Steven Knight addresses absence of Tom Hardy as Alfie Solomons in Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man
Steven Knight has revealed there was a scrapped storyline which would've seen Tom Hardy's Alfie Solomons appear in Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man.
Knight's final outing for Cillian Murphy's character Tommy Shelby is now out on Netflix.
The film has been a major success for the streamer, racking up 25.3million views within its first five days on the platform.
As fans get to grips with the end of the original Shelby siblings and the heartbreaking deaths, questions have been raised about key characters which didn't make it into
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The Immortal Man.
For example, what ever became of Lizzie Shelby after she left Tommy at the end of season six and what even was the point of Finn vowing revenge on Duke if he's not going to even make an appearance?
Finn and Lizzie aren't the only major players which fans have questioned the absence of online, with countless viewers also wondering whatever became of Tom Hardy's character Alfie Solomons.
"I can accept Alfie not appearing. What I can’t really accept is Alfie not even being mentioned," wrote one person on Reddit. "Those are two very different things."
"Should have been Alfie that went to get Tommy and bring him back from “being dead” as a rhyme to Tommy doing that for Alfie," added a second.
What happened to Alfie Solomons in Peaky Blinders?
Although Alfie's fate wasn't explicitly addressed in the film, Steven Knight did reveal that he'd considered a storyline which would've not only brought the character back but changed the entire latter half of his story arc.
Speaking about the film in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Knight explained that he had explored a scenario in which Alfie had actually been another ghost hallucinated by Tommy.
"I had an idea, which I haven’t really spoken about. Ever since he was shot on the beach at Margate [in season four], you’ve only ever seen Tommy and Alfie together alone," he explained to the outlet.
"I thought, Maybe [Alfie] appears, and we realise he’s been dead all that time. Now, I nearly did that, and I didn’t do it, but that was a thought."
The twist would've certainly added a new dimension to Alfie's character and wouldn't have been entirely out of place for Tommy, who sees the ghost of his first wife Grace in season five and apparitions of his daughter Ruby in the film.
It's not the only time in which the topic of characters actually being ghosts has come up either, with Johnny Dogs actor Packy Lee recently suggesting that he was actually a spirit all along while the idea of Tommy appearing as a ghostly spectre in the upcoming spinoff is even on the cards.
Because of course the Shelby family leader would struggle to find total peace in death.
Topics: Peaky Blinders, TV and Film, Tom Hardy
Brenna Cooper