Tom Hardy Closes 2025 in Triumph as His Thriller Becomes Paramount+'s Best Show

Tom Hardy went back to TV and walked straight into a hit. Paramount+ crime saga MobLand dropped him into London as a fixer trying to keep a family war from blowing up, and the show has turned into one of the streamer’s biggest plays of the year. Big numbers, strong reviews, a nasty finale cliffhanger, and yes, Season 2 is already on the way.

What MobLand is doing (and who is doing it)

Hardy plays Harry Da Souza, a London fixer working for the Harrigans, the crime family headed up on screen by Pierce Brosnan and Helen Mirren. His job: keep a full-on war with rival outfit the Stevensons from turning the city into glass. It is Hardy’s first major TV role since Peaky Blinders, and the show leans right into why people like watching him prowl around rooms and threaten people with a raised eyebrow.

• Season 1 landed a 76% Rotten Tomatoes score, with critics calling out its 'crunchy style and memorable performances.'
• Paramount+ is slotting it next to its heavy hitters this year: Yellowjackets Season 3, Dexter: Resurrection, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, and Taylor Sheridan’s Landman Season 2 and Tulsa King Season 3. Translation: they see this as top-tier.
• Creator Ronan Bennett (The Day of the Jackal) not only built the show but co-wrote all ten episodes with Jez Butterworth.
• Directors on Season 1 include some very familiar names: Guy Ritchie, Anthony Byrne, Daniel Syrkin, and Lawrence Gough.

There’s also a little industry flex happening here: MobLand’s success gives Paramount+ something muscular and stylish that isn’t stamped Taylor Sheridan, which, fair or not, is a point they clearly wanted to make.

The numbers (aka why Season 2 was a no-brainer)

MobLand premiered March 30, 2025 and immediately blew past the platform’s previous highs: 2.2 million viewers on day one and 8.8 million in its first week, the biggest opening for any Paramount+ series to date (per TVLine). The renewal came fast (per Deadline); when you post numbers like that, nobody is pretending to 'wait and see.'

About that finale cliffhanger

The Harrigan–Stevenson feud goes properly bloody by the end. Harry turns down Kat’s (Janet McTeer) offer to split what’s left of the Stevensons, which is a straight-up betrayal from her point of view. Then the real shock: in the final scene, Harry gets stabbed by his wife, Jan, after an argument. Cut to black. No body. No answer.

Creator Ronan Bennett has addressed it without really addressing it. His tease makes the answer feel pretty obvious:

I mean, if you think about it, 'Is Harry dead?' No. We're not gonna - We love Harry. We love Tom... It felt satisfyingly dramatic that, having walked through fire for 10 episodes, what happens at the end is the one thing he's not expecting.

Season 2 will confirm Harry’s fate, and all signs point to him surviving. Meanwhile, Conrad and Maeve have tapped Eddie as the next Harrigan heir, which sets up a power-rise storyline. And Harry? He is almost definitely going to pay for crossing Kat.

Hardy’s post-Venom reset

Timing-wise, this show hit right after Hardy wrapped his Venom trilogy. Those movies didn’t win over a lot of critics, but fans had a good time with his Eddie Brock/Venom chaos. Still, finishing a superhero run leaves a big 'what now?' on the table. MobLand is Hardy’s move to take that energy and push it somewhere sharper.

He told Esquire the gig felt like it lived in the same neighborhood as a superhero franchise, just with different toys:

You know, still a studio production, still a big vessel, but it's different muscles. Some are older muscles that I'm warming up again, like villains and criminals. I needed to go somewhere. To move forward. I needed to draw a line, because otherwise I'd be looking back, going 'Sony, will you have me back? Reignite the flames!' That's a desperate place to be as a human being.

On top of that, Hardy gets to spar with Brosnan and Mirren, work alongside Paddy Considine, and reunite with Guy Ritchie for the first time since RocknRolla 17 years ago. If you like your behind-the-scenes nods baked right into the episodes, that’s a fun one.

MobLand is now streaming on Paramount+. Season 2 is coming, and if the show keeps this pace, the knives are only going to get sharper.