‘Peaky Blinders’ Season 6: Who Is Esme Shelby-Lee? Why Does Thomas Shelby Call Her?
In Peaky Blinders Season 6, Thomas Shelby’s daughter Ruby falls ill. Tommy has always believed in Romani curses and visions, so when his daughter starts speaking ominous words during her fever, he grows concerned. Tommy gives Esme Shelby-Lee a call, but who is this mysterious woman? And how can she help Tommy?
[Spoiler alert: Peaky Blinders Season 6 Episode 2 spoilers ahead.]
Who is Esme Shelby-Lee?
Esme married Tommy’s brother John in the first season of Peaky Blinders. John was previously married to a woman named Martha, who died before the start of the series. John plans to marry a sex worker named Lizzie Stark so that she can help him take care of his four children, but Tommy rejects the idea.
Instead, Tommy sets John up to marry a woman from the Lee family who had “gone a bit wild.” This marriage would solidify a peaceful relationship between the Shelbys and the Lees while giving John someone to help him with the kids. John is reluctant to marry a woman he has never met, but he perks up in the wedding scene when he sees Esme is young and beautiful.
In Peaky Blinders Season 4, John is killed by Italian assassins hired by the Changretta family. Esme is devastated by her husband’s death, and she leaves the Shelbys with her children to “live with decent people.”
Why does Tommy call on Esme in ‘Peaky Blinders’ Season 6?
In Peaky Blinders Season 6, Lizzie calls Tommy to tell him that their daughter Ruby is sick. Tommy doesn’t seem overly concerned until Lizzie tells him she was repeating Romani words while in the midst of her fever: “Tickna mora o’beng.”
Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight has a brief explanation of these words in an interview with Digital Spy. “It’s difficult to translate from the Romani, but it means ‘devil’. It means a bit more than that, but yeah. So it’s not good. It’s not a good thing.”
Lizzie also tells Tommy that Ruby saw a Grey Man with green eyes. At this point, Tommy panics. He tells Lizzie to keep Ruby away from the river and horses. He also instructs her to tell Johnny Dogs’ eldest wife to put a Black Madonna around Ruby’s neck.
Later, Tommy places a call to Esme Shelby-Lee. Tommy is a practical person, but he takes Romani curses and visions seriously. Before Esme left the Shelbys, she stated the family is cursed. She also placed a curse on Tommy and Arthur, declaring that they would have “no peace.” Now, perhaps Tommy believes that Esme can lift the curse and save his daughter.
Who is the Grey Man?
Ruby’s hallucinations of a Grey Man with green eyes could represent several things. In Peaky Blinders Season 6 Episode 2, Tommy tells Jack Nelson that the first person he ever killed was a “Prussian boy with green eyes” while serving in WWI. Den of Geek points out that the Prussians wore grey during the war.
Toward the end of the episode, Tommy has a seizure, during which he sees himself killing the Prussian boy in the war. Den of Geek suggests that the Grey Man is, therefore “a memory, a curse, and a kind of demon manifested from Tommy’s war trauma.”
It’s also possible that this Grey Man Ruby sees coming to get her and her father is Oswald Mosley. This fascist leader is an enemy of Tommy’s, and notably, he has green eyes.
New episodes of Peaky Blinders Season 6 air Sundays on the BBC.
