A Thousand Blows (2025)

Hezekiah's final fight ends with him killing Alec Munroe in the ring by accident, shattering him and Mary both; Sugar Goodson is murdered in the street by Indigo Jeremy's men soon after; Mr. Lao is taken away to likely execution in China; Mary, broken from betrayal and loss, stays in London with the Elephants while Hezekiah, furious and grieving, walks away alone from the boxing world and from her, the season closing on both of them separated, bruised, and unfinished.

Now, the ending, step by step, as if spoken aloud, scene by scene:

Hezekiah steps into the ring for the night's main event, the crowd packed tight around the ropes, breath smoking in the cold air of the hall. He is lean, coiled, his fists taped, his eyes narrowed with all the weight of what has brought him here: the anger at Indigo Jeremy, the humiliation he has suffered, the need to prove himself, and the hope of a future beyond this. Across from him stands Alec Munroe, his friend, his cornerman, now turned opponent by the currents of money and pressure that move the sport. They touch gloves because they must, but the set of their jaws makes clear this is more burden than honor for either of them.

The bell rings. The first exchanges are sharp and fast. Hezekiah moves with the speed and rhythm Alec helped him build, while Alec, calmer and more measured, tries to control the pace. Each punch that lands is loaded with history: hours of training together, shared dreams, and the recent divide that has pushed them onto opposite sides of the ropes. The crowd roars with each combination, but inside the ring it narrows down to the breathing of two men and the thud of leather against bone.

The rounds progress. Alec starts to tire under the sustained assaults. Hezekiah, driven by pride, by the desire to seize his chance, pushes harder. He throws more combinations, digs to the body, comes back upstairs. Alec is hurt, but still trying to answer, still trying to stay in it. Sweat and blood mark both their faces. Around the ring, bettors shout odds, trainers call advice, and the sense grows that the fight is turning one way.

Then comes the fatal moment. In a later round, when Alec is already worn down, Hezekiah sees an opening and steps in. He launches a powerful finishing punch--committed, full-bodied, thrown with all his weight, the way he has been taught. It lands cleanly on Alec's head. Alec's legs buckle immediately. He does not crumple slowly; he drops in a sudden, terrifying collapse that looks different from any knockdown they have seen before. His head hits the canvas. His body does not move.

The noise of the crowd changes. The usual roar that greets a knockout is absent, replaced by a stunned hush and then rising shouts of alarm. The referee rushes in and waves Hezekiah away. Hezekiah backs up, chest heaving, hands still half-raised before he realizes something is very wrong. At the edge of the ring, people lean in, trying to see whether Alec is breathing. The referee and seconds kneel around Alec, calling his name, trying to rouse him. There is no response.

Hezekiah's face shifts from triumph to confusion, then to dawning horror. He steps forward, ignoring instructions to stay back, and peers down at Alec, his friend lying utterly motionless. He calls Alec's name once, twice, but gets nothing in return. The doctor is summoned, crouching, checking for signs of life. The attempts to revive Alec grow more frantic, but the stillness remains.

As the realization spreads through the hall, there is no formal announcement needed. The expressions, the body language of those surrounding Alec, tell the story. Alec Munroe has been killed in the ring, the final blow delivered by the man who cared for him, trained with him, and never intended this end. Hezekiah staggers back from the sight, shock pushing out everything else. The victory means nothing. The purse means nothing. He is left standing in the corner, his gloves hanging heavy, a man who has just killed his friend in front of a crowd.

News of the death moves quickly through their circle. Elsewhere, Mary Carr learns what has happened. She hears not just that a man has died, but that it is Alec--someone she has come to rely on--and that Hezekiah, the man she has allowed herself to love, is responsible, even if by tragic accident. The knowledge hits her in layers: first disbelief, then a grim acceptance of what the world they live in does to people, and then the recognition that this loss is a direct echo of the violence and power struggles that have surrounded them.

Around the same time, the other strand of menace tightens: Indigo Jeremy's ongoing campaign to reassert control. He has already ordered violence before, including the hit that was meant to kill Hezekiah and instead took Alec's life outside the ring: the stabbing in the street that left Alec wounded because he was mistaken for Hezekiah by the Forty Elephants' hired knife. That earlier attack, sanctioned by Indigo as punishment for Mary's independence, set the entire tragedy into motion, weakening Alec and pulling everyone into deeper conflict.

Now, with Alec dead after the fight and tensions high, Indigo makes his next move in the criminal world. Sugar Goodson, Mary's longtime protector and self-appointed suitor, remains exposed. Sugar has been growing increasingly resentful since Mary refused his offer of marriage, choosing her own path and allowing herself to fall into a relationship with Hezekiah. That refusal has withdrawn the shelter he once gave her, but it also leaves Sugar himself standing in a dangerous gap, unaligned, with a heart that has turned from devotion to bruised pride.

On the street, under the gray London sky, Sugar walks, unaware of the exact timing of Indigo's revenge but aware that enemies surround them. The cobbles are wet. The alleys nearby serve as the hidden arteries of the city's underworld. Men step from the shadows--Indigo Jeremy's partisans, sent to settle scores and cut away those who are no longer useful or loyal. There is no grand speech, no warning. They set upon Sugar quickly, blades drawn or blunt weapons raised. The attack is swift and ruthless. Sugar tries to fight back--he is no stranger to violence--but he is outnumbered, and the assault is sudden and coordinated.

Blows land. Steel finds flesh. Sugar is beaten and stabbed until he falls. The sounds of the struggle echo for a moment, then fade as the attackers melt back into the warren of streets, leaving his body behind. Sugar Goodson, the man who once picked up workhouse children and brought them food, the man who dreamed of a patchwork family of strays with Mary at its center, ends his life sprawled on the stones of London, cut down by the very criminal machinery he helped feed. His fate is sealed there: dead on the street at Indigo Jeremy's order.

While Sugar's body cools, Mr. Lao faces his own final turning point. Arrested for the killing of Lo Feng Luh--a Chinese diplomat whose actions helped destroy Lao's family in China--Mr. Lao stands before the machinery of international law and politics. The death he delivered was not a random murder but a personal act of revenge for his wife and child, who died when Lo Feng Luh oversaw brutal reprisals at home, burning villages and ordering slaughter. That past has now caught up with him in London.

Authorities arrange for Mr. Lao's extradition. The fear attached to the word is clear: if he is sent back to China, the penalty is almost certain death. He cannot fight the process. He is taken into custody, his hands bound, his path controlled by officials whose concern is not his story or his grief, but the diplomatic offense he has caused. When the time comes, he is led away, the London streets passing by him for the last time. The show does not display his execution, but his destination is plain--return to China to be tried and almost certainly killed as a murderer of a state official. Mr. Lao's fate is thus: removed from the story, transported toward a death sentence imposed by his homeland.

Back in Mary Carr's world, the Forty Elephants strain under internal pressure. Mary, who has dared to carry out the Chinese Legation robbery without involving Indigo's men, has defied the old power structures. Jane Carr, her mother, plays her own dangerous game, feeding information where it suits her. The gang's cohesion frays. Members fear retaliation. Some look to Mary and see a leader who may have overreached; others see a path to something new. Yet as the bodies pile up--Alec in the ring, Sugar in the street--Mary finds herself more isolated than before.

Word of Sugar's death reaches her. She learns that the man who once loved her, who stood as her protector since her childhood in the workhouse, has been killed. She knows why: her refusal to accept his proposal, her move toward Hezekiah, her independence from Indigo Jeremy, all have mixed to make him a target. Yet whatever the reasons, the outcome is simple and brutal. Sugar Goodson is gone, and the loose network of orphans and misfits he wanted to shelter has lost its central figure.

Mary stands in the streets and rooms that defined her life, now haunted by absence. In the gang's haunts, former allies look at her with uncertainty. That uncertainty will harden into open rebellion later, but for now, at the end of this season, the immediate sensation is that she has been left standing in the wreckage. She remains in London, still at the head of her segment of the Forty Elephants, but without Sugar's backing and with her relationship to Indigo fully poisoned.

The connection between Mary and Hezekiah, which once promised escape for both of them, is now caught in the crossfire of these deaths. She has lost Alec, who supported Hezekiah and stood as a bridge between worlds. She has lost Sugar, who represented her past and her protection. The cost of her choices and the choices of those around her lands heavily: she is a leader without many trustworthy allies, a woman whose bid for self-determination has come with a terrible price.

Hezekiah, meanwhile, must face the aftermath of Alec's death alone. After the fight, the officials handle the body, the crowd disperses slowly, and the conversations about blame and responsibility begin. Some will say it was part of the sport. Others will whisper about the earlier stabbing, about how Alec was already weakened by the attack meant for Hezekiah. But none of that changes what Hezekiah himself feels: he threw the punch; his friend died.

In a quieter scene after the chaos of the fight, Hezekiah stands removed from the ring, somewhere on the edges of the city that has used him as spectacle. The blood, sweat, and cheers have drained away, leaving him with the memory of Alec's body hitting the canvas. He is filled with grief and fury--fury at Indigo Jeremy, whose order for a killing started this chain of events, and fury at the city and structures that turn men like him and Alec into expendable bodies. That anger points him toward revenge, but at this moment, it also pushes him away from everything that tied him to the ring.

Mary is not beside him. The idea that they might leave London together--an escape that once seemed possible--is now broken. The losses have dug a trench between them: he has killed her ally in the ring; her world has claimed the life of his friend through street violence. When they part, it is not in a storm of shouted words but in a heaviness that says they cannot walk the same road, at least not now. Hezekiah walks away from the boxing hall, from the immediate orbit of Mary Carr, carrying his guilt and his rage into an uncertain future.

So, by the end of Season 1:

Hezekiah Moscow has accidentally killed Alec Munroe in the ring. He is alive, but emotionally shattered, estranged from Mary, leaving both boxing and his fragile hopes with her behind for the moment, his future pointed toward vengeance and further conflict.

Mary Carr is alive and still in London, still a figure within the Forty Elephants, but now largely alone. She has refused Sugar's proposal, lost his protection, seen Alec die, and stands with far fewer allies, forced to hold her position amid growing threats and the memory of what her choices have cost.

Sugar Goodson is dead, murdered in the street on Indigo Jeremy's orders, his lifelong devotion to Mary ending in a violent, lonely killing that removes him permanently from the world he tried to shape.

Mr. Lao is alive only in transit; he is extradited to China to face a near-certain death sentence for killing Lo Feng Luh, his story leaving London as he is taken from the docks toward the country and government that will likely execute him.

Alec Munroe is dead, first stabbed in a mistaken attempt on Hezekiah's life and finally killed in the boxing ring by Hezekiah's finishing punch, his fate tying together the world of organized crime and the supposedly regulated brutality of sport.

Indigo Jeremy, though not centered in the final images, remains alive, the unseen hand whose decisions have felled Alec and Sugar and whose power still hangs over both Mary's criminal world and Hezekiah's quest for justice.

The season's last impression holds on Hezekiah and Mary apart from each other, each marked by loss, each alive but wounded, their stories unresolved and their paths heading away from one another as the words "to be continued" hang over their fractured lives.

Yes. Across seasons 1 and 2 several named characters die, and their deaths are important to the story and to Hezekiah, Mary, and Sugar's emotional arcs.

I'll list the major on‑screen or clearly established deaths, in rough chronological/story order, and describe the circumstances: why, when, and how.

1) The Chinese embassy representative (season 1 – off‑screen but pivotal)
- Who: An unnamed but important Chinese legation/embassy official involved with the valuables coming from China.
- How: He is killed by Mr. Lao during the botched Chinese legation heist that Mary organizes.
- Why (story reason): Mary's ambitious scheme to rob valuables being brought to the English government from China goes wrong. Lao, her volatile and violent Chinese ally, kills one of the Chinese representatives during the operation, escalating the fallout far beyond what Mary planned. His death turns what was "just" a high‑stakes theft into a diplomatic incident and a murder, giving the Elephant Boys and Indigo Jeremy a serious grievance and giving the authorities extra pressure to find scapegoats.
- Narrative impact: This killing is what pushes Mary's gang toward fracture: the heist isn't as valuable as promised, the murder makes the heat unbearable, and combined they allow her lieutenant Eliza to move against her. It also spurs Jane and Indigo Jeremy to punish Mary by targeting Hezekiah.

2) Alec Munroe (season 1, penultimate episode – murder / mistaken identity)
- Who: Alec, Hezekiah's closest friend from Jamaica, the gentler, more hopeful of the pair, trying to find a foothold in London alongside Hezekiah.
- When: Near the end of season 1, in the penultimate episode, and his funeral and wake open much of the finale.
- How: Alec is stabbed to death in the street by a masked man – a member of the Elephant Boys. The killer approaches him in the dark, in a tense, fearful London where everyone is watching for reprisals. The attacker mistakes Alec for Hezekiah and drives a blade into him. Alec dies from the stabbing.
- Why (story reason): Indigo Jeremy orders a hit on Hezekiah as punishment for Mary, who has overstepped by carrying off the Chinese legation heist without the Elephants' sanction and then trying to contain the fallout on her own terms. The gang member sent to carry out the order sees Alec, thinks he is Hezekiah, and kills him instead. The murder isn't random; it is very precisely the bill coming due for Mary's ambition, but it lands on the wrong man.
- Emotional/narrative impact:
- For Hezekiah: Alec's death rips away his one true anchor from home. The show lingers on his grief: the Jamaican Nine Night observances, the sense that the London streets have swallowed Alec and could swallow Hezekiah too. At first, Hezekiah believes it was a meaningless, random killing, which makes the city feel even more hostile and godless.
- For Mary: She quickly learns – through her mother Jane and through Indigo Jeremy's maneuvering – that Alec died in an attempted assassination of Hezekiah ordered as punishment for her. She decides to conceal that truth from Hezekiah, hoping to protect him, protect herself, and keep alive the dream of the two of them running away to New York together. That choice to lie, not just the killing itself, is what finally destroys their fragile trust.
- For Sugar: In the finale, Jane quietly tells Sugar that Alec's murder was an Elephant Boys job aimed at Hezekiah, ordered by Indigo Jeremy. Sugar realizes that Mary has lied to Hezekiah about the circumstances. Driven by his messy tangle of jealousy, desire for Mary, and hatred of Hez, he chooses to tell Hezekiah that Mary knows who ordered the hit and that Alec died in Hez's place. When Mary comes to meet Hezekiah so they can flee to America, he confronts her, throws her lies in her face, and tells her she is "dead" to him. Alec's literal death becomes the instrument of the death of their relationship.

3) The boxer Hezekiah kills in the ring (season 1 finale – accidental killing)
- Who: A fellow bare‑knuckle boxer Hezekiah faces late in season 1. The show presents him more as an opponent than a fully developed character, but his death is explicit and central to the finale.
- When: In the season 1 finale, during Hezekiah's climactic fight.
- How: In the ring. Hezekiah, pressured by his rising reputation, by the expectations of the crowd, and by his own burning need to prove himself and escape poverty, fights with a ferocity that goes beyond sport. During the brutal bout he lands a decisive blow – the kind of shot the show has been slowly building toward as his power grows – that leaves his opponent badly injured. The man later dies of the injuries sustained in that fight.
- Why (story reason): The death is framed as "accidental" in the narrow sense – Hezekiah didn't walk into the ring intending to kill the man – but morally and emotionally he knows he pushed too far. In practical terms, the fight is meant to cement his stature; instead it brands him as a killer. Legally and socially, he is now culpable: the authorities and his enemies have one more reason to bear down on him, and his conscience gains a weight he can't shrug off.
- Emotional/narrative impact:
- Hezekiah experiences a surge of horror and guilt. He came to London looking for opportunity; now he has taken a man's life with his own hands. His accidental killing in the ring mirrors the way violence has been encroaching on every part of his life – from street threats to organized hits.
- For Mary, already reeling from Alec's death and the implosion of her heist, this adds one more stain to any future she imagines with Hezekiah. The man she loves is now, undeniably, a killer – even if the law or the crowd might shrug and call it "part of the sport." It underscores the idea that every path they've chosen is soaked in blood by the end of season 1.

4) Jane Carr (between seasons 1 and 2 / early in season 2 – Mary's mother)
- Who: Jane Carr, Mary's hard, ruthless mother; an older Forty Elephants veteran who has always understood the criminal world more deeply than her daughter. She is one of Mary's main antagonists and also her most defining influence.
- When: By the time season 2 gets properly underway, Jane is dead. The second season is set roughly a year after the end of season 1, and during that interval – or very early in the new run – Jane dies.
- How: Her death happens off‑screen/around the time jump rather than in a single, spotlighted on‑screen killing. There is no elaborate murder sequence; instead, her absence and the fact of her death are treated as a fait accompli that reshapes Mary's world.
- Why (story reason): Jane's death is less a plot twist than a structural shift: it removes Mary's primary source of judgment and restraint, and with that, the woman whose approval Mary has been chasing all her life. Narratively, it clears space for Mary to finally be, in name, exactly what she said she wanted to be: the uncontested leader – the "Queen" – of the Forty Elephants.
- Emotional/narrative impact:
- For Mary: The show makes it clear that, psychologically, Jane's death is a much heavier blow than Mary expected. She has wanted her mother's throne for years, has fought, schemed, and bled for it. But once Jane is gone and the title is hers, the victory feels empty. With Jane no longer there to fight against or impress, Mary is forced to confront what leadership actually is – and to reckon with whether she has become simply a colder, lonelier echo of her mother. Jane's death pushes Mary toward a reckoning with the idea that getting what she wants may never fill the void she carries.
- For the world of the show: Jane had been a stabilizing, if cruel, node in the criminal landscape. Her death destabilizes power structures, contributing to the more chaotic, fluid underworld we see in season 2, and making Mary's position simultaneously higher and more precarious.

Characters gravely injured but not confirmed dead
- Treacle Goodson (Sugar's brother): Sugar, drunk and provoked by Treacle's barbed comments about his obsession with Mary and his wasted potential, viciously beats Treacle in episode 5 of season 1. The attack is so savage that Treacle ends up hospitalized, and for a time everyone believes he may die. However, by the end of season 1 it is clear that he survives. His survival, and Sugar's guilt, are a big part of Sugar's broken state at the start of season 2.
- Various unnamed fighters and gang members: Across both seasons the show depicts bare‑knuckle bouts, street ambushes, and gang reprisals. Several nameless or barely named men die in the background – in alleyway stabbings, beatings, or off‑screen reprisals – but the narrative does not linger on them the way it does on Alec, the Chinese representative, the boxer Hezekiah kills, and Jane.

So, in terms of clearly established, plot‑relevant deaths by character name or close identity:

• The Chinese embassy representative – killed by Lao during Mary's ambitious heist, turning a theft into a politically explosive murder.
• Alec Munroe – stabbed by a masked Elephant Boys enforcer who mistakes him for Hezekiah, on Indigo Jeremy's orders, as punishment aimed at Mary.
• The fellow boxer killed by Hezekiah – dies of injuries from their brutal bout, marking Hezekiah as a killer and deepening his internal conflict.
• Jane Carr – dies between seasons/early in season 2, off‑screen, leaving Mary with the crown she thought she wanted and a hollowness she didn't anticipate.