'Gangs of London' Episode 4 Review: Elliot's loyalty is tested with a bloodbath, but who kidnapped [spoiler]?
Spoiler alert for Episode 4
Heading into the fourth episode of the Sky crime thriller that has left even fans of 'Game of Thrones' and 'Peaky Blinders' shaken and stirred, 'Gangs of London' only gets more outrageous and the violence only gets bloodier.
Secrets unravel about deceased crimelord Finn Wallace's (Colm Meaney) supposedly pregnant mistress, Floriana. His widow Marian (Michelle Fairley) is left rattled with rage, but curiously enough, even with a whole yacht and an island to her name, Floriana is nowhere to be found.
Where is she? Who is keeping her from unfurling the core mysteries of Finn's murder? Suspicion hovers over Elliot Finch (Sope Dirisu), as his undercover status implies possible leverage the police might have over the Wallaces, but soon Elliot's loyalty to the family is put to test.
He rescues and almost bleeds his guts out, even though the question still lingers: who abducted Finn's pregnant mistress?
With the connection between Elliot and Ed Dumani's (Lucian Msamati) daughter, Shannon (Lucian Msamati), growing, it's no wonder that Ed would have this new recruit tailed. So off he goes snooping on the UC, and ironic as fate would have it, a father ends up meeting another father: Elliot's.
The next step is pretty predictable, the usual subtle blackmail is induced and Elliot knows better than just watching his own back. He gets assigned to one of Ed's personal henchmen who takes Elliot around town, attacking old men for drugs and money, and later, common crooks for no good reason.
Right when one thinks Elliot is doing the utmost to ensure his own integrity doesn't tell on him, things get worse. The Albanian mafia leader Luan Dushaj (Orli Shuka) has landed himself in quite the predicament with a Nigerian gang, who cemented a person live in from of Luan's eyes to assert their dominance.
So Luan does what he can to get the money out of the Wallaces, and blackmailing them with photos of a family he had murdered for Finn gets him a meeting with the Wallace heir — Sean (Joe Cole).
Mid-proving his loyalty, Elliot gets conveniently called over to this meeting right after he defies the handler, and even though the meeting with Luan gets ambushed by a sniper shooting from a distance, Elliot's luck favors him again with the handler dying from the first bullet.
Dying would be an understatement; the bullet hits his head and it pretty much explodes like a water balloon, splattering blood on Sean's face — a vivid portrait of why this show is being labeled to be "on steroids" by many.
The fight sequence takes over with bullets raining down from a singular, but steady source. People start popping and dropping as the entire alleyway blushes red. In all of this, Elliot, even though hit by a bullet, manages to drag Sean out of harm's way.
Their only respite is Luan diligently defending his only hope for safety, and a random guy who tailed Elliot from the warehouse where he was unnecessarily torturing young crooks.
All of this happens in the backdrop of Sean and Marian knowing full well that the Dumanis are tied with people possibly involved in their family's fate.
So back home continues a dinner where Sean was supposed to confront Ed and Alex Dumani (Paapa Essiedu) for any intel they might have, but instead, it turns into a massacre when Sean returns home with a wounded Elliot.
Again, conveniently, Sean's sister Jackie is a trauma surgeon, so of course, she is able to save Elliot with a pair of knives and shears on the dinner table. But a third disaster strikes when one of the servers at the dinner turns out to be the sniper's agent.
She gets a call from the wounded man telling her they need to resort to plan B: Shoot Sean in his own house.
The script once again gets predictable by making Alex and Ed arrive right in time to shoot the waitress from behind before she can hit Sean, but the question still lingers about who they are working for.
The primary catalyst is making that particular doubt swing so hard is that the sniper is also secretly holding Floriana hostage in his own basement. Like a typical psychopath, he's feeding her and has given her a mattress for the baby's sake, but that's all.
It's pretty obvious that he is holding her as leverage over whoever he is working for as everyone who knew of Finn's mistress believes she is dead. And this German mercenary doesn't exactly look like the kind of person to be working for the cops even though their persons of interest are both the same.
As of now, our best bet is on Jeevan Kapadia (Ray Panthaki) — newly introduced as one of the investors in the Wallace business, as he can be seen talking to Ed Dumani about his son's life and security earlier in the episode, almost as if trying to buy Ed into his personal beliefs about how to handle their business.
All of this happened at the same event that the Dumani duo was attending, precisely why they were also very conveniently later to Sean's dinner. And even if all of this is an elaborate coincidence, one can't help but recall how Ed murdered Finn's driver in cold blood, purely because some secrets are better kept buried.
Did he know about everything all along? Did he help orchestrate this devastating madness? Only time will tell.
'Gangs of London' dropped with all nine episodes on April 23, and now airs weekly on Thursdays at 9 pm on Sky Atlantic.