The Gentlemen Recap Season 2 Episode 3 ‘Do You Reject Satan?’
- 10 minutes ago
- 7 min read
There was a quiet scene in this episode where Nanny complimented Eddie on how he has lived his life after his stint in the army. Nanny mentioned how most people who saw what he saw at war either turned to alcohol or blew their brains out. From Nanny’s point of view, Eddie was a rare aristocrat who became a successful businessman. He even mentioned how the King looked forward to meeting Eddie and speak to him about his successful agricultural ventures.
The whole time, Eddie has been having visions of the accountant he killed. Eddie was a soldier; he was not a novice at death. Mentally, however, one could separate being at war to being in a kitchen in the countryside, killing a man whose name he did not know, to please a mafia don whose investment he wanted. Eddie had hardened himself in his quest to regain what he believed his family lost. It was not enough. Even as he lobbied for and eventually ordered more killings in this episode, the ghost of the accountant remained with him.
Contrary to what Morelli told him, the accountant was not some horrible man. He was a witness, an innocent who accidentally saw something he should not have, and ended up on the crosshairs of the mafia because of it. Eddie was bothered enough to ask Bella to find out what she could about the accountant. She gave him the information casually, as though it did not bother her that her godfather asked the man she lusted after to help murder an innocent man.
When we first met Bella, it was hard not to be on her side, given how Cico treated her. She was a capable, beautiful woman who for some reason thought this uncouth man who disrespected her was good enough to be her lover. She often walked behind Cico, as aristocratic women often did with their aristocratic husbands, though Cico was neither aristocratic nor her husband. Compared to Susie, she seemed passive, a woman who would willingly take Captain Eddie’s orders, La Perla related or otherwise.
That brief phone conversation with Eddie gave Bella’s character a different complexion. The death of an unknown innocent mattered not to her. She told Eddie there was a concern about Mr. Takashi, who did not get on his plane as he was supposed to, and whom no one had spoken with since Eddie was supposed to have dropped him off at the airport. Eddie suggested a couple of scenarios, and Bella calmly told him Eddie dropped Mr. Takashi at the airport, and that was that. She knew something happened to Mr. Takashi, and Eddie was involved. She was telling him she would say the thing that would end any more inquiries for him. Bella was no innocent aristocrat; she was showing Eddie she was like him, able to straddle the two worlds they chose to live in.
Eddie was still trying to gain Susie’s support in his plan to push for the decriminalisation of marijuana when they were faced with a problem. Unknown to them, Jimmy has been using some of their employees in clinical trials for variations of their product. One of them, Randall, ended up being hospitalised due to a serious mental health related adverse reaction. His friend Red Ned decided to organise a strike to demand better working conditions.
Eddie wanted to take Ned out into the woods and shoot him. Susie talked him out of it, and instead offered Ned a slight pay increase, breaks, paid leave and sick leave. Ned did not think the offer was good enough, so he was fired. Susie had Blanket stick a gun on his head and calmly reminded him they were killers. Ned really had trouble reading the room, because he still mouthed off. It was then that Eddie stepped in and threatened him harshly.
Eddie may have been wound up a bit too tightly, but he was not wrong about Ned. Ned has been stealing about five thousand pounds worth of product every week. His friend Kris suggested that he take more product as a redundancy package. Kris’s cousins helped with the theft, and they took far more than Ned expected. They took the product to Victor, who told Ned to tell him everything he knew about Bobby Glass’s operation.
That the theft had the potential of making the Glass operation look weak was not the only problem. Some of the stolen barrels were from the product development area; testing had shown some very serious effects. People dying theatrically due to contaminated weed would attract the attention of the authorities, the press, and the public. They needed to find Ned.
But, Ned was not at his house. They were still there when someone used Ned’s phone to call. It was Victor, and he demanded a meeting before he returned the weed. Eddie wanted to take the meeting, but Jack, who had been quietly playing the part of an enforcer, interjected that they needed to talk to Bobby before things got messy. Eddie was not keen, but Susie took Jack’s side.
Bobby scolded them for not coming to him sooner, and stated that he would handle it. As soon as Victor’s crew started shifting the product, they would be found. Eddie did not want to wait. Bad product would attract too much attention. Susie backed Eddie, but Bobby stood firm. A marijuana induced psychosis on the eve of the decriminalisation vote was good for him.
As soon as they were out of the sauna, Eddie told Susie they were still taking the meeting, and that he had a colleague who could help. Victor arrived with some men and an offer — he would provide the Glass operation with a more efficient team of workers, people who would not steal from them the way Ned did. There was no way Eddie and Susie would have agreed to this, but Victor made things worse by talking smack about Bobby. He said he had Albanian associates inside who said Bobby had gone crazy. Eddie flicked his cigar, a cool signal. The angle of the shot was from the ground, so that Eddie and Susie could be seen through the cigar’s tiny flickering lights. A sniper shot all of Victor’s men and left only him alive, so he could tell Eddie and Susie where the weed was.
The sniper was Andy, and may I say, he would make a good rival for Susie's affections. Susie looked impressed by his work. Eddie’s payment for his services was to make him the custodian of a 17th century manor he recently acquired.
Visions of the dead did not slow Eddie down from his goal to reassemble the lost pieces of his family estate. Simon MacDougall had decided to put his 600 acre estate on the market. Eddie instructed his solicitor Ahmed to make an offer well above the market value, but Simon, using colourful language, turned down the offer. Eddie personally went to see him with Geoff, to find out what the issue was.
It turned out that in the 15 years that Simon had lived next door to the Hornimans, every Christmas, he has invited them for drinks. Not once had anyone even bothered to respond. Eddie raised the offer another million, but Simon remained adamant. Fifteen years of resentment was not easily erased. He told Eddie he has heard the rumours about the dodgy things happening on the estate.
Eddie told him the offer would decrease by a million every day until it was at zero. If he were right, if Eddie was both a duke and a gangster, could he truly stop him from getting what he wanted? Eddie was getting more comfortable with violence, more willing to turn to it as a first or second resort.
Just in case you are already thinking Michael Corleone, the show decided to take the comparison further by giving Eddie a Christening scene. Charly and Nanny asked Eddie to be godfather of their son Tarquin, along with the King. Charly wanted Geoff to be godfather, and in the end asked Nanny to intercede to make it happen. When the Christening came to the ‘I reject Satan’ part, Susie muttered ‘Good luck with that’, as Eddie had another vision of the dead accountant.
Susie went against her father’s wishes on the theft of the weed; Eddie, correctly, thought that meant she was ready to go against him again regarding the decriminalisation of marijuana. Susie still insisted Bobby was eccentric rather than mad, however. They had a brief garden walk near the end, because the episode just had to remind us how good they looked together, regardless of their diverging romantic paths.
Rating: B+
Strays
🏚️According to Eddie, the 8th Duke of Halstead designed the house on the MacDougall estate. He lived there with his mistress and their three children who died. In his grief, he sold the estate for next to nothing. From Eddie’s point of view, the land still belonged to him.
🏚️Every time Eddie and Susie called each other ‘Susan’ and ‘Captain’, it felt like flirting. Eddie's 'Susan' in particular often had a tinge of want.
🏚️Bobby warned Susie about Joe Green, who was in the far more violent chop game. Susie had heard this warning before. She told Joe to keep their relationship from Jack, who would talk and it would get back to Bobby.
🏚️Joe pointing out that Bobby was not just Susie’s father, he was her boss, got to her a bit.
🏚️I feel like I should mention Mr. Lawrence, the Halstead Manor butler, because he was often around, a continuous symbol of the lifestyle the family enjoyed uninterrupted, especially when compared to other aristocrats who had fallen on hard times.
🏚️When the Glass crew went to Ned’s house, Eddie and Susie remained outside talking and looking like cool criminals. Susie’s red bag popped on the scene, along with her white-lined sunglasses.
🏚️Victor shot Ned in the head after pumping him for information on the Glass weed operation.
🏚️When Charly was six years old, she gave Geoff a piece of walnut she found in the woods. Geoff kept it all these years, and carved a toy owl out of it for baby Tarquin.
Episode Title: Do You Reject Satan?
Episode Writers: Guy Ritchie and Matthew Read and Danielle Ward
Episode Director: Eran Creevy
Original Release Date: September 3, 2026