MobLand Season 1 Episode 2, “Jigsaw Puzzle”: How Everything Starts To Snap Into Place
When MobLand hit Paramount+ on March 30, 2025, it arrived with serious pedigree: created by Ronan Bennett, co‑written with Jez Butterworth, and executive‑produced and partially directed by Guy Ritchie. The British crime drama quickly became Paramount+’s biggest global series launch to date, pulling in 2.2 million viewers on premiere day and 8.8 million in its first week, on its way to 26 million cumulative viewers and a Season 2 renewal by late June 2025.
Episode 2, “Jigsaw Puzzle,” is where that breakout hit status really starts to make sense. First released on April 6, 2025 (dropping at 3:00 a.m. ET / 12:00 a.m. PT like the rest of the season) and running about 51 minutes, it’s the second episode directed by Guy Ritchie himself. It’s also the hour that confirms the central mystery of Episode 1, locks in the stakes of the Harrigan–Stevenson war, and pushes several of the show’s women—especially Maeve and Bella Harrigan—deeper into the story’s power core.
If you’re catching up in late 2025: MobLand Season 1 has 10 episodes, all streaming on Paramount+, and as of July 2025 the first three episodes (including “Jigsaw Puzzle”) were released free on YouTube for sampling. After that, you’ll need a Paramount+ Essential ($7.99/month) or Paramount+ with Showtime ($12.99/month) subscription to keep going.
Where Episode 1 Left Us: A Missing Prince and a Dead Consigliere
To understand why Episode 2 hits so hard, you have to remember how we left things in the pilot.
In Episode 1, Eddie Harrigan (Anson Boon) stabbed Tommy Stevenson, the privileged son of rival boss Richie Stevenson (Geoff Bell), during a drug‑fueled night out at Valjon’s club. Tommy vanished. The club owner Valjon (Peter Ferdinando) erased the CCTV footage to protect the Harrigans. Meanwhile, inside the Harrigan family, patriarch Conrad Harrigan (Pierce Brosnan) shot and killed his oldest friend and consigliere Archie Hammond—a decision that shocked even hardened fixer Harry Da Souza (Tom Hardy).
Episode 2 opens in the immediate aftermath. The Stevensons’ golden boy is missing. Archie’s body is still warm. And Harry, the man paid to clean up everyone’s mess, is about to find out there are some stains you can’t just wipe away.
Cleaning Up Archie: Harry and Kevin’s Origin Story
“Jigsaw Puzzle” begins in very practical territory: Harry and Kevin Harrigan (Paddy Considine) physically clean up Archie’s murder scene and move his body out via a morgue connection. It’s the kind of nuts‑and‑bolts criminal work MobLand leans into—no romanticism, just logistics and risk.
At the same time, the episode cuts in flashbacks to explain how Harry ended up tethered to this family in the first place. We see that Harry met Kevin in prison years ago, which is where their relationship was forged. Those scenes do crucial work for the season:
- They establish Harry as an outsider who earned his way into the Harrigans through loyalty and violence, not blood.
- They show why Kevin trusts Harry almost more than he trusts his own parents.
- They set up the painful tension we’ll watch all season: Harry is tied to the Harrigans by history, but he’s trying to build a completely different life at home with Jan (Joanne Froggatt) and their daughter Gina.
By the end of these sequences, Archie’s body is gone, but the guilt and suspicion around him are very much alive.
The Dawn Raid: A Mole Inside the Harrigans?
Just when Harry thinks the worst is buried, armed police sweep in. At dawn, officers led by DS Ivan Fisk (Luke Mably) raid Harry’s house and drag him into custody. The speed and precision of the operation—a key point characters later discuss—immediately raises the question: who tipped them off?
Inside the interrogation room, Fisk leans hard on Harry about Archie’s disappearance. He offers Harry a way out if he’s willing to turn on the Harrigans. Harry refuses, sticking to the criminal code that has kept him alive and employed for years. That loyalty buys him some protection: family lawyer O’Hara Delaney (Lisa Dwan) swoops in and secures his release within hours.
On the outside, though, the damage is done. Harry and O’Hara both clock that the police moved too fast to be working only off street chatter. The implication is chilling: there was likely a Harrigan insider feeding information to law enforcement before Archie died.
That possibility sends a shockwave up the chain. Conrad, already reeling from executing his old friend, now has to consider that Archie might have been “a grass” all along. He tasks Harry with proving whether the dead man betrayed them—a job that is equal parts investigation and emotional landmine.
Richie Pushes Back: Eddie Becomes Target Number One
While Harry deals with the police, the Stevensons are tightening their own net.
On a rural road, Richie Stevenson intercepts Kevin Harrigan in a tense roadside confrontation. Richie plainly demands that Tommy be produced and makes it clear that the old understandings between the families are over. Behind the lines about respect and responsibility is a simple threat: if the Harrigans don’t give him his son back, he’ll take something of theirs.
Kevin, who knows full well Eddie stabbed Tommy, understands how bad this can get. He decides Eddie must be moved out of London and sent to the Harrigans’ country estate in the Cotswolds, where the family traditionally hides their problems.
To pull that off, Harry deploys Zosia (Jasmine Jobson) and Kiko (Antonio González Guerrero), two of his most trusted associates. They bundle a sullen, coked‑up Eddie into a car and head for the countryside.
The Stevensons don’t let them go quietly. On the run, Zosia and Kiko are ambushed by gunmen linked to Richie. What follows is an extended chase and shoot‑out on rural roads. The sequence is important not just as action, but as a statement: Richie is willing to wage open war on the Harrigans’ foot soldiers, even before he has confirmation that Tommy is dead.
Zosia and Kiko manage to get Eddie to the Cotswolds estate alive, but the message has been delivered. Eddie is no longer just a reckless party boy; he’s the fragile fuse on a gang war.
Queen of the Cotswolds: Maeve and Eddie’s “Dark” Bond
At the Harrigans’ Cotswolds estate, the tone shifts from bullets to something more insidious.
Maeve Harrigan (Helen Mirren), the family matriarch, folds Eddie into a warped version of grandmotherly comfort. She pampers him, reassures him, and repeats the brutal creed that underpins the family:
If a man disrespects you, take care of it. That’s the Harrigan way.
Eddie, still riding the high of what he’s done, tells her that stabbing Tommy “felt fking great.” Rather than recoil, Maeve effectively rewards him—most memorably in the now‑infamous scene where she pulls out a bag of cocaine hidden in her bra and hands it to him**. The moment has been singled out by critics for its mix of dark comedy and moral sickness.
Actor Anson Boon has described Eddie’s relationship with Maeve as going to “very strange” and “dark” places over the season, and Episode 2 is where viewers start to see why. She isn’t just protecting her grandson; she’s actively grooming him into the family’s violent code.
Helen Mirren herself has talked about how unusual these female roles are in the gangster space, praising the “agency that the female characters in MobLand have… all of them, not just Maeve” and saying it’s “great to be a part of it.” Maeve’s scenes with Eddie here are a textbook example: she shapes the future of the family not by standing behind the men, but by rewiring the next generation in her own image.
The Political Angle: Bella, Lord Pennock, and Antoine
While Maeve is consolidating soft power in the countryside, Bella Harrigan (Lara Pulver) is trying something arguably even more dangerous in London.
Bella, Kevin’s wife and Eddie’s mother, reaches beyond the criminal world to leverage her own background. She arranges a secret meeting between her estranged father Lord Pennock—a sitting government minister—and French businessman Antoine Arloud. The goal is to exploit Pennock’s political access, potentially opening doors or protections for the Harrigans that go far beyond turf and drugs.
Bella is operating behind the family’s back, which already makes the move risky. Harry, who learns about her maneuver, explicitly warns her that he may not be able to save her if it blows up. For a show that’s heavily about inter‑family war, this subplot is a reminder that the Harrigans are also playing a longer game with institutions and power.
It also underlines Mirren’s point about female agency. Bella isn’t content to be just a mob wife; she’s trying to reshape the board through political leverage, even if it puts her in Harry’s crosshairs.
Harry’s Double Life Collides: Gina and Jan in the Line of Fire
Back on the streets, Richie Stevenson decides to apply pressure where Harry is weakest: his family.
In one of the episode’s most pivotal scenes, Richie meets Harry again and escalates his threats. This time, he shows Harry surveillance photos of Harry’s teenage daughter Gina, a clear message that if Tommy doesn’t reappear, Richie is willing to target a child.
The impact is immediate. Harry rushes home to secure Jan and Gina, pulling them tighter into the blast radius of his criminal life. Jan, who has already been frustrated by Harry skipping therapy and refusing to open up, can tell something is badly wrong—even as Harry lies that the situation is under control.
By the middle of the episode, Jan is openly contemplating divorce and talking about finding a solicitor. For all of MobLand’s baroque violence, this domestic tension is one of its sharpest threads: Harry is trying to be a devoted husband and father while acting as executioner, cleaner, and strategist for the Harrigans. Episode 2 is where those two worlds stop running in parallel and start colliding head‑on.
Piecing Together Tommy’s Fate: From Schoolboys to Nightclub Carnage
The “jigsaw puzzle” of the episode title finally comes into focus in the back half of the hour.
Harry starts re‑tracing Eddie’s steps on the night Tommy disappeared. He tracks down Eddie’s wealthy school friends—Alfie and Jack—who were present during that chaotic club night. Their story introduces a crucial detail: they say Eddie “knows” Valjon, the club owner.
That contradicts Valjon’s earlier denials about Eddie’s involvement when Harry questioned him back in Episode 1. Suddenly Valjon’s whole act looks like a lie, and Harry has a clear next move.
He heads straight back to Valjon’s London nightclub. What follows has already become one of the signature images of MobLand’s first season: as Prodigy’s “Breathe” blasts over the sound system—a sonic echo to Episode 1’s use of “Firestarter”—Harry brutally beats Valjon in front of his staff and punters. Critics have called it a “quintessential Guy Ritchie moment,” a hyper‑stylized eruption of violence that nonetheless moves the plot decisively forward.
Under that beating, Valjon breaks. He admits he knows exactly what happened to Tommy and leads Harry to a hidden trunk/box in a back room. Inside are Tommy Stevenson’s mutilated, dismembered remains, butchered after his death.
That revelation accomplishes three big things at once:
- It confirms Tommy is dead, ending any hope this can be smoothed over as a disappearance.
- It reveals the level of brutality involved, suggesting that this wasn’t just an impulsive killing but a deliberate attempt to erase a body and inflame a war.
- It officially ignites the Harrigan–Stevenson conflict; with a corpse in play, there is no face‑saving exit ramp for either side.
Why Episode 2 Matters So Much for Season 1
By the time the credits roll on “Jigsaw Puzzle,” the MobLand universe is fundamentally different from how we left it at the end of Episode 1.
- The Harrigans have lost Archie, may have to reckon with him as a possible informant, and are staring down police heat.
- Tommy Stevenson’s death is confirmed, and the grotesque state of his body makes vengeance almost inevitable.
- Richie has shown he is willing to threaten Gina, taking the fight out of the underworld and into Harry’s living room.
- Eddie is being actively molded by Maeve into a violent heir, cheered on for murder rather than shielded from it.
- Bella is gambling with national‑level politics through Lord Pennock and Antoine Arloud, giving the story an institutional dimension.
- And Harry, whose prison‑forged bond with Kevin is clearer than ever thanks to the flashbacks, is being pulled in opposite directions by his found family and the family he’s trying not to lose.
Thematically, critics have pointed out that Episode 2 is where the show’s interest in multi‑generational dysfunction and female power really comes into focus. Maeve’s chilling bond with Eddie and Bella’s clandestine play with her father show exactly what Helen Mirren meant when she said the women of MobLand have real agency, unlike in many classic gangster tales.
From a bigger‑picture perspective, the episode landed as part of a roll‑out that has clearly worked for Paramount+. After those record‑setting premiere and first‑week numbers and a solid mid‑70s approval range from critics through 2025, the streamer leveraged the buzz by putting the first three episodes on YouTube for free in July 2025—“Jigsaw Puzzle” included—to hook new viewers. A few weeks later, Season 2 was officially confirmed, with MobLand named the service’s second‑most‑watched original series to date.
No Season 2 premiere date has been locked in as of December 2025, but if you rewatch Episode 2 now, knowing where the season ends and where the franchise is headed, it plays like exactly what its title promises: the moment when all the scattered pieces of MobLand’s world snap together into a brutally clear picture.
