MobLand Season 1 Episode 9, “Beggars Banquet,” Explained: The Night the Harrigans Finally Broke
Season 1 of MobLand hit its penultimate chapter on May 25, 2025, when Episode 9, “Beggars Banquet,” dropped on Paramount+ at 12:00 a.m. PT / 3:00 a.m. ET. Slotted as the second‑to‑last episode in a 10‑episode run (March 30–June 1, 2025), it’s designed as the big pivot point: long‑boiling secrets spill out, the Harrigan power structure implodes, and law enforcement finally storms the family’s countryside stronghold.
At the same time, the episode arrives after MobLand has already cemented itself as a major streaming hit. Paramount+ reported 2.2 million global viewers on premiere day and about 26 million over the first couple of months, making the show the streamer’s No. 2 original series of all time, behind Landman. Against that backdrop, “Beggars Banquet” had a lot riding on it as the table‑setter for the finale.
Here’s a detailed, fact‑based breakdown of what happens in Episode 9, why it matters, and how it reshapes the board for the endgame and beyond.
Setting the Stage: Season 1 Before “Beggars Banquet”
To understand why Episode 9 hits so hard, you have to track the slow corrosion that’s been eating through the Harrigan empire all season.
Earlier episodes established that Maeve, the family matriarch, has been secretly aligned with rival kingpin Richie Stevenson. She leaked critical intel that led to the ambush of Brendan and Seraphina in Antwerp/Amsterdam, and she clearly intended Seraphina not to walk away from that setup. At the same time, law enforcement—especially former Deputy Chief Inspector Colin Tattersall—has been maneuvering in the background, lying publicly about previous killings (including Fisk and Mukasa) in order to seize control of the organized crime task force.
On the political side, fixer Kat McAllister has started pulling Harry away from his long‑time loyalty to Conrad, while the series has also teased an internal “rat” in the Harrigan camp and kept viewers guessing about Eddie’s true parentage. All of those threads converge in “Beggars Banquet.”
Eddie’s Parentage Finally Confirmed
The episode wastes no time. It opens with Conrad walking into Eddie’s bedroom at the Harrigan Cotswolds estate, waking him up and calling him “son.” That one word is the payoff to a season’s worth of hints: Eddie is Conrad’s biological child, not Kevin’s.
The reveal is low‑key on the surface—just a quiet morning chat—but it rewires several relationships at once. Kevin’s sense of self, Maeve’s manipulation of the family, and Eddie’s place in the hierarchy all look different once you know Conrad has, in effect, stolen his own grandson and raised him under a lie.
Critics have noted that this scene functions as a metaphor for Eddie’s whole arc. He’s repeatedly framed as a caged animal, and now we see who’s been holding the keys all along.
Tattersall, Nicola, and the Long Game Against the Harrigans
While the Harrigans are dealing with their own bloodline drama, Tattersall is putting the final pieces of his long con in place.
We learn that “Alice,” Jan’s outwardly unassuming friend, is actually Nicola, an undercover officer who has been embedded around the Harrigans for eight years. She’s been working under Tattersall’s direction the whole time. He’s the one who spun lies at the press conference about Fisk and Mukasa, and in Episode 9 he’s now steering a full‑blown sting operation aimed squarely at Conrad and Maeve.
Nicola’s mission in this episode is simple but surgically precise: attend a Harrigan “family dinner,” stay close to Maeve, and secure physical evidence and live audio that can tie the couple to past murders. Tattersall even pumps up her confidence before she heads in, “getting Alice’s tootsies tapping” as one recap put it, selling her on the idea that this is the moment she’s been working toward for nearly a decade.
Cartel Money on the Table: The Falkland Arms Meeting
Before the dinner, “Beggars Banquet” takes a decisive detour to a country pub: The Falkland Arms.
Conrad, Harry, Seraphina, and Paul meet cartel emissary Jaime Lopez there to pitch a high‑stakes business play. The Harrigans want to take over part of the fentanyl trade from Richie’s side of the line, essentially poaching cartel business and repositioning the family in the international drug economy.
Jaime is intrigued, but he doesn’t come cheap. His condition is blunt: if the Harrigans want his trust, they have to identify and eliminate the “rat” in their midst. It’s a demand that pushes Harry to look inward at the family’s cracks, even as viewers already know that the real mole problem is more complicated—stretching from Maeve to Tattersall’s covert operation.
Jaime also needles Harry directly, telling him that it’s “no wonder Kat wants you. And no wonder you want to leave.” In a single line, the episode underlines how visible Harry’s restlessness has become to outside power brokers.
Bella’s London Side Hustle
The Harrigans aren’t the only ones trying to diversify their portfolio. Bella has been quietly pursuing her own path, and in Episode 9 she literally “does a runner to London” for a clandestine meeting.
There, she sits down with fixer Antoine, Home Secretary Suri Sharma (who is also her father), and an apparent Syrian arms dealer. The implication is clear: Bella is leveraging her political connections and appetite for risk to assemble a side deal that spans government, organized crime, and international arms.
Antoine, of course, plays multiple angles. He’s secretly recording the meeting via a hidden camera in his tie, keeping leverage on everyone at the table. By the time Bella leaves London, it’s obvious that the Harrigan kids aren’t just heirs—they’re active, volatile players whose moves could blow back on the family from multiple directions.
Kevin’s Revenge in Plaistow
Running parallel to the family’s strategic plotting is one of the show’s most personal arcs: Kevin’s trauma stemming from sexual abuse at Newgate Prison.
Episode 9 routes him to a nursing home, where he intercepts his former prison guard abuser, Rusby, by posing as his ride. Kevin then drives Rusby back to the guard’s house in Plaistow, in East London, for a grim reckoning.
Inside the house, Rusby offers a faltering apology, but the years of damage are beyond any repair words could offer. The tension peaks when Rusby asks Kevin if he has children—a question that hits especially hard given the complicated truth about Eddie’s parentage. Kevin ultimately shoots Rusby in the head, closing out a storyline that has haunted him all season.
It’s a self‑contained tragedy, but its placement here—right before the Harrigans’ larger collapse—emphasizes how violence and abuse ripple through every layer of this world, from prisons to parliament.
Maeve Tightens the Screws on Gina
Back at the Cotswolds estate, Maeve is busy consolidating her own warped version of control. She corners Gina (Harry’s daughter), making it clear she’s been watching Gina’s relationship with Eddie through the estate’s security cameras.
Maeve doesn’t just threaten separation; she describes in graphic terms what she’ll do if Gina doesn’t stay away from Eddie. It’s an intimidation campaign that serves two purposes: it keeps Gina in line and reminds Harry, indirectly, that Maeve holds all kinds of leverage over the people he cares about.
This encounter helps explain why the dinner that follows is so charged. Gina retreats to her room, and Harry is already on edge when the so‑called “normal family dinner” begins.
The “Normal” Family Dinner from Hell
The Harrigans invite Nicola—still posing as Alice—to what is framed as an ordinary family meal. In reality, it’s a minefield.
Around the table, Maeve sexually needles Eddie, crossing boundaries and stoking tension. She also interrogates Alice about her marriage, poking at her supposed domestic problems, while Seraphina adopts a more tactical approach, grilling Alice on what she knows about the family and testing her cover story.
The entire scene plays double duty: for Tattersall’s operation, it’s a live wiretap into the heart of the Harrigan clan; for the family, it’s an unstable gathering where old resentments are poised to explode.
Mid‑meal, Alice excuses herself. This is the moment Tattersall has been grooming her for. She quietly retrieves Maeve’s wine glass and Conrad’s cigar, slipping them into evidence bags. At the same time, her phone is transmitting audio from the dinner to the police team outside.
The twist is that she’s not as invisible as she thinks. Harry catches her in the act—he sees the evidence bags, understands immediately what’s happening, and tells her that the police are about a minute away. Crucially, he lets her continue, effectively opening the door for law enforcement to crash the Harrigan world he’s helped build.
Conrad vs. Maeve: The Betrayal Comes Out
Back at the table, with Alice out of the room and the clock ticking down to the raid, Conrad decides he’s done pretending.
He confronts Maeve with what he’s pieced together: she is the one who leaked the location of Archie’s body, and she’s the one who fed Richie the intel that led to Brendan and Seraphina’s ambush in Antwerp. The accusation is not new to viewers, but this is the first time it’s spoken aloud in front of the whole inner circle.
Maeve doesn’t deny it. Instead, she escalates—openly admitting that she intended for Seraphina to be “chopped up” in the Antwerp operation. The argument spirals until Conrad grabs a steak knife and Maeve snatches up a broken wine bottle. The show stops just short of having them kill each other at the table, because at that exact moment, outside forces finally collide with the family’s implosion.
The Raid on the Cotswolds Estate
Sirens and the thump of a police helicopter roar to life above the Harrigan estate. Tattersall’s operation, years in the making, moves in.
Tactical units storm the property, breaching the home and arresting Conrad and Maeve on suspicion of murder. Nicola’s planted DNA evidence and live audio feed give Tattersall the pretext he needs; the family’s own dysfunction provides the incriminating theater.
As they’re led away in handcuffs, Maeve begins singing “20 Men From Dublin Town,” a traditional Irish folk song. Conrad joins in. On paper, it’s a defiant act, but several critics have pointed out that the moment plays more as an awkward, rambling flourish than a triumphant stand.
Inside the house, the emotional fallout lands on the people left behind. Gina watches the chaos from her bedroom and clings to Harry. Jan sits alone at the dining table as a police helicopter’s searchlight washes over her—the final image of the episode—capturing how isolated and exposed the Harrigan family has become.
Why “Beggars Banquet” Matters for the Season – and the Series
Structurally, Episode 9 is the turning point for Season 1:
- It publicly exposes Maeve’s betrayal, shattering the illusion of a unified Harrigan front.
- It physically removes Conrad and Maeve from the board, at least temporarily, via arrest—creating an immediate power vacuum for players like Harry, Seraphina, or external actors such as Kat McAllister and Richie Stevenson to exploit in the finale.
- It wraps Kevin’s prison‑trauma arc in decisive, violent fashion, underlining how personal histories of abuse feed back into the wider cycle of crime.
- It sharpens the show’s portrait of corrupt law enforcement, with Tattersall and his handlers positioned not as moral opposites to the Harrigans, but as rival power brokers working with Richie and willing to manipulate and endanger an undercover officer who’s been embedded for eight years.
Critically, reactions have been mixed but engaged. Entertainment Weekly has framed the episode as the chapter that finally answers the mystery of Eddie’s parentage, sees Kevin kill Rusby, and ends with Alice’s dinner operation leading to Conrad and Maeve’s arrest. Other outlets, including The Review Geek and AIPT, have argued that the hour can feel setup‑heavy, describing the writing as sometimes “lazy” and repetitive and pointing to the singing‑while‑arrested moment as especially awkward. At the same time, they’ve praised the ongoing tension around Harry’s loyalties and Toby Jones’ performance as Tattersall.
What’s not in dispute is the episode’s function: by the time the credits roll, the old order is gone. The Harrigans’ Cotswolds fortress has been breached, the parents are in custody, the kids are scattered across dangerous side deals, and law enforcement has stepped fully into the criminal arena as another ruthless faction.
Where This Leaves MobLand Going Into the Finale (and Season 2)
“Beggars Banquet” aired in the ninth slot of a tightly scheduled 10‑episode run, with the finale following on June 1, 2025. Behind the scenes, the numbers it helped drive contributed to Paramount+’s decision, announced in late June, to renew MobLand for Season 2, citing the show’s 26 million‑plus global viewers and its status as the streamer’s second‑most watched original.
For fans catching up now, the path to Episode 9 is straightforward: in the U.S., MobLand streams on Paramount+, with plans starting at $7.99/month (Essential) and rising to $12.99/month for the Paramount+ with Showtime tier. Paramount+ also made the first three episodes available for free on YouTube in July 2025 as a gateway, though “Beggars Banquet” and the rest of the season remain behind the subscription wall.
Guy Ritchie has described MobLand as his chance to tackle a more “traditional” gangster‑family setup in a long‑form format, while writer Jez Butterworth has said that TV was a “brand‑new world” he was initially reluctant to enter, only to be won over by the creative possibilities. Helen Mirren has talked about loving the show’s spontaneity and wanting to “do it again” in Season 2. All of that creative energy converges in Episode 9, where years of plotting—both in the writers’ room and in‑universe—are finally cashed in.
By design, “Beggars Banquet” doesn’t resolve everything. Instead, it clears the board, strips away the Harrigans’ illusion of invulnerability, and hands the finale a combustible setup: a fractured family, a swaggering but compromised police task force, cartel partners waiting to see who comes out on top, and a fixer class—from Kat to Antoine—ready to monetize the chaos.
