Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen returns to Netflix for a second season that trades much of its predecessor’s loose, comic energy for a darker study of criminal ambition — a trade that, per a Daily Wire review, comes at a real cost to the show’s fun.
Season 2 picks up where the first left off, with Theo James back as Eddie Horniman, the 13th Duke of Halstead, now formally committed to the marijuana empire he spent Season 1 trying to escape. The review describes him as newly ambitious and “seemingly unquenchable” in his avarice, ordering his loyal gamekeeper Geoff (Vinnie Jones) to restore the dukedom to its former scale in land, wealth, and reputation — “I want it back, Geoff. I want it all back,” he says in the opening episode, standing beside a fleet of Range Rovers and looking out over an estate the review notes is already larger than most suburban neighborhoods.
From England to Italy, Then the Lords
Those ambitions don’t stay contained to the English countryside. According to the review, stately Italian palazzos have been converted into cannabis farms, pulling Eddie and Susie Glass (Kaya Scodelario) into the orbit of Mafia “boss of bosses” Marco Moretti, played by Sergio Castellitto. Italy turns out to be only a waypoint. Eddie also sets his sights on the House of Lords, hoping to influence a bill that would decriminalize cannabis and nudge his operation toward legitimacy — a move that puts him at odds with Bobby Glass (Ray Winstone), who, having apparently spent enough time in Canada to see hippie cannabis shops on every other corner, wants the bill buried.
The season keeps its predecessor’s fixation on the finer things. The review highlights a sequence in which Eddie hosts his new Italian partners at Halstead for a day of shooting, appropriately dressed in tweed, with an armory stocked not with ARs or AKs but with antique shotguns made by artisans. The script name-drops wines like Petrus, Masseto, and Mouton; when Michele Morrone’s Cico Maldini theatrically accuses Eddie of serving a corked 1989 Mouton at dinner, the review observes that the writers clearly understand it’s the sort of offense you can get killed for.
The Cost of Going Dark
What that elegance cannot hide, per the review, is the season’s central problem: Eddie’s darker descent drains the show of much of its freewheeling humor. Season 1’s funniest moments — a coked-up Freddy (Daniel Ings) forced to dance like a chicken, or impersonating an Eastern European gangster while trying to buy a sports car — give way this year to Freddy spending much of the season locked in rehab before an unfortunate arc the review says carries unmistakable echoes of The Godfather (details withheld to avoid spoilers).
The shift also changes the Eddie-Susie dynamic. Their chemistry once paired her seasoned criminal maturity against his wit and nerve; now the season “increasingly becomes the Eddie Horniman show,” the review argues, leaving Scodelario with too few chances to spar with James.
Coppola parallels run throughout. The review compares Eddie’s arrival as a criminal negotiator to Michael Corleone’s cutting response to a corrupt Nevada senator in The Godfather Part II — except Eddie settles a matter for a few thousand pounds after preparing to offer millions. Religious portent hangs over his rise via Stanley Johnston (Giancarlo Esposito) and the menacing biblical butcher Gospel John (Pearce Quigley). Eddie eventually marries wealthy Italian heiress Bella (Benedetta Porcaroli), a union whose business logic is clear but whose romance the review finds so thinly drawn that its emotional weight never lands.
Not every expanded storyline misfires. Geoff’s long-clandestine affair with the Horniman matriarch finally surfaces, and Nanny (Benjamin Clementine) — partner to Charly (Jasmine Blackborow) and father of the Horniman heir Tarquin — drifts through much of the season before revealing formidable military skill in a tense, highly entertaining finale.
A Choice That Makes Sense, a Show That Loses Something
The review frames Eddie’s transformation as logical: he discovered that narcotics trafficking suits him, and unlike Goodfellas‘ Henry Hill or Michael Corleone, he had an out — he could be sailing the Mediterranean. He wants the power anyway, drawn to it the way Freddy is drawn to cocaine.
That choice makes his descent more interesting on paper. In practice, the review concludes, the series sacrifices something in completing it: there is still plenty to enjoy in Ritchie’s impeccably tailored criminal playground, but somewhere along Eddie’s path toward conquering the underworld, The Gentlemen lost much of its fun.
The Daily Wire review is written by Harry Khachatrian, a film critic for the Washington Examiner who also writes about wine at BetweenBottles.com. The piece appears as part of Upstream, The Daily Wire’s culture and lifestyle section.
Source: www.dailywire.com — https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-gentlemen-season-2-takes-its-gangster-ambitions-too-seriously