Warning: Major spoilers ahead

As the gangs and police of London alike are distracted by the devastation of the fentanyl-spiked cocaine, Sean sets a new plan in motion.

Here’s how the episode plays out.

Sean, still incarcerated, is taken in a secure van to his court hearing. Disturbingly calm, he even expresses a smirk to one of the guards monitoring him. At 3pm on the dot, the van crashes, sending Sean and the guards flying, and bullets start raining down. Getting the upper hand on his guards despite being handcuffed, Sean attacks and kills them both, before escaping with the help of Billy and Cornelius, who have created their own bloodbath outside in their efforts to free him.

Once in the getaway car, Billy reveals he’s planned for a helicopter to take them to Ireland. But their plan is disrupted as they’re ambushed by the Albanian gang, led by a vengeful Luan. Running off in the commotion, Sean is spotted by Elliot who chases after him, alongside a pair of Albanian gang members. Hiding out in a bath house, Elliot declares he just needs the name of who killed his wife, Naomi, and son, Samuel, and in exchange he’ll help Sean get away. Sean says he will, but he has to help him first. This never comes to pass as Elliot is distracted by an Albanian thug and Sean uses the opportunity to make his escape.

When Luan finds out Elliot helped him get away, he is furious, and demands his men find and kill him, putting a £2 million bounty on his head.

Now walking the street in a prisoner jumpsuit, Sean finds a change of clothes in a charity bin and heads into a nearby estate. He offers a teenage street dealer £20,000 to help him get to the helipad in Greenwich, but the youngster gets wind of Luan's bounty and holds him at gunpoint. Sean ups the offer to £4 million and denies being involved with the drug spiking, but it gets him nowhere. When the teen hesitates, Sean disarms him and escapes, but is pursued by the dealer’s gang, all looking to claim the bounty.

Meanwhile, Elliot hijacks an ambulance and its driver at gunpoint, with one of Cornelius’s injured men inside. Once they’re out of sight, Elliot gets in the back and demands Sean’s location. When he refuses, he gets inventive, using a defibrillator to get answers.

Sean makes a beeline for Lale’s office, pleading for help as he’s being framed for the drug spiking. He apologises for leaving her to the hands of Asif when they last saw each other but promises he will make good on it if he can get a car and some cash to escape. She doesn’t care, and is cold towards him, but opens her safe. Instead of giving him money, she pulls out a gun and shoots him in the stomach. When she gets her men to call Luan, he makes another run for it but is now bleeding profusely.

Billy and Cornelius go to Marian’s house to look for help in calling off the Albanians, but she refuses to see him, with her men denying she’s even at the house. In the house, Ed assures Marian she’s making the right choice, saying Sean has already made his.

Bleeding out, Sean goes to The Horseshoe pub, stumbles through the doors, before collapsing in the beer garden. When he comes to, the pub landlord Ronnie and his wife have taken him in and roughly stitched up his wound. They offer him a way out, revealing Sean’s dad Finn once helped their son, and they’re now repaying the favour.

Elsewhere, a mystery man is seen making a smoothie in his home, before checking his phone and going to his own arsenal of guns.

Elliot is picked up by Saba, who tells him about the bounty on Sean’s head. He calls up Luan and tells him he needs Sean alive, but he doesn’t care.

Sean’s saviours offer to help him to Greenwich by taking a route through the underground access tunnels Ronnie once worked in. Ronnie makes no secret of the fact he’s more hesitant than his wife to help. However, the pair eventually bond as they head towards Greenwich.

But Luan and his team aren’t far behind, with Sean leaving a trail of blood leading straight to the Horseshoe. The landlady stands up to Luan, refusing to budge even when he shoots out of her stock and threatens to set the place alight, which unnerves him, but Jim, a regular of the pub and a retired enforcer for the Wallace Organisation (and Elliot’s former handler), tells them where they’ve gone.

With time running out, Cornelius and Billy wait anxiously with the helicopter, which needs to leave by 7pm. Elliot and Saba are also nearby, dispatching men to try and find him. Elliot tells Saba the truth about why he wants Sean alive.

Ronnie and Sean make their way through the tunnels, and Ronnie reveals he holds resentment towards Finn for putting drugs on the streets, even if he did wipe off his son’s debts. Sean’s wound begins to bleed out again, causing him to struggle, and Ronnie said he needs to stay in Ireland once he gets there, as he’s not the c**t his father was.

As Luan’s men get closer to them, they open fire, shooting Ronnie in the neck. Sean tries to save him, but Ronnie dies from his wounds.

Billy holds the helicopter pilot at gunpoint as the window on their exit closes, demanding he wait. Sean makes it to Greenwich, with the helicopter in sight, but Elliot and Saba spot him and make him stop. Elliot is then run over by the hooded man, who incapacitates him further with a brutal kick to the face, before picking up Sean and piling him into the back of his car. No one - Luan, Elliot, Billy or Cornelius - knows who this mystery man is.

While Elliot is taken to hospital, Sean wakes up in a dilapidated flat, tied to a chair. He demands “how much” the hooded man wants, but he isn’t interested. Instead, he berates Sean, declaring him “not so special” before receiving a message with instructions to kill him. Sean initially offers £10 million to keep him alive, but in his last words, defiantly screams “I am Sean Wallace! I am a proper f***ing c**t!” The assassin unloads a semi-automatic gun on him, leaving Sean to take his last breath on the floor.

NARGES RASHIDI (Lale): It was hard for me because I love him, and I want to work with him, and I don’t want him to go, so I cried.

ORLI SHUKA (Luan): Sean was a great character. It’s very sad to lose such a character. He gives so much to the show and thanks to him this show, it’s quite brilliant. Because of this, fans are going to be surprised and shocked all the way through the season.

PIPPA BENNETT-WARNER (Shannon): I was really sad. I love Joe and he’s brilliant as Sean, his absence will be felt. We've been doing this for a long time, and losing original cast members feels strange.

HUGH WARREN (Executive Producer): We're pretty emphatic in episode two. There's no question: He is dead. His desperation in a way, but also his self-belief as he says, ‘I'm a f**king Wallace’. He thinks he's invincible, but of course, he is vulnerable and ultimately doesn't understand who is hunting him down. There's people from various sides, some for mistaken reasons and some for correct reasons.

It is an episode that is purely about his survival, and of course, he doesn't survive. We’re pretty clear. In season one, there was one bullet through the face. This is a myriad of bullets. I don't think even Sean Wallace can survive that.

PETER MCKENNA (Lead Writer): I think there’s always a danger in shows like Gangs of London, shows where people are ostensibly living in a high stakes world, that if you don’t have moments where characters die, then the stakes begin to dissipate. It becomes like a superhero thing where nobody really dies except non-speaking extras. It’s really, really important for the show to give the audience a kind of shock that engages them so they don’t fall into a rhythm watching the show and feel they know what’s going to happen. I think that really does it. It also sets up lots of story for a lot of the other characters, and that’s really important to us.

So we decided to create an episode that was really about him, and you’re on a journey with him. It’s kind of like at the very beginning of the episode, he’s broken out from prison. The plan goes wrong. He gets separated from the people saving him, and then it’s kind of like a chase across London where he’s getting away from London and everybody’s out to get him. There are moments with him and Lale when they’re there and he apologises, the moments with him and Ronnie, where you begin to see a different side to him.

There’s not just a gangster. What we wanted to do is build up this thing so that by the end of the story, the audience are rooting for him, really want him to get away, want him to be safe, and then kind of pull the rug from underneath them. That makes it that more shocking that you kind of set up this big escape and he looks like he’s done it and he has all these plans and he’s going to go away to Ireland and come back and rule the city, then suddenly he’s dead.

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