Summary
It might not tie off every loose end, but the final episode of Top Boy is a shocking, resonant affair as the cycle of generational violence is finally broken, but only after claiming its last few victims.
This article contains major spoilers for the ending of Netflix’s Top Boy Season 3 Episode 6, “If We Are Not Monsters”.
The last ever episode of Top Boy begins with a new introduction — Isaac Latif, Wilson Lee’s expert in getting people out of the country, no questions asked. But he’s a shrewd businessman, obviously. And he’s visibly unimpressed with Dushane, hiding out in a decrepit housing estate flat, with no money and no passport. Unless Dushane can acquire those things, Isaac isn’t willing to do anything for him.
This is bad news for Dushane since Summerhouse is in the grip of a full-blown riot, Lithe absconded with all his money, and the police want him for murder. Turkey, where Isaac claims he’s sending him, seems like a distant paradise, a far cry from the small patch of London steadily burning beneath him.
Netflix’s Top Boy Season 3 Episode 6 Recap
What happens to Kieron?
The first casualty of the Top Boy finale is Kieron. In case it wasn’t obvious, Sully knew all along that he was lying about Jaq. He lures him out on the pretense of being present at the exchange, and then Junior bundles him, screaming, into a van, never to be seen again.
Jaq arranges to meet Sully at the community center at 8 p.m. Many of the displaced Summerhouse residents, including Mandy, are also there. She sends Dushane the same message. Since he’s desperate for cash to facilitate his disappearance, he jumps her outside, assaults her, and takes the drugs before she can hand them over to Sully.
Sully thinks Jaq is lying about this and tells her this is why she won’t get a pass — and why Kieron didn’t either.
READ: Who shot Sully in Top Boy Season 3?
Dushane runs back to Summerhouse with the bags and tries to negotiate with Isaac to pay him in drugs instead of money. Isaac wants 20 kilos and sends a couple of his goons to retrieve them with assurances that they’ll get Dushane out if he can survive the hour it’ll take them to get there. And that’s touch and go at the moment, since Sully pursues him to Summerhouse, and Jaq is there too, having visited Kieron’s mother Diana to see if he was there. When she discovers he isn’t, she realizes Sully was telling the truth about having him killed and breaks down in tears.
Why does Dushane shoot Bradders?
Junior brings Sully a couple of guns and the pair of them begin roaming the estate, looking for Dushane. They run into Rowmando, Bradders, and Samsi on the way, and Sully gives Bradders one of the guns with instructions to shoot Dushane on sight, retrieve the bags he’s carrying, and return them to Sully. This seems like a woefully bad idea, considering I wouldn’t trust Bradders to open a tin of beans, but I’m not a drug lord, so perhaps I’m missing something.
All the while, Dushane is trying to hold out for long enough to meet with Isaac’s goons. He hides in another apartment for a while but is forced to leave when some youths break in with plans to torch it. He spots Sully and Junior patrolling the opposite balcony — Sully has a quiet moment in Dushane’s mother’s place, obviously considering his lifelong relationship with Dushane — and arranges to meet Isaac’s guys at some disused garages nearby.
Sully and Junior spot Dushane as he’s leaving and give chase. Dushane runs right into Bradders, who tries to confront him, but Dushane shoots him. He’s able to make it to the garages just as Isaac’s men arrive and engage in a gunfight with Sully and Junior. Junior and both of Isaac’s men are shot dead, leaving Sully to have his final confrontation with Dushane.
Does Dushane die?
“If We Are Not Monsters” pulls a genius move by framing this confrontation mostly as a conversation. Dushane throws the drugs over a giant metal gate and tries to climb over after them, but Sully shoots him. He lands on the other side with a whimper, and the two of them argue through the gate. Dushane can’t believe Sully shot him. Sully can’t believe Dushane robbed him. Dushane explains that he had no choice, because the police were onto him for Jeffrey’s murder and he had no money, but Sully claims he’d have given him the money if he’d just asked.
All this, because two grown men don’t know how to communicate.
Sully’s crying in this scene. He confesses that all he ever wanted was Dushane’s respect. “Look at where we’re from,” he says. “If we’re not monsters, we’re food. And I could never be food.”
It’s childish, really. And pointless. Dushane quietly dies on the other side of the gate, bleeding out in the mud. Sully climbs over, retrieves the bag, and leaves him there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0ME5ahl1jQ
Netflix’s Top Boy Season 3 Ending Explained
At the end of the episode, Sully tells Tash he might not be around for a little while. He has managed to survive, but Dushane and Kieron are dead, Jaq has gone home to Becks to leave the street life behind, and the entire operation is in tatters. He needs to disappear.
Why doesn’t Stef shoot Sully?
We do get the long-awaited confrontation between Stef and Sully, though.
“If We Are Not Monsters” kept Stef out of the way during the confrontations at Summerhouse by locking him away in his bedroom due to the riots. He finally catches up with Sully in the park, armed with the gun Si gave him.
Stef points the gun at Sully and goes through the lines he rehearsed in the mirror. He asks Sully how it feels to be the one on the other end of the gun.
“To be honest, Stefan, feeling left me a long time ago,” Sully says. And Stefan sees the tragedy in that statement. Sully is broken already, and he isn’t worth Stef throwing his life away. Stef tells him he isn’t worth it and walks away, breaking the cycle.
Who shot Sully at the end of Top Boy Season 3?
The final scene of Top Boy is Sully getting shot in the head through his car window by an unknown assailant.
I watched this frame by frame and there’s absolutely no way to identify the shooter. In glimmers, it seems like they’re wearing a motorcycle helmet, or perhaps have long-ish blonde hair in a fancy do, but I don’t suspect it was anyone from Hall and Oates. That leaves us with theories only.
Sully has killed and otherwise annoyed so many people throughout Top Boy‘s run that the list of potential suspects is endless. It definitely wasn’t Stef. It could have been one of Isaac’s goons, since Sully killed a couple of them during the shootout at Summerhouse. It could have been someone associated with Lizzie and Lithe, although their beef was with Dushane more than Sully.
Either way, we don’t know, and crucially we’re not supposed to know. This is the life, and the only way out of the life, especially for someone like Sully, is death. Someone had to get him eventually, and someone did. Perhaps him — and us — not knowing who is entirely the point.
You can stream Netflix’s Top Boy Season 3 Episode 6, “If We Are Not Monsters”, exclusively on Netflix. Do you have any thoughts on the ending of Netflix’s Top Boy Season 3? Let us know in the comments.
