Who is Donnie in MobLand, explained: a hitman whose season 2 assignment was not to kill anyone
MobLand's quietest hired gun spends most of his second season taking a woman out to dinner.
MobLand, the Paramount+ crime drama from Ronan Bennett, showrunner Jez Butterworth and director Guy Ritchie, follows the Harrigans, a London crime family, and their fixer, Harry Da Souza, played by Tom Hardy. Joanne Froggatt plays Harry's wife, Jan. Donnie is played by Alex Fine, a former bull rider turned actor. Season 2 premiered in September, with new episodes weekly.
Spoilers for season 2 through episode 6 below.
Donnie in season 1
He started out as Kat McAllister's man, and the show used him sparingly. He turned up at Zosia's door claiming to be a friend of Harry's, came back later with an offer from his boss, and was the one who put Harry on the phone with Kat. Fine sums up his first season in one line.
"I worked for Kat McAllister in Season 1," Fine told TV Insider.
The season 2 job
In episode 3, a driver rear-ends Jan's car. They swap insurance details, and he introduces himself as Jamie. It's Donnie, and the accident is how he gets into Jan's life.
His work this season is almost all talk:
- dating Jan, under the name Jamie, while her marriage to Harry falls apart;
- acting as Kat's handler for Seraphina, played by Mandeep Dhillon, and passing her what he knew about Frankie Cooper's plans to attack the Harrigans;
- staying close enough to Harry's family to be useful to whoever is paying.
Fine called the role "more of a honey trap for her," and said the date scenes were "fun to play the different side of a hitman." He doesn't give Donnie much credit for sincerity, though.
"There's zero care for her at all," Fine said of Donnie and Jan.
When the orders change
The new villain changes the job. Frankie Cooper, played by Johnny Flynn, wants Jan taken so he can use her to draw Harry out. Donnie tries to abduct her and fails when Zosia spots him. Frankie's answer is an ultimatum: deliver Jan or die.
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That's the moment the honey trap turns back into a hitman. In Fine's words, Donnie "would kill anyone on any orders, especially to save himself."
How it ends for him
Episode 6, "A Different Corner." Jan agrees to meet Donnie at the Rose and Crown pub and never shows up. She goes to his house instead, with Harry's gun, and waits. When he gets home, she shoots him in the neck.
Fine says it "was never a surprise that he was going to go," and he likes how it happened: "I think that was a good way for Donnie to go."
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