Summary
Things take a worrying turn in “Likkle Favour”, and Sully is pulled back into the fray.
This recap of Netflix’s Top Boy season 2, episode 3, “Likkle Favour”, contains spoilers.
Despite all the assurances from Chaash in the previous episode, things in Spain don’t seem to be going all that well. “Likkle Favour” opens with a drug drop-off on an isolated beach that is immediately ambushed by Juan and his fellow officers. Mounir is watching the whole thing from a distance and reports what he sees to Dushane. Whether Chaash is preparing a replacement or not, the fact of the matter is that it can’t be a coincidence that Juan knows exactly where and when to look. Back in London now, Dushane instructs Jaq — who plays down her split lip — to send Sully out there to sort things out. Of course, though, given the issues between Dushane and Sully, getting him to do anything is easier said than done.
Netflix’s Top Boy season 2, episode 3 recap
Sully at least agrees to meet with Dushane, mostly as a favor to Jaq, but the meeting goes so badly that the two of them come to blows and need to be physically separated. Since Sully won’t do Dushane’s dirty work, he turns to someone who will — Jamie. In the meantime, Sully trips and falls into a subplot that’ll keep him occupied for the next couple of episodes (and also tie back into the main plot in a clever way.) Meet Pebbles.
Pebbles is a relative of Sully’s — she calls him “Unc” — who wants the “likkle favour” of the title. She naively agreed to bring a bag back from Jamaica under the instruction of two unsavory types named Cyprus and Khadeem, but her boyfriend, Rashaun, convinced her to sell the contents of the suitcase in order to make a profit for themselves. Supposedly Rashaun took the drugs and now won’t pay her, which is a problem since Cyprus and Khadeem want their money back. Honestly, there’s no wonder Sully stays on his boat.
Sully goes to see Rashaun and tries to warn him about the situation but he isn’t very receptive. He later follows him home and brutalizes him into giving him the location of the drugs, which are under his bed along with the paltry profit he made from their sale. He takes the drugs and money and warns Rashaun off Pebbles, though he says she talked him into it, complicating the matter even further.
Elsewhere, we get some more development in other ongoing subplots, such as the Summerhouse redevelopment — various locals, including Dushane’s mum Pat, are trying to stop it — and Lauryn’s captivity. To deal with the latter matter, Jaq feigns taking her mum to a hospital appointment to secure some time off so she can drive to Liverpool and meet with Lauryn, who has managed to snatch a few private moments on her own. Jaq is still playing for time, though, since she doesn’t want to ask for Dushane’s help unless she’s sure he’ll say yes, which given all the other problems he has isn’t going to be any time soon. We also see Jaq open up to her sister here though, about the homophobic attack she suffered and about Ats’s death, which is a nice touch, as is the fact that throughout the entire scene, Lauryn’s phone continuously vibrates with missed calls from an obsessive Curtis.
Stef isn’t pleased to hear about Jamie going away again. Whether it’s prison or Spain, what’s the difference, really? The ghost of Ats still haunts that household, and it’s eye-opening to hear Jamie talk about it with Kit. He explains that whatever Ats did, he was family; he ate with them, watched TV with them, and helped Stef with homework when Jamie couldn’t. This idea of family, both biological and surrogate, is absolutely integral to Top Boy, and Jamie believes in it more strongly than perhaps anyone else.
Dushane, on the other hand, is becoming less and less attached to the idea. He might have said “Family is everything” when he gave Jaq time off, but when Shelley asks him for money to help stop the Summerhouse redevelopment and he’s forced to admit that he already invested in it, he’s unsympathetic about the plights of the residents, including his own mother. How things change.
In other news, we get some progress regarding Ats’s death. Ruben tips Dushane off to the fact the girl from the CCTV has been recognized rapping at a club event. Jaq pretends to be a talent scout to discover her name is Keziah, and then in a double dose of good news, she’s told by Kieron that he has found the boy who attacked her and Becks. Jaq beats him half to death, retrieves Becks’s bag, and returns it to her by way of apology for snapping at her on the phone when she suggested they should go to the police. All in all, a good day’s work.
“Likkle Favour” ends with two tantalizing developments. In the first, Lizzie visits Jamie at home and pitches the idea of him making Juan an offer that would cut Dushane out of the Moroccan deal and allow Jamie and Lizzie to take over. He fronts like he isn’t buying the sales pitch, but you know what he’s like. And in the second, Ruben starts getting a bunch of calls informing him that his various properties and businesses are being raided by the police. Recognizing that he has been rumbled, he clears out his place and takes his son, Noah, directly to Dushane, where he leaves him before fleeing into the night.
You can stream Netflix’s Top Boy season 2, episode 3, “Likkle Favour”, exclusively on Netflix.
