MobLand Season 1 Episode 5: Inside “Funeral for a Friend”
Episode 5 of MobLand—titled “Funeral for a Friend”—is where the Harrigan–Stevenson feud stops simmering and starts to boil. Airing on April 27, 2025 on Paramount+ (dropping at 12:00 a.m. PT / 3:00 a.m. ET), the episode runs roughly 40–42 minutes and is written by Ronan Bennett and Jez Butterworth, directed by Daniel Syrkin.
By this point in Season 1, MobLand had already become Paramount+’s biggest global series premiere ever, with 2.2 million viewers on its first day and 8.8 million in its first week, eventually reaching around 26 million viewers across the season. Episode 5 lands squarely in the middle of that breakout run, and it carries the weight of setting the tone for the war to come.
Where “Funeral for a Friend” Sits in the Season 1 Timeline
Season 1, built around the Irish Harrigan crime family in London, tracks a brutal power struggle with rival boss Richie Stevenson. Tommy Stevenson’s death at the hands of Eddie Harrigan in earlier episodes pushes the families to the edge of open conflict.
Episode 4 ends with Richie demanding that every Harrigan show their face at his son Tommy’s funeral and wake. “Funeral for a Friend,” the fifth of ten episodes, picks up the morning after that demand and turns a funeral into a strategic battlefield.
The stakes are clear:
- The Harrigans can’t refuse the invite without looking weak.
- The Stevensons might use the funeral as a trap.
- The police are circling, increasingly aware that something is about to break.
This is the episode where everyone shows up in the same room—and no one can pretend it’s just about paying respects.
Council of War: Should the Harrigans Even Go?
The hour opens with Harry Da Souza (Tom Hardy) relaying the bad news to Kevin Harrigan: Richie doesn’t just want a church appearance, he expects the Harrigans at a reception inside the Stevenson home after the service. That’s where things start to feel like a potential execution rather than a condolence call.
Back at the Harrigan estate, Conrad Harrigan pulls together a strategy meeting with Maeve, Kevin, Eddie, and Harry. The options are limited:
- Skip the funeral and effectively admit guilt or cowardice.
- Show up unarmed and hope Richie only wants to talk.
- Or go, but prepare for the worst.
They choose the third path. Following Harry’s lead, they agree to attend the funeral while smuggling weapons into the Stevenson home ahead of time as an insurance policy if things turn violent.
That single decision drives almost every major beat that follows.
Harry’s Insurance Policy—and the Police Get a Tip
To make the gun plan work, Harry needs someone on the inside. He targets Freddie Shaw, a frustrated member of Richie’s crew. Using blackmail, Harry forces Freddie to sneak Harrigan weapons into the Stevenson house before the wake. It’s a calculated move: the Harrigans are guests, but they won’t be defenseless.
At the same time, the police accidentally get pulled into the funeral drama through Jan Da Souza. Jan’s new friend Alice invites her out for a drink, but Jan explains she’s going to Tommy’s funeral instead. What Jan doesn’t know is that Alice is actually an informant working with Detective Sergeant Ivan Fisk.
Fisk and DC Mukasa quickly switch gears. Using Alice’s intel, they set up surveillance on the funeral and wake, watching the Harrigans and Stevensons try to play nice while sitting on a powder keg.
So while Harry is trying to outmaneuver Richie with hidden guns, Fisk is quietly building a picture of how deep the Harrigan–Stevenson feud really runs.
Side Plots: Antwerp Diamonds, Old Trauma, and Ignored Wives
Even as the funeral storyline dominates, Episode 5 seeds several subplots that shape the back half of the season.
Brendan and Seraphina: The Antwerp Gambit
“Funeral for a Friend” gives overdue attention to Brendan Harrigan, the sidelined son. Conrad has been favoring Kevin and Eddie, leaving Brendan out of the inner circle.
Feeling shut out, Brendan reaches out to half-sister Seraphina Harrigan with an offer: a diamond deal in Antwerp. The idea is to prove their usefulness to the family on their own terms, outside Conrad’s core operation. Seraphina agrees, but under her own conditions, setting up a separate power lane for the Harrigan “outsiders.”
This isn’t just filler—this Antwerp plan becomes the focus of Episode 6 (“Antwerp Blues”), taking the show beyond London and expanding the criminal network MobLand is playing with.
Kevin’s Flashbacks: Prison Still Owns Him
Episode 5 also deepens Kevin Harrigan’s personal arc through flashbacks to his time in prison.
We see or learn more about a former prison officer—named Rusby or Alan in different sources—who was involved in sexually assaulting Kevin while he was incarcerated. The episode shows just how raw that trauma still is: an apparently tough Harrigan son is visibly shaken and haunted.
These moments foreshadow Kevin’s later choices: he’s not just a loyal heir; he’s someone carrying a long memory and unfinished business.
Bella and Jan: Watching from the Edges
While the Harrigan men posture and plot, Bella (Kevin’s wife) and Jan (Harry’s wife) are mostly left to the sidelines of the operation.
The episode lets them share their frustrations with their roles in the family—especially Jan, who is already unknowingly connected to the police via Alice. That emotional distance between the men’s violent plotting and the women’s forced detachment quietly sets up how dangerous Jan’s eventual position between Harry and the police will be.
The Funeral: Civility on the Surface, War Underneath
The heart of the episode is the funeral and wake themselves, filmed at the West London Crematorium in Kensal Green Cemetery and at Richie’s upscale Mill Hill mansion in London. The locations visually reinforce what the story is doing: old power, old money, and a public show of respect masking private hatred.
The Harrigans arrive as a tense caravan:
- Maeve drinks from a flask to steady her nerves.
- Kevin and Bella bicker, revealing cracks in their marriage.
- Harry and Jan ride in strained silence.
Inside the church, there’s a tense attempt at civility as the Harrigans present themselves to Richie and his wife Vron. But everyone knows the truth: Eddie killed their son.
When Eddie is brought face-to-face with the grieving parents, he completely fails the test. Instead of contrition, he leans into bravado:
- He keeps his sunglasses on.
- He addresses Richie as “Richard,” a subtle but obvious disrespect.
- His whole posture screams defiance rather than remorse.
This performance humiliates the Harrigans, infuriates the Stevensons, and confirms that Eddie is, in many ways, the chaotic center of the conflict.
Maeve vs. Vron: The Queens Go to War
The most important clash at the wake isn’t between Conrad and Richie—it’s between Maeve and Vron.
Vron publicly insults Maeve, and Maeve, who is never built to play the submissive mob wife, fires back. The scene channels what Helen Mirren had already teased in a promotional clip for the series, where Maeve lays out a literal hit list and declares:
“I’m the white queen.”
In that clip, Maeve names potential targets—including Vron—making it clear she sees the world as a chessboard and herself as the piece that matters most.
In Episode 5, that mindset becomes text. Maeve doesn’t just want to survive; she wants to dictate the terms of the war and refuses to be humiliated in someone else’s house.
Recognizing how volatile Maeve is in this environment, Harry and Kevin secretly drug her, slipping something into her drink to sedate and quiet her at the wake. It’s an extraordinary move: the Harrigan men literally incapacitate their own matriarch to keep a fragile peace.
Richie’s Offer: Peace in Exchange for Eddie
While the wake simmers downstairs, Richie Stevenson and Conrad Harrigan retreat to talk in private. This is the pivotal conversation of “Funeral for a Friend.”
Richie lays several cards on the table:
- He knows the Harrigans lied to him earlier (the Valjon nightclub cover story from previous episodes).
- He openly admits his lifelong hatred for the Harrigan family.
- But he also says he doesn’t want an all-out war that would burn everything down.
So he proposes a deal:
Richie will not go to war with the Harrigans—if Eddie is effectively sacrificed. He tells Conrad that Eddie is now “fair game”. If Richie’s people can get to Eddie, they will, and the Harrigans should not stand in the way.
Conrad, caught between protecting his grandson and preserving the broader family empire, appears to tacitly accept this arrangement. It’s one of the darkest compromises in the season: a mob patriarch considering the expendability of his own blood to preserve the business.
Maeve’s Countermove: The Car Bomb That Ends the Truce
Once Maeve learns what has been agreed in her drugged absence, she is furious. For her, no peace is worth Eddie’s life. However reckless he may be, he’s family—and Maeve is unwilling to trade a Harrigan grandson for political stability.
In the final minutes of the episode, Maeve quietly calls Paul, a Harrigan enforcer, signaling that she wants action. Shortly after, Vron gets into her car.
The car explodes. Vron is killed.
The implication is strong and direct: this was a hit ordered by Maeve, not sanctioned by Conrad, and it obliterates whatever fragile truce the Richie–Conrad meeting had produced. The sequence turns the episode’s title on its head—the “funeral for a friend” ends by creating the circumstances for many more funerals to come.
Why Episode 5 Matters for the Rest of Season 1
“Funeral for a Friend” is a pivot point more than a climax. It doesn’t feature the kind of wide-scale shootout some viewers might expect, which is exactly why some critics were divided on it.
- CBR praised the episode as “a crime drama cliché done to a high standard, delivering nuance and drama alongside an impressive ensemble cast,” spotlighting the tension and performances.
- AIPT, on the other hand, called it “a boring and uneventful funeral,” arguing it “fails to generate tension or to significantly move the story forward” despite the setup.
Whether you land on one side or the other, the episode’s structural importance is hard to argue with:
- It formalizes Richie and Conrad’s positions: Richie prefers a limited, targeted response; Conrad is willing to compromise; Maeve rejects compromise entirely.
- It establishes Maeve not just as a strategist but as the true architect of escalation, moving from advice-giver to the person who directly orders a major assassination.
- It launches Brendan and Seraphina’s Antwerp storyline, which opens up Episode 6 and adds a new front to the Harrigan operations.
- It cements Eddie as the liability everyone is now circling—Richie sees him as a target, Conrad sees him as a bargaining chip, and Maeve sees him as a line that cannot be crossed.
- It pushes Jan one step closer to being a critical bridge between Harry and DS Fisk, thanks to her unwitting role in tipping off the police about the funeral.
By the time the credits roll, the funeral has changed nothing and everything at once. Nobody has formally declared war, but with Vron dead in a car bomb, the Stevenses now have a second family member to mourn and a far stronger justification to strike back.
Behind the Scenes: Locations, Production, and What Comes Next
Episode 5’s visual weight comes from real-world locations:
- The funeral was shot at West London Crematorium in Kensal Green Cemetery, a historic London site that lends the whole sequence a heavy, old-money gravitas.
- The wake scenes take place in Richie’s home, represented by a multi-million-pound mansion in Mill Hill, in the London Borough of Barnet.
- Across the season, production also used Farnborough International Studios, with sets built inside historic wind tunnels and at Overton Papermill, alongside locations in London, Hampshire, and the Cotswolds.
The show itself has been a major play for Paramount+. After that record-setting 2.2 million–viewer premiere and 8.8 million in week one, MobLand’s first season went on to draw about 26 million viewers, making it the streamer’s second most-watched original series, behind Landman. Those numbers drove a Season 2 renewal on June 23, 2025.
Paramount+ executive Chris McCarthy labeled the series a “resounding triumph” and a “global phenomenon,” while co-creator Jez Butterworth praised the platform’s “bold creative vision and razor‑sharp strategic insight” and said he was excited to continue the story. Season 2 is set to film at Ealing Studios in London, though an exact release date has not yet been confirmed.
For now, “Funeral for a Friend” stands as the moment in Season 1 where MobLand stops flirting with war and starts committing to it—one car bomb, one funeral, and one very determined “white queen” at a time.
