Guy Ritchie’s stylish crime world continues its sharper, more introspective turn in the third episode of The Gentlemen’s second season. Do You Reject Satan? balances the series’ mix of sharp suits, sharp dialogue, and sharper violence with a growing sense of moral corrosion at its centre. What begins as another day of managing an underground cannabis empire and aristocratic estate steadily tightens into a study of a man who can no longer pretend the blood on his hands is temporary.
Eddie Horniman has already crossed several lines by this point in the season. The former army captain and reluctant duke is no longer merely dabbling in the Glass family’s business; he is becoming one of its leaders. Episode 3 opens with him standing in the fields of his estate, still haunted by the previous kill. The memory of the accountant he shot surfaces in a brief, unsettling hallucination, the dead man appearing beside him with a catastrophic head wound before the vision dissolves. Geoff, ever the grounded presence, pulls him back to reality. It is a quiet, effective beat that signals the episode’s interest in the psychological cost of Eddie’s new life rather than glorifying its excesses.
The practical problems arrive quickly. Restoring Halstead to its former glory is proving expensive, and Eddie’s attempt to acquire neighbouring land from the stubborn Mr. MacDougall hits a wall of personal resentment. The neighbour has not forgotten years of social snubs and has heard the darker rumours swirling around the estate. Eddie’s response is increasingly direct, a far cry from the measured aristocrat of last season. At the same time, trouble brews at the cannabis farm. Workers, led by the aptly nicknamed Red Ned, have slowed production and are demanding better pay and conditions after one of their number suffered a severe reaction during a clinical trial and received no proper support. In a business that operates outside any formal employment structure, the response from Eddie and Susie Glass is predictably brutal: an offer that is non-negotiable, backed by the clear threat of violence. Ned is pulled aside, a gun pressed to his head, and left in no doubt about the consequences of continued agitation.
The confrontation does not end the matter. Ned and an accomplice later steal ten barrels of experimental, DMT-spiked product, a batch that has already produced extreme side effects in test subjects. The theft creates both a logistical crisis and a public-relations nightmare. With a House of Lords vote on decriminalisation looming, the last thing the operation needs is highly potent, mind-altering cannabis circulating among the general population. The stolen load finds its way into the hands of an Albanian contact named Victor, who kills Ned and attempts to leverage the situation into a larger arrangement with Bobby Glass. Bobby’s instructions are characteristically uncompromising: no negotiations, no weakness, eliminate the problem.
This all leads to a tense set-piece that feels classic Ritchie. Eddie and Susie take the meeting, demand the return of the product, and execute a plan that uses a former Queen’s Dragoon Guard as a hidden sniper who uses a prosthetic leg as a tripod. A casual drop of a cigar serves as the signal. Most of Victor’s men are cut down. The survivor is spared after returning the barrels, a decision that carries the uneasy suggestion it may prove costly later. It is staged with the series’ usual kinetic flair and is brutally sudden but never feels gratuitous even when it is decisive.
The subplot for the episode is the more domestic and symbolic thread of Tarquin’s christening. Eddie is asked to stand as godfather, an invitation he accepts. The family initially hopes for the King to be the second godparent, but Charly wants Geoff, her real father, in the role. Moments before the christen she gets her way and Geoff steps up. The ceremony itself becomes one of the episode’s most pointed scenes. Eddie stands in church in a linen suit, repeating the vows, rejecting Satan and repenting of his sins while you know exactly what he has just authorised and carried out. The irony is not underlined with heavy music or lingering close-ups; it is allowed to sit there, quiet and damning. Theo James plays the moment with a controlled stillness that has become one of the season’s strengths. His Eddie is no longer the slightly bemused outsider learning the rules. He is a man who has internalised them and is beginning to understand the price.
Kaya Scodelario continues to make Susie a compelling character, pragmatic, loyal to the family business, and increasingly aware that Eddie’s growing independence and darkness complicate their partnership. Their conversations about strategy, the risks of defying Bobby, and the optics of the decriminalisation bill feel realistic to their established world and dispaly mutual respect and mutual wariness. Ray Winstone’s Bobby remains a force of nature even from a distance, barking orders and cutting through hesitation with the authority of someone who has lived by those rules for decades. Vinnie Jones’s Geoff provides the episode’s quieter emotional undercurrent, particularly in the small moments surrounding the christening and the wooden owl he has carved. The revelation of family secrets continues to simmer beneath the surface for Charly, adding another layer of tension to the domestic scenes
This is another very dense episode. Between the land acquisition, the labour dispute, the stolen experimental product, the Albanian complication, the consultation with Bobby, the ambush, the ongoing Italian mafia threads from earlier episodes, and the christening, the episode moves at a brisk pace and is borderline overstuffed. The result is some supporting characters risk becoming sketches, and the broader political manoeuvring around the Lords vote is set up more than fully explored here. These are problems caused by the shows ambition while tonly having four episodes to work with.
The parallels between Eddie and Michael Corleone have never felt more deliberate. Like the youngest Corleone son, Eddie begins as the respectable outsider—the war-hero officer who was meant to stay clean, the good brother who inherits responsibility rather than seeking it. Both men are drawn into the family business through a combination of necessity, loyalty, and a gradual realisation that they possess the temperament for it. Both slowly trade their residual moral codes for ruthless pragmatism. Michael’s journey from idealistic outsider to cold-eyed Don is mirrored here in Eddie’s quiet acceptance of ordered killings, his willingness to defy even Bobby Glass when ambition demands it, and the chilling composure with which he now handles threats. The church scene crystallises the resemblance: just as Michael stands as godfather while ordering the simultaneous elimination of his rivals, Eddie rejects Satan in front of the altar moments after orchestrating another body count. The comparison is not exact—Eddie’s world retains more of Ritchie’s black-comic energy—but the trajectory is unmistakable, and the episode leans into it without apology.
Do You Reject Satan? is a confident chapter that deepens the show’s exploration of class, power, and the slow erosion of principle. It delivers the expected thrills with violence, negotiation, and dark comedy, while refusing to let Eddie off the hook. The series continues to look and sound like classic Ritchie, but it is increasingly interested in the soul of the Duke . That combination makes for compelling, if increasingly uneasy, viewing.
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Where to watch The Gentlemen – Season 2, Episode 3: Do You Reject Satan?: