A Thousand Blows Season 2 Ending Explained: Does Alice Betray Mary?

Season 1 of ‘A Thousand Blows’ leaves most of the protagonists at varying stages of destruction in their narratives. The Goodson brothers seem to have ruined themselves and each other, while Mary Carr has lost control over the Forty Elephants, finding herself entirely alone. Likewise, promising Jamaican boxer Hezekiah Moscow loses his closest companion and receives a ban from London’s West End boxing scene. Consequently, as season 2 rolls around, these characters have a lot less to lose and a lot more to prove.

Off-the-bat, Mary regroups her lost troops to pull off a heist of immense magnitude. However, an outside partnership with Mesmerist Sophie Lyons threatens to become her undoing. Meanwhile, a homesick Hezekiah finds an opportunity of a lifetime when a Prince in line to the throne comes to him seeking mentorship. As for Sugar and Treacle, the duo find themselves backed into an impossible corner that they need to fight their way out of in order to preserve the streets of Wapping. SPOILERS AHEAD!

A Thousand Blows Season 2 Recap

After Hezekiah Moscow’s boxing ban from the West End, the boxer has no choice but to take the underground ring at the docks of Wapping. One night, upon his return from one such bout, he notices Sugar Goodson wasting away in the rain-soaked streets. As a result, despite their fraught history, he ends up helping the man by bringing him to his brother, Treacle, at the Blue Coat Boy pub. Later, Mary Carr arrives at the pub with Alice and her old allies in tow, choosing the vapid establishment to hold her court in an attempt to convince the women to join forces with her once again. Similarly, she goes to Sugar, encouraging him to get sober, insisting that she needs him for an important job. The nature of this job becomes clear when the next day, news arrives of the brutal murder of Indigo Jeremy, the king of the Elephants.

As it turns out, Mary had orchestrated the entire thing with the help of Hezekiah, the masked mummer, who exacted revenge on Indigo for Alec’s death. Unfortunately, despite his disguise, bystanders were able to make out that the killer was a Black man. This inevitably brings the rest of the Elephants, led by a vengeful Bull, to Wapping. Nonetheless, the Goodsons refuse to give up Hezekiah. Consequently, the confrontation eventually ends in a violent altercation, which gets Treacle’s young daughter, Rose, shot. Once Sugar kills Bull in retaliation, it allows Mary to announce herself as the new Queen of the Elephants. In the aftermath, Treacle’s wife, Marianne, takes away the kids, including Rose, who is in recovery. Yet, the eldest son, Thomas, decides to stay behind with his father and take up the family business.

Alternatively, Victoria Davies manages to convince Hezekiah to teach boxing to Prince Albert Victor, second in line for the throne, for his upcoming debut in the West End ring. The fact that the latter is willing to give the veteran boxer his sugar plantation in Morant Bay, Jamaica, certainly helps. Despite the initial friction in their dynamic, the two manage to work well together. Meanwhile, once Mary gathers her Forty Elephants gang back again, she lays out the details of her upcoming plan. She wants to partner with Sophie Lyons, a New York mesmerist, who is on the hunt to secure a valuable painting for an oil magnate client. However, stealing the painting won’t be as easy as simply getting inside the owner’s house. Graften has the Caravaggio painting, Martha and Mary Magdalene, hidden in a vault along with his other art collection. As such, Sophie needs Mary to orchestrate a con that will compel him to bring his collection out for display.

As all of this unfolds, a police investigation after a French anarchist brings Murtagh’s attention to Wapping. Even though the anarchist dies in the fight between the Goodsoons and the Jeremys, his dynamite stash remains loose in the neighborhood. As a result, Murtagh becomes obsessed with finding Mary to ensure the Forty Elephants’ Queen doesn’t use the weapon to her advantage. Therefore, he decides to secure a mole for himself. As it turns out, Treacle has recently become a person of interest in the murder of a sex worker by the docks. Murtagh uses this incident to blackmail Sugar into spying on Mary for him. It’s only a matter of time before the latter learns about the same when her life is put into danger one too many times. However, as she learns about Sugar’s deception, another betrayal brews on the horizon as Sophie attempts to convince Alice to double-cross the Forty Elephants.

A Thousand Blows Season 2 Ending: Does Alice Betray Mary? What Happens to the Caravaggio?

Sophie Lyons begins to sow the seeds of disloyalty in Alice Diamond around the same time as the death of Mary’s mother, Jane. Despite their complicated relationship, the Queen of the Forty Elephants is still affected by the death, which prevents her from being front and center in the lead-up to the Caravaggio heist. As a result, she puts Alice in charge of the preparations for the play at Graften’s house. In the end, the plan goes as intended, with only a few improvisations along the way. Alice poses as the daughter of a shipping magnate, Silas Drake, which compels the Graftens to throw a Christmas Ball in hopes of networking opportunities. Consequently, the Carvaggio comes out of the family’s vaults and is on display in their manor. From there, all it takes is one mesmerist demonstration performance from Sophie as a distraction for the others to begin the painting’s extraction process.

Nonetheless, chaos inevitably erupts when Mary chooses to help out a choir girl from assault at the hands of one of the guests. Even so, a few guns pulled in a timely manner allowed the women to make their escape from the premises with the painting in possession. Yet, once back in their safehouse, the real threat begins. It soon becomes obvious that Sophie has no intentions of holding up her end of the bargain. Instead, she simply wants to take off with the painting, leaving the Forty Elephants with nothing. However, the real surprise comes when Alice pulls out her own gun and aids the American woman in her plan. As a result, hours after the heist, the women forcibly steal the painting from Mary and escape into the night. On the ride to the train station, the mesmerist extends a New York invitation to Alice, who turns it down. She takes her half of the cut and leaves to resolve unfinished business in Wapping.

Initially, Alice’s betrayal comes as a heart-wrenching surprise. Time and again, she had remained loyal to Mary to the point where she was the only one by her side in the aftermath of a failed heist. Therefore, everything begins to fall into place once Sophie arrives in America and hands the procured painting to her client. As it turns out, the supposed Caravaggio is actually a portrait of Mary Carr, which she had done by Graften’s friend, Frederic. Alice had indeed been a double-crosser, but not toward Mary. Instead, she had tricked Sophie, capitalizing on her scheming ways to secure both the painting and the payment for the Forty Elephants. In the aftermath, Mary decides to leave London, which is still much too dangerous for her. Yet, she leaves Wapping and the gang in capable hands as she rewards Alice for her loyalty by naming her successor as the new Queen of the Forty Elephants.

Did Treacle Kill the Woman in the Docks? Is He Innocent?

One of the reasons Murtagh is able to get as close as he does to catching Mary stems from his covert partnership with Sugar. The latter is already at an incredibly low point in his life at the beginning of the season. His brother, Treacle, is in a very similar position. After the violent brawl between the brothers, Treacle continues to suffer from many health and mental complications. Things worsened to the point where his own wife, Marianne, grew tired of his outbursts and decided to leave him under the guise of caring for her mother in Ireland. Once she returns and takes the kids with her, the former boxer’s condition only grows more dire. Around the same time, Murtagh corners Sugar and convinces him that his brother is the lead suspect in the death of a sex worker. The latter’s dead body was found in the docks, and Treacle had identified her himself. Thanks to a few records, connecting Treacle to the woman earlier, Murtagh has the evidence needed to nail him with the murder.

Even though Sugar is reluctant to believe his brother could commit such a heinous act, he also knows that there’s little he would be able to do if the law decides to condemn him. Worse yet, Treacle’s condition leads to many memory blocks, making it impossible for him to know for certain if he was involved in the case. Although both brothers want to believe the youngest isn’t the kind of person to do something like this, they don’t have any proof to contest the claim. Therefore, the eldest ends up working for the investigator, trading Mary’s safety for his brother’s. Yet, in the end, he and his allies, who all share one common enemy, manage to come together to earn their freedom from his looming threat. In the aftermath, as things begin to return to normal in Wapping, Sugar pays the local copper, Brenner, to look into the sex worker’s death. As a result, he finds out that Murtagh had messed with the timeline of the case to make Treacle look like a suspect. Ultimately, the woman is identified as likely to be a victim in a different string of murder cases.

Does Hezekiah Leave London? Does He Return to Jamaica?

From the beginning of the season, Hezekiah remains married to the idea of leaving London. Having undergone one tragedy after another in the city, the boxer believes he needs a fresh start. Initially, Jamaica becomes his destination of choice, as he dreams of reconnecting with his roots and returning to his true home. For the same reason, he decides to accept Prince Albert’s offer, wherein he trains the young man in exchange for the possibility of owning his sugar plantation in Morant Bay. The deal remains as such; if Albert wins his debut competition, he will hand over the deed to the land to his trainer. Fortunately, after many bumps in the road, Hezekiah is able to reach through to Albert and hone him into a commendable boxer.

Thus, the Prince wins his first match, and his mentor receives ownership over a patch of land in his hometown. However, the former goes one step further and gives Hezekiah another life-changing opportunity. After befriending the former boxer, Albert learns about his last bout, which got him banned from the West End boxing scene all those months ago. He knows that it was really his opponent’s health that led to his death in the ring, more than Hezekiah’s punches. Therefore, he uses his influence to get the latter’s ban lifted. For the same reason, when he enters the West End boxing competition this time, he’s welcomed with open, enthusiastic arms. Yet, this mercurial and conditional acceptance is as evident to Hezekiah as it is to another Black boxer, Nathaniel Washington. The latter is an American boxer who is currently putting on exhibition shows in London.

Unsurprisingly, Washington wants Hezekiah in his ring. Inevitably, the latter ends up agreeing to the proposition and makes his official return to the ring in a match against the American. After he wins the bout, Washington makes another proposition. He wants Hezekiah to come to New York with him and find an actual fresh start as a boxer, this time among people who would actually accept and celebrate him. Even though America is in no way a utopia for non-white athletes like the duo, Washington insists that the growing Black community and solidarity in the country provide support that Hezekiah would never find in London. Furthermore, by moving to New York, the latter can join the growing fight for civil liberty and inspire real change. In the end, Hezekiah decides to pass the Jamaican land to Alec’s family. Afterward, he continues chasing after his boxing dreams and gets his new start by moving to New York with Mary.

What Happens to Murtagh? Does Sugar Die?

By the end, Murtagh manages to become a Wapping-wide problem. He’s after the Goodson brothers and using them to get to Mary. Furthermore, he poses a threat to Hezekiah, who could still face legal repercussions for Indigo Jeremy’s death. Similarly, he’s the reason Lao has to stay away from London’s East End, maintaining the cover of his fake death. Fortunately for Sugar and the others, Murtagh has also managed to make another enemy, one who has the means to destroy him. Jack Mac, the companion of Henry Duval, the French anarchist, has had to suffer many brutalities at the hands of the London coppers. As a result, he’s eager to supply Duval’s hidden dynamite supply to the people who want to bring Murtagh down.

As a result, when Murtagh’s threat becomes pressing, Sugar comes up with the idea to band all these personalities together and take their common enemy down. The plan is put into motion in the morning when the law enforcement agent comes to the Blue Coat Boy pub to take Treacle into custody to use him as a pawn in a negotiation. He wants to trade the younger Goodson in exchange for Mary, delivered straight to him. Although Sugar brings the criminal mastermind to the agreed-upon spot to make the exchange, a different surprise awaits the Queen’s servant. As Mary runs away and Hezekiah and Lao deal with Murtagh’s backup, the latter gets taken down by Sugar, who ignites the dynamite to finish the job. In the aftermath of the blast, Treacle worries for a moment that his brother had managed to get trapped with Murtagh in the wake of a gunshot. Nonetheless, Sugar manages to walk away from the incident with only a minor gunshot wound to the arm. In the end, the brothers pay Brenner off to cover up the murder as a dynamite accident that unfolded in the middle of a police investigation.