Episodes 1 and 2 of “Gangs of London’s” second season cut the path for Episode 3, where the story begins in earnest. This is typical of most television shows with scope and pretense: If we make it through the first one or two hours of expository material, we’re rewarded for our patience with the part where things start getting good. What a treat. “Gangs of London” starts out well enough in its return to air, a sharp contrast to so much of what runs on premium cable and streamers, but Corin Hardy, taking over showrunner duties from series creator Gareth Evans for the latest round of frenetic mob mayhem, holds in reserve the season’s “what” until “Episode 2’s” final minutes. 
At best, this is a venial sin, but at worst, the “what” in question hinges on a reveal that viewers who’ve never seen a thriller before will consider a “spoiler.” On the other hand, anyone with even a passing awareness of what comprises “dead” in high-tension tales of backstabbing conspiracy probably suspects that the climactic character death in “Gangs of London’s” first season was a red herring. The Internet is deathly allergic to any detail that gives away too much, even when “too much” is just obvious, but because “Gangs of London” premiered in the U.K. in October and because come on, we’re going to break routine to address you, the reader, directly: Look elsewhere if you want your eyes “pure” for the U.S. premiere on AMC+. 
READ MORE: ‘Gangs of London’: Slick, Brutal Gangster Series Showcases Gareth Evans In Peak Form [Review]
For the rest: You all know well enough that if a death isn’t confirmed or otherwise hazily photographed, the death isn’t permanent, so when Joe Cole shows his face in “Episode 2,” the moment will read less as an out-of-left-field shock than proof of what you already reasonably deduced. The rumors of Sean Wallace’s demise were greatly exaggerated. Of course, that was the point: Nobody in-show was supposed to have thought Sean could’ve survived a bullet to the face. That’s the key to how we, watching at home, respond to the twist, such as it is–predicting whether or not the characters buy Sean’s death or remain vigilant of his return. If you bet on “they’re all surprised to see him up and walking,” you win a prize, because boy are the other characters taken aback. 
Maybe they’re all so busy dealing with the fallout of Season 1 that seeing a dead man rise really is that strange. (Maybe they should all have kept up with their Coleridge.) Marian (Michelle Fairley), Sean’s mother, is building up arms and foot soldiers with the help of Floriana (Arta Dobroshi), mistress of her late husband Finn (Colm Meaney) and mother of his bastard daughter; Elliot (Sope Dirisu), now serving as a targeted missile for the shady Investors, is traipsing the globe murdering anyone who crosses them; Billy (Brian Vernel) is loafing around the rustic Italy countryside with his sister Jacqueline (Valene Kane) and her infant daughter, finally, or so he thinks, away from the Wallace family’s crooked ways; Luan (Orli Shuka), everyone’s favorite Albanian berserker, puts himself in fresh jeopardy with the Investors and one of their other targeted missiles, the Georgian madman Koba (Waleed Zuaiter); and Ed Dumani (Lucian Msamati), now a middle manager in the city that he once held in the palm of his hands, sits and seethes from the sidelines, unable to stop the new regime in London’s ganglands. 
That’s a taster. Hardy has a whole yarn ball’s worth of threads to tie together, what with the primary and secondary cast being so far-flung or simply engaged in the basic task of not getting killed. In the Investors, he has something of a magic wand, people who, with a figurative wave of their hands, can call Elliot back to London from overseas, can subtly uncover Luan’s dealings with Marian, can scare London’s active gangs into falling in line by siccing Koba on them, can assassinate Ed’s son, Alex (Paapa Essiedu), their puppet leader. That figurative wave still requires that multiple people traverse large distances to converge on London at once, but Hardy has Evans-style carnage to get to, so logistics be damned. There are faces to crush, hands to split, bodies to riddle with bullets, and throats to cut. 
“Gangs of London” Season 2 is a loose inverse to Season 1. In 2020, when the show first aired, Evans led off with a startling bar fight between Elliot and scores of Albanians; it was, at least for American viewers, a muscular, admirable introduction to Dirisu, and a comfortable segue into the show’s landscape, removed from the Indonesian backdrops of Evans’ “Raid” films, for which he’s best known. But with that scene under its belt, the series narrowed down the action’s scale, widening for operatic shootouts on occasion as befitting the plot. The finale boils down to a single gunshot. In Season 2, Hardy and his team of writers–Tom Butterworth, Danusia Samal, Steve Searle, Meg Salter, Rowan Athale, and the only returning name from Season 1, Lauren Sequeira–start out small in hopes of going bigger. Proof of their tack is given in Episode 4 and Episode 6, both of which pay off Hardy’s cooler pacing in their own awesome ways. Chaos bathed in fire and slick with blood is what “Gangs of London” is all about, after all. Evans has a brand. The finest violence streaming can offer is what his audience tunes in for.
But his interest in power dynamics gives the violence emotional undergirding so as to avoid being violent for its own sake. Hardy carries on that interest with what’s arguably the best demonstration of a classic Evans move: Giving characters the option of a better life than the one they have before snatching it from them. “Gangs of London” is about the pursuit of power’s endgame, being the acquisition of more power, and subsequently it’s about what happens to people who lose in that pursuit; to see Ed, accustomed to being the most calculating man in any room he occupies, break down in naked grief is to see a timeless, venerable institution turn to dust. The show has grief to spare. It’s the natural end product of greed and ambition. “Gangs of London” ducks didactic preaching with a healthy operatic spirit; it’s a maximalist crime saga where bigger, in both its drama and action set pieces, is never big enough. 
That aesthetic gives the series leeway for jaw-dropping excesses. Hardy harmonizes themes Evans established in Season 1, sons and their fathers being another one of his proclivities, and he hits equilibrium with each character arc such that no one feels shortchanged. But “Gangs of London” struggles to reconcile Sean’s contradictions, even though their presence doesn’t dampen Hardy’s various achievements. Sean has been “Gangs of London’s” biggest conundrum since the beginning. He’s described by other characters as a hothead too volatile to manage the Wallace business after Finn’s execution; he’s also capable of mercy that Marian, for instance, isn’t. Cole, combining sincerity with honeyed menace in every word he speaks, excels in exploring the parts of Sean that are neither hotheaded nor coldblooded. It’s what he’s given to work with. He’s very good in the role, too. Were he absent from the season, he’d be missed. At the same time, his absence may have been necessary to move “Gangs of London” into truly fresh territory. [B-]
“Gangs of London” Season 2 debuts on AMC+ on November 17.