Summary
“The Belt and Welt” looks like it might be a middling episode right up until the unexpected death of a major character re-raises the stakes.
This recap of Pennyworth season 2, episode 3, “The Belt and Welt”, contains spoilers. You can check out our thoughts on the previous episode by clicking these words.
Just in case you needed a reminder that there’s a war on — something several characters say at various points in this week’s episode of Pennyworth — “The Belt and Welt” opens with mortars striking London. Alfie, startled, wakes up to a vision of his late father in tattered, bloodstained clothes, slumped in the corner of the room, lecturing him. Downstairs, Alfie’s mother looks after an injured bystander. It’s an odd opening, to be honest, especially in how it clashes with Alfie’s nonchalance. On his way out he runs into Martha and tells her that he saw Thomas with Aleister Crowley, which will come up later.
But Alfie has more pressing matters to attend to first — namely, who orchestrated the theft of their cash? Alfie suspects Gully Troy since he was the only person who knew they had the dough in the first place, but they have to find out for sure and Alfie plans to ask him.
First, he has to ask his wife, Melanie (Jessica De Gouw), where he is, and after some flirting, she eventually tells him. He’s at a garage with some of his henchmen, and there Alfie accuses him outright. Gully’s speechless, and adamant he had no part in the matter, which he seems pretty sincere about. He even offers Alfie some lucrative burglary work in a couple of big jobs he’s got coming up, and he’ll even hire Bazza and Dave Boy, but Alfie would rather work for himself.
Back at the lounge, just when it looks like they’re out of leads, Dave Boy recalls flashing a $100 bill around, so the thieves could have been basically anyone. But the culprit is revealed when Sheri (Rosa Coduri), the barmaid, shows off a flashy new ring bought for her by the usually skint pikey Vic Dobson (Lee McQueen). The boys have their next lead, which takes them to a fairground campsite where a bit of a fight erupts. Alfie tussles with Vic in a hall of mirrors, and I greatly appreciated that “The Belt and Welt” didn’t bother with any of the usual distorted reflection shenanigans — they both just smashed straight through all the glass. But when Alfie’s foot goes through the floor and Vic sets about him with a shard of glass, Alfie has no choice but to stab him in return. He staggers out and dies in front of Sheri, who tries to escape with the bag full of stolen money and crashes Bazza’s car into a pile of fuel drums. She, the car, and the dough all go up in smoke.
But the real surprise development is that the explosion also left Bazza’s guts on the outside of his body. You’ll recall that the first season of Pennyworth wasn’t against the idea of killing off major characters, but Bazza and Dave Boy have felt so integral since the beginning that seeing one of them bleed out on the floor of a fairground after a relatively low-key episode chasing down run-of-the-mill scoundrels is really strange. Touching, too, in its way. Bazza’s dying wishes are for Alfie to get fat and bald, and get a fat wife and have fat kids; to Dave Boy, he reminds him to brush his teeth and gets halfway through a message for Doris Day before he suddenly expires. He made Alfie promise that he’d make it to America, but he won’t be going with him.
This is the core narrative arc of Pennyworth season 2, episode 3, but “The Belt and Welt” spares some time for other things. As it turns out, disgracing Archbishop Potter is remarkably easy. Aleister Crowley enlists his help in ministering to some sex addict friends of his who, the next morning, he wakes up in a pile of. A quick photograph is taken as a memento and is swiftly published by the Raven Union. In his shame, Potter hangs himself. The Queen and the rest of the English League discuss this afterward, and it allows Martha to put two and two together — she later visits Thomas and slaps him. Doesn’t look like they’re going to be making Batman this season.
And then there’s Bet and Katie. They take shelter at the home of Mr. Dorian Furbank, one of Katie’s old art teachers, who Bet immediately deduces is a creep. She’s finally, though, able to get Lord Harwood on the phone, and despite both Gaunt and Salt advising against it, he arranges for Bet to be picked up and delivered to him, her mistakes once again swept under the rug. This is just as well since Bet has overheard Katie and Dorian whispering about her and flipped her lid, as usual, holding them both at gunpoint. When the police pull up outside, she thinks help has arrived, but the Old Bill immediately open fire on the house, killing Dorian and forcing Bet and Katie back on the run.
What did you think of Pennyworth season 2, episode 3, “The Belt and Welt”? Comment below.
