The Gentlemen Recap Season 2 Episode 6 ‘The Bells of San Domenico’
On their first and only night as a married couple, Bella told Eddie that she knew his decision to marry her was a business decision. She did not care, because she loved him. Eddie assured her he loved her, and made the appropriate allusion to them growing old together. Putting aside that it now looked like Eddie has reached the stage of his turn to darkness when he has grown comfortable with dark secrets and a casual relationship with the truth, I do think Eddie was not necessarily lying here. Eddie and Bella’s story was an illustration of how love was not just something that happened. Love was a decision made at every moment, and in the short time they were together, Eddie decided to love Bella. And so he did. In his own Dark Eddie way, he did.
Why kill off Bella in the same episode that she and Eddie got married? Outside of the Michael Corleone reference (Michael lost his first wife, also an Italian, through a car bomb that was meant for him), the fact is, The Gentlemen is a show with only eight episodes per season, and Bella has served her narrative purpose. Bella was there to serve as Eddie’s gateway into the European aristocratic criminal class. She provided the root that her godfather Moretti said Eddie did not have. Now, it was time to move on, to an Eddie untethered by the need to playact the devoted husband.
Bella’s time in The Gentlemen may have been short, but she was a fascinating character. I have seen her described as an innocent; I have contended in the past that she was not. Bella was goddaughter to the mafia don of dons. She allowed her palazzo to be used as a weed farm. She met a cocaine dealer, Cico, at a party, and started dating him, because, she said, she liked his ambition, bearing in mind that this ambition was trained specifically in crime. She had the option to be just another wealthy aristocrat who wandered around Europe looking beautiful and spending money; she chose not to. Instead, she became an active member of her godfather’s criminal empire. She fell in love with a man she knew to be a killer, who was involved in the murder of at least one innocent (the accountant), and she did not care. Bella may not be ordering murders about, but her soul mirrored Eddie’s. Outside of their classic good looks and their aristocratic pedigree, Bella and Eddie were quite well matched. Had she lived, their marriage would probably have gone the distance.
I also found it interesting that in a tight season, the show decided to introduce, then kill off, a man from Bella’s past, Tancredi. On one hand, Tancredi being an absolute jerk to Bella at the party led to Eddie going to see him at his hotel room, to Eddie accidentally killing him, to Moretti finding out about the murder and loving Eddie even more because that was his good murderous boy, it was only proper that he killed the man who disrespected his Bella, to that darkly hilarious confession scene that was more season one dark comedy than the more straightforward criminal drama of season two, to Angelica using Tancredi’s body to try and bend Eddie to her will, only to belatedly realise that the new kid on the block was a far more dangerous adversary than she expected. Tancredi served a narrative purpose, but the sequence of him not watching his mouth and Bella dancing with her friends whilst Eddie watched, Bella heartstoppingly beautiful in slow motion, felt pointed. Eddie was a man whose plans were coming to fruition in this episode. I could be reading too much into it, but Eddie watching Bella dance felt like a slow-motion car wreck. Eddie was embarking on a far darker path than he realised, with a woman he barely knew who did nothing to restrain his darker impulses. What could possibly go wrong?
Bella presented a sweet front to Eddie, and to everyone else, but she notably could not keep the same act up around Susie. Even when she came to Susie to, she claimed, kiss the ring, she engaged in aristocratic double speak rather than make a genuine effort to get along with an important business partner. Eddie invited Susie to the wedding, and though Eddie was certain Susie would come, Bella thought she would not, perhaps because that was her hope. Susie arrived at Bella’s palazzo to speak to Moretti in a leopard print outfit, cut low; Susie knew how to dress for any occasion, so it was notable that she chose that outfit, something that screamed she did not grow up with a French-speaking butler. It was almost as though sartorically Susie was making a point that Bella had nothing to worry about, she knew she did not belong in Eddie’s aristocratic world, and she would make no effort to do so. Even before she spoke the most gracious words, Susie was already telling Bella she would not fight for Eddie.
The very best of the well-born know the golden rule, you never allow anyone outside of the immediate family know what you are thinking. Bella could not quite manage this, not with Susie. She walked down the stairs of her grand palazzo, in her gorgeous wedding dress, reeking of hostility and insecurity, outright telling Susie she thought there was something between her and Eddie. Everyone who knew them thought that. Susie claimed they just worked together, and gave Bella a gift on her wedding day she did not necessarily deserve given how she treated Susie from the start. ‘Eddie wouldn’t marry you unless he loved you profoundly. Authentically. Passionately. And by the way, you wear love well.’ The girl who grew up in a Council Estate was very much to the manor born here.
This sequence reminded me of Lord Hawthorne telling Susie once upon a lifetime ago that she ought to be a politician. She often was. She was a woman who thrived in a cutthroat criminal world. She, more often than not, knew what to say, when to say it. Her father Bobby had trained her in the importance of balancing the necessity of violence with restraint; it was a balance she almost effortlessly maintained. She also recognised when someone was tethering into the abyss, as she did with Eddie.
For a few moments following her arrival at the pre-wedding party, gorgeous in a yellow dress, acting unaware of how Bella’s face dropped as she watched Eddie leave the party with her, Susie reached back to a time when they had each other’s back, when they could speak frankly to each other, and asked Eddie, ‘What is this?’ Without any rancour, Susie made clear to Eddie that her father Bobby expected him to be completely out of the game, not forming a splinter group with Bella’s mafia family. Eddie did not deny this, but he also did not communicate to Susie what he told Moretti, that he intended to split his profits with the Glass family. When Susie told him, ‘You wanna be careful, Eddie’, it was Dark Eddie who replied, ‘You wanna be careful with your be carefuls, Susan.’
Susie tried once more to be the diplomat, and spoke to Moretti. She told him she knew he was planning something with Eddie, and that she did not have a problem with that. When she asked how it would affect their existing business relationship, Moretti punted the question to Eddie. When she asked if he would be willing to act as Eddie’s guarantor, Moretti demured, and said Eddie was his own man.
One final time, Susie tried to speak to Eddie, right outside the church, mere minutes before his wedding. She outright told him, again without rancour, and with much concern, that he had the potential to become a monster. They stood face to face a step outside the church door, with the altar on their background as Eddie asked for her hand. ‘If you're worried I’m gonna come after you, don’t.’
Susie, pointedly dressed in a tight white dress with flower detailing and a red hat, sat near the back of the church as Bella walked in with Moretti, a vision in her wedding dress. At some point during the ceremony, Susie finally walked out, quietly, because no one else looked back except for Eddie. Even during his wedding, even with Dark Eddie on the wheel for most of this episode, the pull of their connection remained, fragile though it may have been.
Eddie had told Charly that whilst at one point he thought he was done, now everything seemed so close. As only Charly could, she asked him if it was all duty with Bella; Eddie denied it. Alone as man and wife, Eddie assured Bella of his love. Love is a decision; that does not make it any less real. Bella, who wanted to fly to their honeymoon in Switzerland, suggested that Eddie take the Ferrari, a wedding gift from Moretti, and they would race. The two of them looked genuinely happy, Eddie driving a little recklessly, Bella in the air, blowing him a kiss. Bella’s plane exploded whilst she was near Eddie, so that the fiery crash happened on the road in front of him.
Rating: A
Strays
🏚️Apologies for this recap’s long delay, I was in the middle of working on it when I fell ill. Thank you so much for your patience!
🏚️Eddie finally visited Freddy at rehab, and asked him to be best man. Freddy honestly told him he was not ready. Freddy still stewed over what he viewed as a betrayal, Eddie bypassing him in the inheritance. Now, Eddie even had a posh would be wife. Eddie had everything Freddy thought belonged to him. Freddy kept bringing up the story of Esau and Jacob.
🏚️Eddie wanted the profits cleaned via London, but Angelica insisted on using her contacts in Hong Kong. Eddie told Ahmed to run a full background check on Angelica, and figured out that, contrary to the story Angelica concocted, her husband never left her. He was the majority stakeholder in a shell company they set up in Hong Kong to skim money off Moretti. When Angelica tried to use Tancredi’s body to force Eddie to go with her Hong Kong plan, Eddie in return very casually threatened to tell Moretti about how she had been stealing from him.
🏚️Bella made Eddie, who was not Catholic, go to confession with Father Bosco. Though he did not name them, Eddie casually shared that he killed Tancredi, Takashi, Henry Collins, the accountant, and a number of Afghans whilst he was a soldier. Father Bosco could not quite keep up with Eddie’s scripture discourse. The conversation greatly disturbed the priest, and he later told Eddie he was praying for him.
🏚️Nanny, whilst strolling through Bella’s gardens with baby Tarquin, accidentally saw the massive marijuana operation. Charly confirmed what he suspected, that Eddie was involved in a vast criminal enterprise with Moretti and Bella.
🏚️Aw Sabrina meant to move to the dower house to give way to Bella, the new mistress of Halstead.
🏚️Charly asked Geoff to sit next to Sabrina up front in the church. It was nice that Eddie did not seem to have a problem with it.
🏚️Susie told her father over the phone that what Eddie was doing was a move, but not a confrontational one. Bobby: ‘You sure your radar ain’t getting a bit cloudy here, having to watch the Duke go down the aisle?’ Susie assured him her radar was glitch-free. Bobby told Susie to come home so he could fill her in on the latest. Mr. Stevens, Stanley Johnston’s assistant, was with Bobby with some paperwork.
🏚️The Godfather references on this episode: (1) policemen taking photos and license plates of the wedding guests (2) Moretti telling Susie he was not Sicilian and Bella was not his daughter but he could still not refuse a request on that day (3) Bella’s plane blowing up.
Episode Title: The Bells of San Domenico
Episode Writers: Guy Ritchie and Matthew Read and Ian Weatherby
Episode Director: Guy Ritchie
Original Release Date: September 3, 2026