Tearing The House Down

Gangs Of London episode 8 begins with Leif phoning Jevan and telling him that Sean and his family are on the run. At the same time, Elliot takes his opportunity to see Shannon without Sean knowing. Ed confronts him though and tells Elliot he doesn’t trust him and that he should leave. Elliot complies and drops off the key on the coffee table before leaving. Ed visits Jevan who’s determined to find Sean. With no leads to go on, he instead turns Leif’s attention to Sean’s sister as a means of baiting Sean out of hiding. Thankfully Billy gets there first and pleads with Jacqui to leave because if he can find her – so too can Jevan and the others. In hiding, Sean starts to lose his cool demeanor, looking at an eviction notice and a less than flattering message on the wall about his family name. Seeing things from the other side of the coin soon makes him realize that the Wallace name isn’t quite as prestigious as he once thought. Elliot heads down to the docks to meet Vicky but when she doesn’t show, the Captain reveals himself instead and gives him a different mission; this one saving the undercover cop, Anthony, who’s been snapping his photos. With his own livelihood hanging in the balance, Elliot sets to work trying to find him. Meanwhile Luan takes drastic measures and plants a mole to root out Mosi and the others. Determined to take them out with one fell swoop, Luan arrives but is blindsided by Mosi who threatens him and his family, held up at knife-point. Luan however picks his moment and kills all four men, whimpering as he leaves the room after murdering these men. Having found 250 million of the stolen funds in the Cayman Islands, Alex feeds this back to his Father, who tries gently convincing Alex to kill the Wallace family. Instead, Alex turns his attention to Floriana and contemplates whether she’s still alive. She is, of course, and manages to outsmart her captor and run with her babe down the street. With Jevan’s plan unraveling, Leif returns home and sees firsthand what’s happened, realizing that the plan has gone wrong. Sean meanwhile returns to London and meets with Lale, who gives him a shopping list of items to use for the fight ahead. Elliot finds Anthony midway through being tortured but it’s too late, he bleeds out without saying anything. Elliot kills Colin and sets the scene up, planting the gun and fleeing. When he does, he heads straight up to Shannon and tells her and Danny to leave before things get too chaotic. Meanwhile, Sean phones Alex and they talk business and investments. Mentioning how he can see what they own, Sean hangs the phone up as a bomb planted by him explodes, toppling the entire Wallace skyscraper and causing a city-wide blackout. With the final fight ahead seemingly pitting Sean against Jevan and the different investors, the subplots here feel a little half-baked in the wake of this. The resolution with Mosi and his men in particular feels like a missed opportunity, with Luan dispatching these gangsters surprisingly quickly after so much build-up. While the story itself feels a little far-fetched and unbelievable at times, it’s the explosive action set pieces that make this show so appealing. With little of that in this episode beyond small skirmishes, hopefully the show has kept the best for last in the finale.