Of London as Finn takes his boys into the woods to kill a man in cold blood. As we jump back to the present, in Turkey a group of armed men flip a lorry holding cattle and burn everything in the back after taking what they came for. They tell the driver to get to the next checkpoint and make the delivery as scheduled, driving off in an identical truck as the original burns.

In Kent, England, butchers open up the cows and reveal that there’s nothing inside. This neatly reveals that drugs are being smuggled in through the cattle and as we jump across to the shore, we see these red bags of Class A being brought in by Lale, who defies Sean Wallace’s embargo as the war looks set to begin.

An unstable Elliot is given therapy following his ordeal last episode while Vic watches on a monitor from the room next door. After some careful consideration, Elliot is allowed to continue his operation. As he and Vic decide what to do next, Elliot is called to Sean’s side where he finds the crime boss in the apartment with a bloodied Jack, who was obviously killed last episode by Ed. On the way out the door, Elliot notices 2 of the cups missing from the cup holder but doesn’t say anything for now.

Asif touches down in London and reveals that he’s the one whose gear was stolen in Turkey by Lale earlier in the episode. He heads straight to Sean and confronts him over the shipment, demanding to know who stole from him. Sean squares up to Asif and he gleefully admires his temper, telling Sean he gets it from his Father. However, he reminds the young boss to be smart around the best way to handle this situation.

Luan is greeted by Ed on the cusp of ordering a birthday cake for his daughter Bukuroshe. They sit together and discuss Sean Wallace’s vengeance before Luan hands over a package with incriminating pictures inside. As he leaves, Ed peeks a look at the photos before putting them back and looking deep in thought.

Asif meanwhile asserts his authority and questions each of his different workers, asking them one by one who stole his heroin. While he tries to get to the bottom of what’s happened, Sean Wallace hosts a lunch where Darren’s father arrives. He slides Darren’s phone over the table and tells him that someone hired him to do the hit.

The phone is encrypted professionally and takes longer to encode than Sean thought as he tasks Elliot with his next job – protecting Billy. Thanks to Alex’s good work, he learns the location surrounding where Darren is but refuses to go with him, telling Sean it’s a bad idea to pursue this further.

Elliot rescues Billy as he goes searching for the suppliers of the heroin at a party earlier in the episode. However, he races off before things can escalate at the kebab house. While Elliot races off in hot pursuit, inside the building one of the men makes a phone call and grimly reveals that “They know,”. Is he referencing Sean and his boys?

Billy heads back home and hands Sean over the bag of heroin. Sighing, Sean tells his brother to stay away from the business, revealing via another flashback what happened that day in the woods.

On the back of Alex’s tip-off, the gangs are led by Sean who find Kinney and his men. They blast their caravans with a barrage of bullets while inside one of them, Kinney furiously smashes a hole in the floor to escape. And escape he does, watching in horror as his home and people are completely slaughtered while Sean watches the inferno rage, where the episode comes to a close.

With more great camera work, including a rotating shot early on and a nice overhead one in the coffee shop, it’s ultimately that final action sequence that’s likely to stand out here. The brutal assault on the caravans is incredibly gritty and violent, with lots of well-shot action sequences and plenty to chew over going forward. With Kinney still alive and inevitably repercussions for what Sean has done, could we see more big shoot-outs in the future?

If this episode is anything to go by it’s fair to say there will be but quite what direction the show will go next remains to be seen. There’s lots of unanswered questions and Gangs Of London is doing an excellent job building up the tension on all fronts with this.