‘Peaky Blinders’: Does Tom Hardy’s Character Alfie Really Have Cancer?

Fans were shocked and delighted to learn in the Peaky Blinders Season 5 finale that Tom Hardy’s character Alfie Solomons was still alive. Thomas Shelby shot Alfie at the end of season 4, but he miraculously survived the encounter. Before he was shot, Alfie told Tommy that he had cancer. It’s not clear if Alfie is still sick when he meets Tommy again in season 5. It could even be that Alfie was lying about having cancer in the first place.

Who is Alfie Solomons?

Alfie is a Jewish gang leader who Tommy meets in season 2 of Peaky Blinders. The two do business together, though Alfie betrays Tommy on multiple occasions. In season 4, Alfie agrees to help the Italians with their plan to kill Tommy, though this ultimately failed.

Realizing that Alfie betrayed him to Luca Changretta, Tommy finds Alfie on the beach and shoots him. In season 5, it is revealed that Alfie survived the encounter. Alfie agrees to help Tommy kill Oswald Mosley in exchange for a large sum of money. He organizes a group of men to distract Mosley’s bodyguards while Barney Thompson shoots Mosley. However, this plan fails too.

Does Alfie still have cancer in ‘Peaky Blinders’ Season 5?

Alfie is lucky to have survived being shot by Tommy, though the bullet leaves him scarred and blind in one eye. When Tommy finds Alfie on the beach in Margate, Alfie tells him something before Tommy shoots him. “Are you armed?” Tommy asks. “No,” replies Alfie. “The only thing I’ve got on me is f***ing cancer mate.”

“Yeah. Riddled with it,” Alfie continues. “Doctor told me I might have picked it up in France in a gas or something. He even showed me a photograph of it before I met you at the fight.” It’s never clear exactly what kind of cancer Alfie has, though fans have speculated it to be either lung or skin cancer.

If Alfie was “riddled” with cancer at the time, it seems unlikely that it would have gone away. In season 5, Alfie is still alive, but no mention of the cancer is made. Some fans have speculated that Alfie was lying about the cancer to get Tommy to pull the trigger. “I don’t think that he has cancer. He lied to Tommy so that Tommy would kill him,” said a fan on Reddit.

This could be true. It did seem like Alfie was trying to give Tommy a justification to kill him. When Alfie tells Tommy about the cancer, he adds, “Come on, Tommy. There’s an honorable reason now to pull that trigger.”

Is Alfie in ‘Peaky Blinders’ Season 6?

However, it could also be that Alfie really does have cancer, and it’s killing him a bit slower than expected. It’s not clear yet whether Alfie will be in Peaky Blinders Season 6. However, Sam Claflin has teased that his character Mosley may team up with the Jewish gangster in the final season. It wouldn’t be against Alfie’s character to betray Tommy again.