MobLand Season 1 Episode 3, “Plan B”: The Blast That Turns a Cold War Hot
Season 1 of MobLand wastes no time turning London’s underworld into a pressure cooker, but Episode 3, “Plan B,” is where that pressure finally detonates. Airing on April 13, 2025 on Paramount+ and running roughly 45–47 minutes depending on platform, the episode marks the moment the uneasy standoff between the Harrigans and the Stevensons explodes into outright war.
Created by Ronan Bennett with Jez Butterworth, and executive‑produced by Guy Ritchie alongside a heavyweight roster that includes Tom Hardy, Helen Mirren and Pierce Brosnan, MobLand had already broken Paramount+ launch records by the time “Plan B” dropped. The series premiere pulled in 2.2 million global viewers on day one and grew to 8.8 million in its first week, helping Season 1 eventually top 26 million global viewers by June 2025.
“Plan B” lands right at the critical early point in that run: Episode 3 of 10, the final installment in the initial trio of episodes that Paramount+ later released for free on YouTube to hook new viewers. It’s no coincidence that this is the cut‑off point for the sampler. Critics repeatedly point to Episode 3 as the hour where MobLand fully reveals what kind of show it wants to be.
When and how “Plan B” hit screens
“Plan B” premiered on April 13, 2025 at 12:00 a.m. PT / 3:00 a.m. ET on Paramount+ in the U.S., matching the streamer’s standard overnight drop for originals. Internationally, the episode rolled out in line with MobLand’s staggered launch: the show first arrived in the U.S., U.K., Canada and Australia on March 30, 2025, then expanded to markets including Italy, Germany, France, Latin America and Brazil from May 30.
Key episode details:
- Season: 1
- Episode: 3 (overall #3)
- Title: “Plan B”
- Writer(s): Ronan Bennett & Jez Butterworth
- Director: Anthony Byrne
- Rating: TV‑MA
- Runtime: Listed as 47 minutes on Metacritic and IMDb, 45 minutes on Apple TV and Showmax
Later in 2025, Paramount+ made Episodes 1–3 (“Stick or Twist”, “Jigsaw Puzzle”, “Plan B”) available for free on YouTube, positioning “Plan B” as the end of a three‑episode trial designed to convert curious viewers into subscribers.
Setting the stage: what “Plan B” is reacting to
To understand why “Plan B” hits so hard, it helps to rewind to the opening chapters of MobLand:
- In Episode 1, “Stick or Twist”, fixer Harry Da Souza (Tom Hardy) establishes his value to Conrad Harrigan by arranging a “peace summit” between two Harrigan‑aligned bosses—then coldly supervising their execution on Conrad’s order. In parallel, Conrad’s grandson Eddie spends a chaotic night out with Tommy Stevenson (son of rival boss Richie Stevenson). Eddie stabs club‑goer Hughie Campbell, and Tommy later disappears. Harry wipes CCTV footage and destroys Eddie’s clothes, but nothing can erase Tommy’s absence.
- In Episode 2, “Jigsaw Puzzle”, Harry spends a long day trying to locate Tommy and head off a gang war. He eventually discovers Tommy’s dismembered body hidden at Valjon’s club, confirming that Eddie’s night spiraled into murder and cover‑up. Conrad orders the execution of Archie Hammond, an old friend suspected of informing, while Maeve Harrigan quietly shields Eddie and begins grooming him as the family’s future.
By the time “Plan B” opens, the Harrigans know Tommy is dead, Richie does not, and Eddie’s guilt is a ticking time bomb. “Plan B” is, quite literally, the episode where that bomb goes off.
The blast: Richie bombs Kevin’s house
“Plan B” opens with a jolt. Richie Stevenson orders a bomb planted at the suburban home of Kevin Harrigan, Conrad’s son. Crucially, as Entertainment Weekly notes in its recap, Richie takes this step before he even learns that Tommy has been killed and butchered. The explosion rips through Kevin’s house, sending debris across the quiet street and instantly shifting the mob conflict from tense diplomacy to open attacks on family members.
The blast jolts Kevin awake to the reality of the situation. Panicked, he calls Harry, warning him that “Richie’s coming for all of us.” That single act of retaliation raises the stakes for every character connected to the Harrigans, from high‑level bosses to children asleep in their beds.
Harry moves his family and stares down Richie’s gunmen
In immediate response to Kevin’s call, Harry pivots from strategic fixer to emergency protector. He wakes his wife Jan and teenage daughter Gina, bundles them into the car and drives them to a makeshift safe house: a houseboat owned by Mike, an old acquaintance who happens to owe him money. The choice of location underscores Harry’s improvisational style; even his safe house is tied to a debt he’s yet to collect.
Meanwhile, two of Richie’s gunmen—Freddie and Ollie—are already waiting outside Harry’s home, ready to eliminate him as part of Richie’s opening move. Instead of responding with immediate violence, Harry puts Conrad on speakerphone and talks the gunmen down, using his reputation and the authority of the Harrigan name to force them to stand down without a public shoot‑out.
The sequence reinforces Harry’s dual role: he’s both the man who cleans up the Harrigans’ mess and the firewall between mob politics and his own family’s survival.
The shipyard showdown: Valjon’s confession and Eddie’s guilt
Once Jan and Gina are hidden, Harry turns back to damage control for the Harrigans. He instructs Kevin to bring Eddie to “the yard,” a covert shipyard that doubles as Harrigan business territory. At the same time, DS Fisk and her partner Mukasa quietly follow Harry’s car, maintaining the low‑key tail they’ve had on him since earlier episodes.
At the shipyard, Harry confronts Valjon, the club owner entangled in the Tommy cover‑up. Valjon has already been beaten and bloodied, and the Harrigans are ready to squeeze him for answers. Under pressure, Valjon confirms two critical facts:
- Eddie killed Tommy Stevenson.
- Eddie paid Valjon £10,000 to dispose of the body.
These revelations, recorded in fan‑compiled episode summaries and mirrored in major recaps, crystallize what the audience has suspected since Episode 2: Eddie is not just reckless, he is the direct trigger for the looming gang war. Harry and Kevin relay the confession to Conrad and Maeve, forcing the family leadership to confront the question of how far they’ll go to protect Conrad’s grandson.
Their answer is ruthless.
Maeve and Conrad’s “Plan B”: protect Eddie at any cost
Faced with clear proof that Eddie killed Richie’s son, Conrad and Maeve make a decision that defines the rest of the season. Rather than hand Eddie over or allow him to take responsibility, they choose to shield him.
Publicly, they agree to let Harry “handle” the fallout and sell a different story to Richie. Privately, Conrad and Maeve align on a far darker contingency plan: if the deception fails, their “Plan B” is to murder Richie’s wife Vron and eventually Richie himself. That plan ensures every subsequent attempt at peace is undercut by a standing assassination order.
This is also another clear illustration of Maeve’s power. As critics have noted, she’s far more than a mob wife or grandmother; she is the strategist who will “stop at nothing to protect her own,” even when that means unleashing mass violence to keep Eddie safe.
Harry’s own “Plan B”: sacrificing Valjon
At the same time, Harry formulates a different “Plan B” of his own. Realizing that a full‑scale war will devastate both families—and likely his own home—he decides to turn Valjon into a patsy.
To make the plan work, Harry leans into cold‑blooded coercion. He threatens Valjon’s children, forcing him to agree to falsely confess to Richie that he killed Tommy. In exchange, Harry promises Valjon’s family will be left untouched. This is the pivot point that Decider highlights: the moment when Harry shifts from “lovable rogue” fixer to someone willing to terrorize innocent children to protect his employers.
Harry then arranges a meeting with Richie at Moody’s boxing gym, neutral ground with symbolic weight—violence contained and observed. There, he presents the story: Valjon acted alone, Tommy’s killer has been found, and Richie can stand down.
Richie appears to accept Valjon’s confession, but the truce is fragile. According to the MobLand Fandom summary and multiple recaps, Richie continues to torture Valjon, suggesting he either doubts the story, doesn’t care about the details, or simply wants to savor his revenge. In any case, Harry’s “two birds with one stone” solution—protect Eddie while avoiding full war—is built on a man’s sacrifice and a lie Richie may or may not truly believe.
The cops close in: Archie’s coffin and the anonymous tip
While the mob families trade bombs and confessions, DS Fisk and Mukasa quietly move closer to exposing the Harrigans. Their surveillance of Harry pays off when an anonymous tip sends them to a cemetery. There, they discover a coffin containing the corpse of Archie Hammond, Conrad’s old friend who was secretly executed back in Episode 2.
This discovery is important on two levels:
- It connects another body directly to Harrigan operations.
- It signals that someone close enough to the family to know about Archie’s burial is now feeding information to the police.
The coffin find strengthens the official case against the Harrigans and foreshadows the legal pressure that builds later in the season. It also reinforces that, even as Harry works to keep the peace with Richie, the state is quietly preparing its own kind of war.
Harry’s personal obligations and the Rusby reveal
In a quieter but thematically crucial subplot, Harry cashes in on Kevin’s help to briefly shake the police tail and fulfill a promise to Jan. He arranges for the elderly mother of their domestic helper to be admitted into a nursing home, demonstrating that he applies the same problem‑solving instincts to domestic life that he uses in organized crime.
Inside the care home, Harry spots someone unexpected: Rusby, a former corrections officer who abused both Harry and Kevin when they were incarcerated as youths. This moment, documented in fan and press summaries, connects Harry’s present‑day role as fixer to his and Kevin’s shared traumatic past. It offers a glimpse into why Kevin continues to gravitate toward Harry despite their complicated dynamic—both men were shaped, and scarred, by the same institutional violence.
Bella, Antoine and blackmail: another fire for Harry to put out
As if bombs, cover‑ups and police investigations weren’t enough, Bella Harrigan—Kevin’s wife—has her own dangerous subplot. Earlier, she secretly recorded her corrupt father during a business meeting with Antoine, a French associate. That recording was meant to give Bella leverage, but in “Plan B” the scheme backfires.
According to Entertainment Weekly’s recap, Antoine flips the script and blackmails Bella, using the footage to pressure her and, by extension, the Harrigans. Cornered, Bella reaches out to Harry for help, drawing him deeper into intra‑family drama and adding yet another loyalty test to his already overloaded plate. Their private meeting in the episode hints at the emotional entanglements and conflicting loyalties that will continue to complicate Harry’s job.
Why critics see “Plan B” as a turning point
Critics have consistently singled out “Plan B” as a defining episode of MobLand’s first season.
- CBR calls it the MobLand episode “audiences will remember most” and describes it as the show’s darkest hour to date, in part because it forces Harry to choose who is expendable in his world. The outlet also argues that Tom Hardy delivers “one of his most complex portrayals to date” here, pushed to the edge by conflicting obligations to Conrad, to Jan and Gina, and to his own sense of survival.
- Decider’s recap emphasizes the moral slide in Harry’s behavior, noting that his decision to terrorize Valjon’s children in order to stage a false confession makes him “seem a lot less lovable” than he did at the episode’s start.
- At the same time, coverage from CBR and others underscores Maeve Harrigan’s emerging dominance. Her unwavering defense of Eddie—even after learning he orchestrated Tommy’s death—cements her as the show’s central architect of Harrigan strategy, a matriarch who will accept gang war, collateral damage and political fallout rather than sacrifice her grandson.
These critical takes dovetail with the series’ broader reception. While Rotten Tomatoes lists Season 1 with a Tomatometer in the high‑70s and praises Tom Hardy’s “gruff charisma” and the show’s stylish handling of gangster conventions, Metacritic places it around 59–60/100, reflecting more mixed opinions about its familiar genre beats. Within that landscape, “Plan B” stands out as the hour where the series leans fully into its darkest instincts.
How “Plan B” reshapes Season 1
“Plan B” is not just a high‑intensity middle chapter; it’s the pivot for the rest of Season 1’s narrative.
- From cover‑up to open war: Richie’s bombing of Kevin’s house, carried out before he even knows Tommy is dead, turns a quiet cover‑up into a declared vendetta. Harry’s decision to sacrifice Valjon buys temporary breathing room but deepens the moral cost for everyone involved.
- Police pressure escalates: The discovery of Archie Hammond’s body gives DS Fisk and Mukasa a concrete link between the Harrigans and multiple killings, setting up the legal and political fallout that shapes later episodes.
- Trauma and loyalty: The reveal of Rusby at the nursing home underlines how shared trauma binds Harry and Kevin, complicating their relationship with Conrad and the Harrigan legacy.
- Foreshadowing future episodes: Later episode descriptions explicitly reference “the aftermath of Plan B,” with Episode 6 (“Antwerp Blues”) taking place after Conrad has fully embraced the idea of war and DS Fisk recognizes that “this is war” on her side as well. In other words, the decisions made in Episode 3 keep echoing through the season’s midpoint and beyond.
It’s also notable that when Paramount+ chose to give potential subscribers a free taste of MobLand on YouTube in July 2025, they stopped at Episode 3. That move effectively positions “Plan B” as the series’ litmus test: if viewers are hooked by the bombing, the sacrifice of Valjon, Maeve’s hardline defense of Eddie and the encroaching police case, they’re likely to stay for the remaining seven episodes.
The bottom line
By any metric—story, character, or streaming strategy—MobLand Season 1 Episode 3, “Plan B,” is a fulcrum. It turns Tommy Stevenson’s disappearance into a fully weaponized gang war, forces Harry Da Souza to cross lines he had only edged up to before, and locks Maeve Harrigan into her role as ruthless architect of the family’s future.
Released at the height of MobLand’s record‑breaking early run on Paramount+, and later used as the capstone of a three‑episode YouTube sampler, “Plan B” is both a narrative and commercial turning point. It’s the hour where MobLand shows viewers exactly how far its characters—and its creators—are willing to go.
