Warning: Major spoilers ahead

Billy Wallace makes his mark as the new heir apparent to the Wallace crime family, and as one alliance disintegrates, another is formed.

Here’s how episode 6 of Gangs of London season 3 plays out.

Seven years prior to the current timeline, Elliot’s wife Naomi is busy working at her desk, but is disrupted by her son, Samuel, screaming about a boogeyman in the garden. While she calms him down, she sees there is indeed a hooded man outside. Brandishing a knife, she heads outside to confront the intruder. It’s a man named Johnny, who panickily warns her that “they know” and he’s being followed. She urges him to “stick to the plan” before going back to work on a report. Johnny leaves, but true to his word, he is being trailed.

Elliot has disappeared. Faz and Saba are worried for him, bringing in Ed and Shannon for help as they break into his home to look for clues. The four of them discover the drugs barrels, leading Ed and Shannon to declare him responsible for the tainted drugs in front of Faz and Saba. Ed demands Saba return the drugs to the factory, while Faz spreads the word that Elliot was behind the poisoned batch and for him to be found and killed. Outside, a guilt-ridden Shannon asks if they have to kill Elliot, but Ed insists they have no choice. Saba later appeals to Shannon, insisting Elliot must have been framed, but Shannon stands her ground, saying Elliot has betrayed them all.

Asif, with Lale’s baby and the nurse in tow, sets about business in London. At an underpass, he meets with his co-conspirator; the one responsible for orchestrating the tainted cocaine shipment – it's Ed Dumani.

Greeting each other as old friends, Ed assures Asif that Elliot will be taken care of. Ed gives Asif an envelope bearing the same logo seen on Naomi’s file and the warehouse door, and they say they’ll see each other in two days.

Elliot wakes up bound, blindfolded and tied to a pole in an abandoned school. Zeek, who was sitting outside, hears his yelling and approaches him, before knocking him out again to keep him quiet. He then calls and leaves a message for an unknown person. When they arrive, it’s revealed to be Shannon, who delivers the order to kill Elliot, as he has gotten too close to the truth.

Meanwhile, Billy, having fallen off the wagon in his grief, remembers back to when he promised he would always have Sean’s back. He visits Marian alongside Cornelius, as she delivers the news that it was Elliot is behind the spiking. She commands everyone to find and kill him, while tasking Liam the Wallace’s chief enforcer, to ensure that Billy doesn’t waver this time.

At the school, Shannon tells Zeek to kill Elliot. After the job is done, he will be paid handsomely and will have to disappear. Zeek responds by saying he was never in it for the money, and that he will be sticking around. As they talk, Elliot breaks free. As he struggles to remove his blindfold, he is shot in the shoulder by Shannon. When she checks if he’s dead, he manages to stab her in the foot with a nail and steal her gun. He manages to remove his mask, but Shannon flees the school before he can identify her.

Zeek finds Elliot and the pair disarm each other, prompting a violent brawl between them. Elliot is able to get the upper hand, but in attempting to question Zeek about his family’s deaths, he loses focus and is brutally beaten. Throwing him outside, Zeek looks to finish things by choking Elliot out with a swing chain, but just as Elliot looks to have drawn his final breath, Zeek lets him go.

As Elliot gathers his breath, Zeek says he didn’t know his son would be in the car on the night Naomi and Samuel were killed, and that when he left, they were both still alive. He then opts to walk away, despite his instructions to kill Elliot, telling him to ‘remember that’.

Looking for Elliot, Billy and Cornelius corner Faz at the warehouse. Racking up lines of cocaine on a car, Billy tells Faz to either give them Elliot’s whereabouts, or to start snorting lines, warning him that some of it is the fentanyl-laced drug that has killed so many. With Faz having no idea where he is, Billy and Cornelius continue to torture him, forcing him to snort multiple lines.

At City Hall, Simone is informed by Henry that they have a meeting with the Prime Minister scheduled the next day. She expresses concern that Elliot has not been in contact for two days. Henry suggests maybe it’s probably for the best as they concentrate on drawing up plans to take down the gangs for good. James suggests calling the policy ‘Jermaine’s Law’ in honour of Simone’s brother, who was caught up and killed by gang activity, which touches her.

Henry leaves for a meeting by the river, revealed to be with Asif. Henry, who previously worked on Asif’s son Nasir’s mayoral campaign, is still loyal to their family, and the legalisation plan is being masterminded by Asif and Ed Dumani’s alliance. Henry asks Asif if he can deliver on their ‘arrangement’.

Shannon calls Ed to let him know Elliot got free, and he instructs her to go home, pack a bag and get her and her son, Danny, to a safe house as soon as possible. Shannon, still injured and bleeding from the stabbing, hurriedly dresses her wounds. What she doesn’t anticipate is a gravely injured Elliot arriving to see her, believing her to be the only person he can trust.

Faz – wired, desperate and with no useful information - pleads for his life in front of Billy. Despite his uncle’s prompting him to finish the job, Billy appears to show him mercy and tells Faz he’s free to go... only to sadistically gun him down as he attempts to flee. He tells Marian that the word is out - he’ll kill someone from every gang until Elliot is delivered to them.

Elliot tells Shannon that he was let go by Zeek, but he was not alone. He isn’t sure, but he thinks there was also a woman at the school. He begs her to believe that he’s being set up, and she says she does. She tells him she is going to fetch the first aid kit but instead pulls a shotgun out of the safe. While unattended, Elliot spots Shannon’s bloodied shoe on the living room floor, and realises he’s been double-crossed. Shannon tells Danny to hide in his room, but heading back downstairs she finds Elliot has vanished, pointedly leaving her bloody shoe on the table.

As Elliot makes a run for it, Lale pulls up and tells him to get in or die. The pair speed off as Shannon unloads two rounds into the car, knowing her cover has been rumbled.

SOPÉ DÌRĺSU: I think there is so much aggression and violence in the abandoned children’s home fight because whilst Elliot has been through many scrapes in the series so far, many of which we’ve enjoyed, it seems like there’s this reservoir, this well of emotion and history of trauma that he’s finally able to unleash on the person he thinks who has ruined his life.

He’s fighting with all of his being in this, because Zeek is his villain origin story. There is a real unleashing of everything that makes Elliot Elliot in this fight. It’s crazy that with all that

strength, all that power, it still doesn’t go very well for him. So fight with your head, not with your heart. Zeek gets the better of Elliot in that fight, and even though he’s been ordered to kill him, he chooses not to. That is because of Zeek wanting to take a bit more control of his situation. Zeek wanted to spite the gangs, wanted to stake a claim for himself in this world, and perhaps there is an allegiance there that needs to be respected. If Zeek scratches Elliot’s back, then he’s got a debt to repay at some point.

LUCIAN MSAMATI (Ed): The eternal question: what is Ed Dumani’s motivation? I think it comes in two parts. I think one of Ed’s great powers is that he’s very urbane, suited and booted, imperiously elegant, well-spoken, definitely a man of taste, a man of culture, but this disguises the fact this is a seasoned killer, and a lot of people forget this with Ed to their peril. He knows where all the bodies are buried, built an empire of bone and of blood, and even though he is a man of almost fatal honour, I believe in this season he unleashes his true ambition, which is always to have control.

Everything that motivates Ed, that motivated Finn, was about having control, was about those who have nothing, having a stake, having a chance, having a grip of everything. But mixed into that, of course, is the fatal twin of control: love. Love in its truest form is about having no control at all. Those are the two sides, the light and the dark, of Ed Dumani’s soul through season three.

FADY ELYSAYED (Faz): No, I didn’t. As we were filming, coming near to the end, I was like, ‘hold on, I think I might make another season’. Then I got the call from Mike, the producer, a few weeks before we actually shot the scene, and he explained to me what was going on. I have a lot of love for Mike and huge respect for even how he pitched it to me. You know, having read the script and having filmed the scenes, I’m actually really pleased with my death. Not so much to be finished with Gangs of London, but I feel like the way the story’s set up and especially from season two of Faz’s arc to where he is at the end, I feel like it’s almost a full circle of a lesson to kids to not join gangs.

JAHZ ARMANDO (Saba): He called me, and I just wanted to make sure that it made sense in his life as an actor, as an artist. Whenever he told me he was feeling faithful in the path for his character, it immediately made me calm down somehow. But for Saba, it means everything, and for me it felt like the end of an era. Fady, he changed my life. He was that brother figure for me in London and enabled me to trust myself, trust my instinct, acting wise, but also as a human really. I was so shy - the second I moved to London I was on my own all the time and he pushed me and was like, ‘you get to live in this life and it’s meant for you, so you go and do your thing’ and it felt huge. But as long as my boy is happy, I’m really happy for him.

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