Summary
The best action scene of the season is the standout of a penultimate episode that sets the stage for a bloody finale.
This Gangs of London season 2, episode 7 recap contains spoilers.
There has been a lot of backstabbing and scheming in the last couple of episodes, so it’s refreshing for this one to open with some forward momentum. Luan, at Marian’s behest, steals Arif’s heroin shipment, which leaves Sean and Koba pointing the finger of blame at each other. Short of options, they have no choice but to travel to Paris, where Arif recently successfully delivered a shipment, to liberate the city’s preeminent drug dealer of their supply. They take Saba with them, for local guidance purposes, but they’re otherwise pretty understaffed.
Gangs of London season 2, episode 7 recap
And this is the point. Overseas, Sean and Koba are vulnerable. So, when Shannon tells Elliot what’s happening, he flies out himself in the hopes of using his contacts there to ambush them both. Between the Wallace matriarch, the Dumanis, Luan and the Albanians, and Elliot, Sean and Koba’s new empire is becoming quickly encircled by those who mean to bring it toppling down — and they have very few allies to help them protect it.
They do have one ally in Billy, though, who immediately figures out it was Marian who arranged for the shipment to be jacked and follows her to the spot where they’re keeping it. Just as he’s about to call Sean, Luan gets the drop on him and forces him into the van full of heroin at gunpoint and at Marian’s behest.
Paris’s drug lord is a woman, Bibi Agostini, and she doesn’t seem like one to be easily fooled. But she might be down for whatever international deal Sean is offering in exchange for half of her heroin. Saba translates for Bibi, but one gets the sense she probably understands and speaks English perfectly well. She offers to meet them that evening, in the VIP section of a nightclub, which gives Elliot time to snatch Saba off the street and force her to smuggle a gun inside for him so that he can take out Sean and Koba.
Most people agree that the fifth episode of the first season was the best; this, I’d say, is the second season’s equivalent of it in the way it spends a great deal of time developing tension for an upcoming moment and then letting that moment extend throughout a good chunk of the episode. So, we see Sean, Koba, and Saba enter the club first; we see Saba almost get caught going through security, then hide the gun, then tip Elliot off about where it is. We see Elliot begin to infiltrate the building as the others are led to a VIP room separate from the one Saba has told Elliot about, and since her warning message doesn’t deliver, we know Elliot is going to hit the wrong room. From there, everything descends into absolute chaos, which is good news for us, because it amounts to easily the best action sequence of the season thus far.
Elliot fighting his way through the club’s security wouldn’t be out of place in John Wick, both in the way it’s lit and staged to the way it’s choreographed. But his being in the wrong place means he can’t get anywhere near Sean and Koba and has therefore tipped them off about Saba. The deal also falls through — Bibi was willing to give up half of her heroin for access to England’s ports so she could smuggle people there, but she’s not willing to negotiate once Sean and Koba bring so much trouble to her doorstep. Nobody wins in any of this — least of all Saba, who genuinely doesn’t know who’s behind Elliot’s plan, even though the other two think she does.
Elliot calls Shannon to warn her that Sean will know it was him who was there and will trace that back to her, but Shannon has another idea that ties back to the opening of the episode. Earlier, we saw Elliot talking ominously to the camera. We return to that moment towards the end of the episode and it’s revealed he’s talking to Billy, who’s tied up in the container with the heroin. As we see Sean and Marian discussing the events of Paris, the latter gets a delivery — Billy’s arm. Elliot is sending pieces of him to his family to draw Sean out.
