Warning: The below contains major spoilers for Gangs of London Season 3.
If there’s anything fans should take away from Gangs of London’s third season — and the deaths of Sean Wallace (Joe Cole, pictured below) and Ed Dumani (Lucian Msamati) — it’s that they should “expect the unexpected” as the AMC+ drama continues, according to producer Hugh Warren.
“We have some great things in mind, because we don’t want to disappoint people. I think it’s really important for the audience to understand that, by killing these lead characters, there’s no predicting what happens next,” Warren told Variety in a new interview.
Warren admitted the producers were tempted to keep Sean and Ed alive — “because they’re great” — but they opted to “keep reinvigorating the show and ‘regenerating’ it” so that each season feels fresh.
“There’s a clue in the title: Gangs of London is plural,” he added. “The original concept was always that it could be a rolling theme and that the gangs would be different. We are thinking through all those issues around the next season. There’ll be some new characters and some new surprises.”
AMC+/Sky
Case in point: Zeek (Andrew Koji), the shadowy figure who offed Sean, turned out to be Finn Wallace’s illegitimate son and Sean’s half-brother. “We’re always looking for ways to expand this world, and his backstory, obviously, has a real connection with the Wallaces,” Warren said. “We hope to explore that a bit further.”
Ed, meanwhile, met his maker when Marian Wallace (Michelle Fairley), Finn’s widow and Sean’s mother, shot him in the head after learning that he ordered Zeek to kill Sean.
And beyond Sean and Ed’s demise, viewers got another surprise in the Season 3 finale, as Mayor Simone Thearle (T’Nia Miller) announced a drug legalization plan.
“One of the biggest industries in the world is an illegal operation that’s handed to gangsters — if you remove that and turn that into a legitimate world, like that did in the U.S. [after Prohibition ended], what happens to those people?” Warren observed. “That prospect of legalization would be incredibly threatening to them.”
Despite all the changes, though, the “almost cartoony” level of bloodshed will remain a constant in the (still unannounced) Season 4, judging by Warren told Variety: “We’re on an endless quest for new means of death, and new weapons, and whatever props are going to be used violently.”
Gangs of London, Season 4, TBD, AMC+