Cillian Murphy and Steven Knight on the set of 'Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man.'

Courtesy of Netflix

When Peaky Blinders was at the height of its TV dominance, as ratings soared and men in newly-bought flat caps spilled out of Garrison-inspired pubs across Britain, its creator Steven Knight teased a little bit about what Tommy Shelby’s final chapter would resemble.

The British writer occasionally said that his story of the Shelby dynasty — the 20th-century Birmingham crime gang headed up by a magnetic Cillian Murphy in a role that sent him flying in the direction of Oscar-worthy acclaim — would continue right up until the Second World War.

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Today, 13 years after Peaky Blinders first premiered on BBC Two (Netflix acquired the show’s international streaming rights a year later), audiences will finally get to see Knight’s long-held vision play out, as its six wildly popular seasons culminate in the Netflix movie The Immortal Man, which also scored a brief theatrical run. Knight’s script, directed by Tom Harper, promises exactly what he’d always discussed — revisiting the Peaky Blinders at a time when Europe was facing a villain a lot more sinister than Sam Neill’s ruthless Inspector Campbell or Adrien Brody’s vengeful Luca Changretta: Hitler.

Except, Knight hadn’t always known this was going to end in a Peaky versus Nazis showdown, exactly. “I didn’t have the actual story in my [head],” he says about making the Germans the final big boss of Tommy’s tragic, death-laden life. “But I knew that this should be a story about a man and a family between two wars.”

As the years went on, and the series landed the film finale treatment, the Birmingham native decided to end his protagonist’s journey with a once-and-for-all mission: Stop German-made counterfeit banknotes from entering Britain and toppling the economy, thus losing us the war. Returning castmembers include Sophie Rundle (as Ada Shelby), Packy Lee (Johnny Dogs) and Stephen Graham (Hayden Stagg).

But it was actually those lost along the way — such as Shelby’s first wife, Grace; his brother, John; and daughter, Ruby — that provided the entry point for Knight on The Immortal Man. “What I wanted to do was start the film with Tommy in a very unfamiliar place,” he continues to The Hollywood Reporter about having the film start with the former gang leader consumed by ghosts of his loved ones. “Because he’s done lots of bad things over the six seasons, but he’s done something that he really cannot forgive himself [for], and so he’s withdrawn from the world.”

Cillian Murphy as Tommy Shelby in Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man.

Courtesy of Netflix

Knight, whose other credits include creating the U.K. quiz show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? as well as House of Guinness and A Thousand Blows, also wanted to honor his mother, who worked at the Birmingham Small Arms (BSA) company factory, the same one obliterated by the Luftwaffe in August 1940, killing 53 employees, as depicted in the opening moments of The Immortal Man. Thankfully, Knight’s mother happened not to be working that night.

“I would have said confidently — not too long ago — that the Second World War was the last time when there was universally agreed good and bad,” the writer continues. “The Nazis were bad and the people who fought the Nazis were good. The world’s changed a little bit at the moment,” he concedes, “but it still has that dividing line — even a man like Tommy Shelby, who is ruthless and prepared to do what would conventionally be seen as bad things — when coming up against this, he has decided, even before the war begins, that he’s going to oppose it.”

Harper jumps in: “There’s still shades of gray, because it’s almost like Beckett and Tommy are similar in some ways. They were both knocked off course by the First World War, and they’ve taken different paths.”

At the mention of Tim Roth‘s antagonist, a British fascist working with the Germans, who tells Tommy he wants to see the war ended with “banknotes, not bombs,” THR has to ask about the casting decision of an understatedly unnerving Roth. “He was first choice,” confirms Knight. “Cillian [also an EP on the film] has a fantastic address book, so the casting process was made more simple, but I wrote him as a posh person,” he adds. “And it was so brilliant, when Tim came in, he said, ‘What about if he’s infantry? What about if he’s more similar to Tommy?&

Steven Knight on 'Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man,' That Bond Script