Who killed Tommy in MobLand? The truth was beaten out of the man who disposed of the body

MobLand opens with a classic: Tommy Stevenson, only son of gangland boss Richie Stevenson, goes out partying with Eddie Harrigan, heir-brat of the rival family, and simply never comes home. By the end of episode 2 he's found in a suitcase, disassembled with genuinely upsetting craftsmanship by Valjon, a club manager whose father — the show is careful to tell us — was a butcher.

The short answer

Eddie did it. Eddie Harrigan (Anson Boon) stabbed his own school friend 50 or 60 times, then paid Valjon ten grand to make the body disappear. We learn this in episode 3, and we learn it the MobLand way: Harry (Tom Hardy) and Kevin beat the confession out of Valjon, who'd kept quiet to protect his kids — and who then, in a truly grim double shift, takes the blame himself, feeding Richie a kidnapping-gone-wrong story to stop a full-blown gang war. The whole reveal is less "whodunit" and more "who's going to absorb the punishment for it."

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The twist: grandma

Then episode 4 quietly detonates the real bomb: Maeve Harrigan — Helen Mirren, having the time of her life — orchestrated the whole thing, soothing a wobbling Eddie with assurances that everyone is exactly where she wants them. Boon has been refreshingly blunt about who his character actually is, telling TV Insider:

"I consider Eddie to be someone who is being raised by monsters."

And in case you were still filing the murder under "cocaine accident," Boon confirmed the premeditation, saying that starting the war

"was always the aim, and it's all part of the plan."

So: the knife was Eddie's, the cleanup was Valjon's, the beating was Harry's, and the idea was grandma's. Family television.

Previously we wrote: What do they win on The Great British Bake Off? The actual prize — and how one winner turned it into an estimated £3.7 million