The third season of Peaky Blinders ended on a cliffhanger, with most of the Shelby family led away to jail cells.
Fans of the Birmingham crime drama were shocked by mob boss Tommy Shelby's apparent betrayal of his relatives, so will Cillian Murphy's charismatic anti-hero find a way to turn things around in season 4?
"Everything has changed," Murphy told Digital Spy. "I think his family think that he's betrayed them. It'll be up to Tommy to demonstrate to them that he hasn't betrayed them and that he has a bigger plan.
"The question is what that bigger plan is. Who's he gonna call? What's gonna happen to the family? Can he ever get that level of trust or love back again?"
What will happen next?
The Birmingham Mail, which has been closely following the fortunes of the quasi-fictional criminal gang, anticipates that blue-eyed gangster Tommy will fall in love again.
"We're still grieving for Grace and one of the shortest-lived marriages in TV drama. Ruthless Russian Tatiana was just a distraction, and certainly not someone to settle down with... Maybe he will buy another racehorse and need May's services?" it says.
Two actors cast in the next series have been mooted as potential love interests - Cherrelle Skeete and Esther Smith are "both Brummies" currently performing in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.
Could we see Grace return?
At the beginning of season 3, Tommy finally achieved a semblance of happiness as he married the woman he loved, Grace Burgess, a former undercover police agent who posed as a barmaid at the Garrison pub to get close to the crime boss.
However, almost as soon as the pair were married, Grace was shot and killed.
According to the actor who played her, Anabelle Wallis, the tragedy made sense in terms of the overall narrative.
"I think she was a reminder of a time and of a feeling that maybe had been very dormant within him through his PTSD after the war, through the life and family that he was embedded in. Therefore it had kind of chinked his armour as a human being," Wallis told Deadline.
But is Grace definitely dead? Many fans are suspicious over the death and think the character could return in season 4 – rumours Wallis herself has done little to deny.
"I have so many friends so obsessed with the show so I've had all these theories thrown my way of how: there's no funeral or he's done it to protect her," she said. "Some people are so devastated by her death that I've had to give them hope. So I'm just gonna go 'maybe' and hold onto my conspiracy theories."
Will Tommy retreat to Birmingham?
Where season three saw Tommy rise to new and unexpected social and professional heights, season four could – and should – see him return to his Brummie roots, says Inverse.
"One of fans' biggest gripes with Season 3 was that the Shelbys got too far, too fast," the site says. Tommy's country estate was a "far cry from the smokey grey Birmingham slums where they got their start". The shift from lowlife gangsters to high society was simply too great for many fans.
In the final episode of the season, Tommy tells Georgian Duchess Tatiana (Gaite Jansen): "I'm going back to Birmingham to buy a racehorse and have it trained."
According to Inverse, "the writers could have Tommy do something as drastic as retreat to America, but maybe he just needs to go home. When Season 4 rolls around he should retreat back to where it all began, re-arm, and get back on that figurative horse to avenge his family. Plus, who doesn't want to see them all hanging out at The Garrison again?"
Will Tommy give up crime?
Several critics suggest the next series will shift to follow Tommy's attempts to go straight - but Murphy's recent comments appeared to put paid to that notion.
"Because of what happened to [Tommy] in the First World War it's kind of - it's never gonna stop," he said. "He'll always be this man searching for something and I think that even if he achieves all this material wealth and he achieves some sort of position of power, I don't see him retiring with a pipe and slippers, that's for sure."
A new challenge to Tommy?
A key player next season could be Aunt Polly's son, Michael (Finn Cole). The Shelbys' long-lost cousin has gone from being a fresh-faced accountant adding an air of legitimacy to the company's dodgy dealings to a fully fledged gangster.
With two murders under his belt, could Michael have developed a taste for blood? He is looking "increasingly self-assured", writes Michael Hogan in the Daily Telegraph, and his ambition "could soon prove troublesome to Tommy".
Fans have even spotted a parallel between the Blinders' Michael and Michael Corleone of The Godfather: both are shielded from the family business and try to pursue legitimate business before ultimately being sucked into the murky underworld.
"After Tommy has passed Michael Shelby will most likely be the leader of the Peaky Blinders balancing both the illegal and the legal sides of business well just as Michael Corleone did by the end of The Godfather," predicts one Reddit user.
Of course, Michael Corleone inherited his family's crime empire after the peaceful death of his father. Tommy Shelby seems less likely to have a convenient heart attack – or will his cousin give him a helping hand?
Aunt Polly takes charge?
Series four isn't due to air until next year, but Helen McCrory, who plays Aunt Polly, has already given fans a teaser of what they can expect.
Speaking on the BBC's The Andrew Marr Show , the 47-year-old actor described how Polly had developed a taste for power while the Shelby brothers were off in the trenches.
"She'd been running the business while they'd been away," said McCrory, who is making use of the time between shooting to star in The Deep Blue Sea at the National Theatre.
"As far as she's concerned, they're doing it really badly, they're making mistakes, they're going in to other people's turfs."
Aunt Polly is determined to straighten things out and make the family business bigger than ever, she said. Her ambition "to balance a business" and "on the other hand balance the family" will see the Peaky Blinders go "further and further afield" in their quest for power, McCrory promised, adding: "You see why she's in charge."
How will Tommy win back his family's trust?
One way to find out what might be coming up in the next series is to ask the show's star. That is the approach The Independent took when it caught up with Murphy.
So did Tommy betray his family, the paper asked the Irish actor. Perhaps, he replied, but the Brummie gangster has a "bigger plan" to win back his family's trust.
At the start of Season 4, "everything has changed" for Tommy, Murphy says: "I think his family think that he's betrayed them. It'll be up to Tommy to demonstrate to them that he hasn't betrayed them and that he has a bigger plan.
"The question is what that bigger plan is. Who is he gonna call? What's gonna happen to the family? Can he ever get that level of trust or love back again?"
Asked whether Tommy might be planning a quieter, more peaceful life, Murphy replies: "Because of what happened to him in the First World War it's kind of… it's never gonna stop.
"He'll always be this man searching for something and I think that even if he achieves all this material wealth and he achieves some sort of position of power, I don't see him retiring with a pipe and slippers that's for sure!"
Does Tommy get under Murphy's skin?
Like viewers, Murphy finds his Peaky Blinders character fascinating - but he does like to forget about him between series, the actor told Harper's Bazaar.
"I leave him behind because I go off and play other characters and it's important that you can shake it off totally," he said. "But then I became a producer on this series [season 3], so you're kind of involved in the machinations of it, before the show and during it. It's always there, thinking about it.
"But the thing that I am most proud of about that show is that it started off as this very small little thing and it's grown in the right way, just by word of mouth, not by huge billboards or anyone forcing you to watch it. Our advertising was just: people liked it. It's grown very gradually and sort of - I hate using the word - organically."
Asked whether he finds himself drawn to dark characters, Murphy replied: "For me, drama is conflict.
"I'm not interested in a good man's life. I'm interested in contradiction. I'm interested in pressure, I'm interested in duress. All the great works of art, or film or literature, in my opinion, have elements of those in them. Because who wants to write about happy people?"
How long will Murphy be able to keep playing 'exhausting' Tommy?
In an interview filmed at the Black Country Living Museum, Murphy said it is a "big distance" for him to play a character willing to solve his problems with murder and that he has found himself "inhabited subliminally" by the role.
"It's very clear that this is a damaged guy who uses violence as a form of expression," he said, the Express and Star reports.
"It is a big distance for me to get to that and he is the sort of most capable person I have ever played and that's not me. You are inhabiting this character all the time and it affects you in a subliminal way, almost by osmosis.
"You have to concentrate a lot. He talks a lot, smokes a lot of fags and is also fighting all the time so it is exhausting," Murphy said.
Murphy also discussed the show's soundtrack, telling the audience: "I thought it was a terrible idea in the beginning to put contemporary music on a period show, I thought that was silly.
"But it seemed to work as the artists they chose were kind of these outlaw artists that seemed to work. Nick Cave was huge for me as he had to watch the show first before he agreed to give us his music.
"The fact he actually watched it was a big deal for me."
Will Michael come to blows with Tommy?
Fans of the series have mixed feelings about Aunt Polly's long-lost son Michael, who became a much more significant player in the last season. Some love him, but just as many loathe him, feeling that the character is too slight and his descent into criminality too swift. But like him or not the signs are there that he will play a large role in the next season, possibly even bumping heads with Tommy, says Cheat Sheet.
"Michael has had an interesting journey. He went from being an accountant to becoming a gangster. He has killed two people and doesn't seem to have any problem going after more. He left his girlfriend to get her abortion by herself. Now it sounds like Michael could potentially go up against Tommy himself," the site says.
The Daily Telegraph's Michael Hogan saw the same thing coming earlier this year, noting that over the course of the show, Michael has grown "increasingly self-assured" and that his own ambitions "could soon prove troublesome to Tommy."
While Hogan had predicted that the two men would clash last season, Tommy's apparent betrayal of his family could set up the confrontation next year.
When will season 4 be on the BBC and Netflix?
While the broadcast date for both the UK terrestrial TV and online has not yet been announced, if scheduling follows its previous pattern, new episodes should begin on the BBC towards the end of next spring and on Netflix shortly afterwards.
"Typically, what happens is that the series will start running in the UK first before heading over to… streaming services," says Bustle. "For example, Season 3 of Peaky Blinders premiered on May 5 and only became available on Netflix on May 31, so odds are Season 4 will follow a similar pattern."
The BBC commissioned seasons four and five at the same time, so it is likely they will reach us in 2017 and then 2018.
Filming has yet to begin on season four, but writer Steven Knight says he is already looking forward to get back to work. "The prospect of writing series four and five is truly exciting," he told the BBC. "I am genuinely thrilled at the response to the third series of the show."
