The Gentlemen Season 2 Review: Theo James And Kaya Scodelario Make Crime Look Effortlessly Fun

The first season of The Gentlemen worked because Eddie Horniman wanted absolutely nothing to do with the criminal empire buried beneath his family’s estate. Season 2 wisely flips that idea on its head.

Eddie likes this now.

Theo James returns to Netflix’s stylish crime comedy with Eddie no longer reluctantly cleaning up other people’s messes. A year after joining forces with Susie Glass, he’s discovered that being both a duke and a gangster suits him rather well. The problem is that success has made Eddie ambitious, and ambition in Guy Ritchie’s world tends to end with somebody bleeding on an expensive carpet.

Season 2 of The Gentlemen is bigger, busier and considerably more confident than its first. It also occasionally proves that bigger isn’t necessarily better. But when James and Kaya Scodelario are trading threats, insults and increasingly dangerous ideas, the series remains enormously entertaining.

Eddie Horniman Is No Longer The Reluctant Gangster

The biggest improvement in Season 2 is Eddie himself.

Season 1 needed to spend time convincing Eddie — and the audience — that the Duke of Halstead could survive inside the Glass family’s criminal operation. That’s no longer necessary.

Eddie and Susie have expanded their business beyond England, including an operation in Italy that brings them into contact with another collection of criminals, aristocrats, opportunists and people who should never be trusted.

James plays the transformation beautifully. Eddie hasn’t suddenly become a swaggering gangster. He’s still controlled, intelligent and impeccably mannered. What’s changed is that he has begun to understand exactly how useful those qualities can be when combined with money, status and violence.

There’s something considerably more dangerous about Eddie this season because he isn’t simply trying to survive the criminal world anymore. He wants to conquer parts of it.

That evolution gives James more to play with and gives the season its strongest underlying question: how much of Eddie’s old life is he willing to sacrifice now that he’s discovered how much he enjoys the new one?

Theo James And Kaya Scodelario Remain The Main Attraction

For all the gangsters, drugs, money and increasingly elaborate schemes surrounding them, The Gentlemen still works best when Eddie and Susie are together.

James and Scodelario have terrific chemistry without the series needing to constantly define exactly what that chemistry means. There’s attraction, friendship, competition, suspicion and genuine affection sitting underneath almost every exchange.

Susie is changing too.

Kaya Scodelario gives her just enough vulnerability beneath the armor to make Susie’s growing questions about her father Bobby and her own future feel important. Eddie is becoming less predictable at exactly the same time Susie is becoming less willing to simply follow the established order.

That makes them simultaneously better partners and potentially more dangerous to one another.

It’s a smart dynamic because The Gentlemen doesn’t need Eddie and Susie to become conventional romantic leads. Watching two ambitious people who genuinely like each other calculate whether they can still trust one another is much more interesting.

The Gentlemen Season 2 Goes Bigger — Sometimes Too Big

Guy Ritchie’s fingerprints remain all over the series.

There are expensive suits, eccentric criminals, sudden bursts of violence, absurd conversations, elaborate plans, plans hidden inside other plans and enough colorful supporting characters to populate several British crime movies.

Season 2 expands that playground considerably.

Italy gives the series a welcome visual change of scenery and introduces another level of organized crime for Eddie and Susie to navigate. Michele Morrone’s Cico Maldini and Benedetta Porcaroli’s Bella help broaden the world, while Hugh Bonneville fits almost suspiciously well into a series built around the collision between British aristocracy and criminality.

Ray Winstone also gets considerably stranger material as Bobby Glass, whose increasingly questionable behavior creates another complication for Eddie and Susie.

But expansion comes with a cost.

There are moments when The Gentlemen becomes so enamored with another eccentric character, another complication or another elaborate criminal detour that the central story threatens to disappear underneath all the decoration.

The series occasionally feels like it’s trying to out-Guy-Ritchie Guy Ritchie.

Fortunately, it usually finds its way back.

The Supporting Cast Keeps The Chaos Moving

The Gentlemen has always understood that its supporting characters shouldn’t simply exist to deliver information to Eddie and Susie.

Daniel Ings remains a wonderful source of chaos as Freddy Horniman, whose ability to make almost any situation worse continues to border on a supernatural gift.

Vinnie Jones’ Geoff also benefits from having more room this season. His quiet loyalty to the Horniman family gives the series something surprisingly grounded amid all the criminal absurdity.

Joely Richardson, Ray Winstone and the returning ensemble help maintain the strange ecosystem that made Season 1 work, while the expanded cast allows the show to introduce new threats without completely abandoning the people audiences already know.

Not every subplot lands equally well, but even the show’s detours tend to contain an amusing performance, memorable character or spectacularly bad decision.

The Comedy Still Separates The Gentlemen From Other Crime Dramas

None of this would work nearly as well if The Gentlemen took itself seriously.

The violence can be brutal and the consequences increasingly significant, but Ritchie’s series understands that watching wealthy criminals and aristocrats behave terribly is frequently very funny.

Season 2 leans into that absurdity.

Characters can move from discussing enormous criminal enterprises to arguing over some ridiculous personal grievance without the tonal shift feeling unnatural. The humor isn’t something added between dramatic scenes. It’s baked into the worldview.

That makes The Gentlemen unusually easy to binge.

Even when the plot becomes convoluted, there’s usually another sharp exchange, bizarre criminal or impending catastrophe around the corner.

Is The Gentlemen Season 2 Worth Watching?

Absolutely — especially if Season 1 worked for you.

Season 2 doesn’t reinvent The Gentlemen. Instead, it takes nearly everything audiences liked about the first season and gives them more of it: more locations, more criminals, more money, more ambition and considerably more confidence from Eddie Horniman.

Sometimes it gives us a little too much.

But Theo James has fully settled into a role that plays perfectly to his combination of charm and restraint, while Kaya Scodelario remains every bit his equal. Their partnership continues to provide the series with its center even when everything surrounding them becomes deliberately excessive.

The Gentlemen is still stylish, violent, funny and occasionally ridiculous.

At this point, expecting restraint would almost be rude.

Where To Watch The Gentlemen Season 2

All eight episodes of The Gentlemen Season 2 are streaming now on Netflix. Theo James and Kaya Scodelario return as Eddie Horniman and Susie Glass as their criminal operation expands well beyond the confines of the Halstead estate.

Viewers can watch The Gentlemen on Netflix and catch up on Season 1 before diving into the new season.