Does Arthur Shelby appear in Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man?

**WARNING: Contains spoilers for Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man**

Like him or loathe him, no one can deny that Arthur Shelby was one of the most significant characters throughout Peaky Blinders' six season run on the small screen.

Played by Paul Anderson, Arthur was the hot-headed older brother of Tommy Shelby, whose experiences in the First World War had left him with deep-rooted PTSD and mental health issues that often saw him spiralling into addictive behaviours.

Anderson was one of only three actors, alongside Cillian Murphy and Ada Shelby star Sophie Rundle, who appeared in every single episode of the show. With that in mind, you might have expected him to appear in the film – especially since his character was still alive (although not exactly well) when the TV show wrapped up back on 2022.

So does Arthur have a role to play in the events of The Immortal Man? Read on for everything you need to know.

Does Arthur Shelby appear in Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man?

Well... it's complicated. The short answer is that the character – at least in his living form – does not appear in the film. But his influence is deeply felt throughout, and there are a couple of glimpses of him in flashbacks.

The first that we hear of him is early in the film, when we learn that in the time between the end of the series and the beginning of the film, Arthur has passed away. This is revealed when we see Tommy visit his grave, which bears the words: "In The Bleak Midwinter…" and shows his date of death as December 1938.

What is less clear at this stage is the precise cause of Arthur's death. To begin with, it is implied that he died by suicide or an accidental overdose– which doesn't seem like too much of a stretch given what we know about the character and the various self-destructive cycles we so him go through in the series.

However, it becomes increasingly clear as the film progresses that this is not the full story. Tommy has clearly been deeply affected by his brother's death – the latest in a long line of tragedies that have hit his family – and we see him being haunted by Arthur's memory in the early sections of the movie.

Later, Romani medium Kaulo (Rebecca Ferguson) convinces Tommy to admit that he is not being entirely honest about the circumstances of his brother's death. His confession comes after she tells him that Arthur's spirit had told her he was not alone when he died, with Tommy subsequently saying that he was the other person present.

He adds that the pair of them had had an argument after Tommy had denied his brother's request for money, with Arthur then stealing and crashing his car. This had led him to confront Arthur in the vehicle, leading to a brawl in which his gun had gone off, accidentally killing his brother.

But even this version of events isn't the whole truth. We finally get the full story when Tommy visit's Ada's corpse after she is assassinated, and he confesses that there had been nothing accidental about Arthur's death.

He reveals that in a fit of rage, he deliberately strangled his brother to death, desperate at the time to finally be free of the burden that Arthur had become. We even see the incident playing out in flashback, although Arthur's face is obscured. This is why he's been quite so haunted by the whole ordeal – the death had been his fault.

Arthur does make one final – very brief – appearance via flashback in the climactic scenes. As Tommy is climbing a narrow tunnel, he has a number of PTSD-style flashbacks to his time fighting during the First World War and other traumatic moments from his life, with one image showing his elder brother sitting on some rubble.

Has Paul Anderson said anything about Arthur's absence in Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man?

Yes, Anderson addressed Arthur's absence in an interview LADbible earlier in March, suggesting to the publication that he was at peace with the decision not to include him.

"Well, what can you do eh?," he said. "It is how it is. I thought I’d just leave them to it. I think it’s great."

He added that he had been slightly "apprehensive" about the idea to make a film, explaining that he thought "we should’ve just done a couple more seasons" and that he didn't "see a reason to do a film to be honest."

But he added that he was happy with the way in which his character was written out of the film.

"I think it’s great," he explained. "I mean, it’s such a powerful thing to do. It’s something you don’t see on TV. Everyone thought, well, everyone knows Arthur’s gonna die. I was quite surprised, I [Arthur] was quite nasty sometimes, I weren’t very nice to people in it. But people loved me."

Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man is currently showing in select UK cinemas. The movie will stream on Netflix from 20 March – sign up from £5.99 a month. Netflix is also available on Sky Glass and Virgin Media. The Peaky Blinders series is available to stream on BBC iPlayer.

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