The Gentlemen Season 2 Is About to Take Eddie Horniman From Duke to Don

Eddie Horniman has already learned the first rule of being a criminal. Once you have power, there is always someone willing to offer you more. When The Gentlemen returns for its second season, Theo James’ aristocratic antihero, Eddie Halstead aka Horniman, has moved a long way from the reluctant duke who stumbled upon a weed empire operating beneath his family estate.

A year has passed since Eddie joined forces with Susie Glass (Kaya Scodelario) and made his decisive turn towards the family business. Now, the operation is expanding beyond the English countryside and into Italy, and Eddie appears increasingly comfortable with the idea of becoming the man in charge.

Matthew Read, the show’s lead writer and executive producer, has framed the new season of the comedy series around Eddie’s appetite for power. “The risk is, does he want too much? Will he lose his soul in his quest to ascend?” Read told Netflix Tudum.

It is a question with a distinctly Michael Corleone flavour. Like the Godfather heir before him, Eddie began his descent into organised crime with considerably less enthusiasm than the people around him. The difference now is that he has started to enjoy what comes with it. 

The second season picks up one year after Eddie and Susie joined forces to work within Bobby Glass’ criminal empire overseas. Their ambitions have grown considerably since the first season, and the pair are now looking to extend their operation into Italy.

According to Netflix, Eddie and Susie will be heading to the “lakeside villas of Italy” as they attempt to establish a foothold there. Their expansion puts them in the orbit of a new collection of players, while Bobby Glass’ (played by Ray Winstone) increasingly questionable decisions threaten to destabilise the empire they have inherited.

The official synopsis puts as such: “Now Eddie and Susie must decide whether to take action or risk losing it all, but unfettered ambition never ends well.”

For Eddie, there is the complication of how his criminal career has begun to blur with his aristocratic identity. He has the title, the estate and the pedigree, and now he has a criminal organisation to match. James describes the character as someone who has fully embraced the possibilities offered by both sides of his life.

“By Season 2, he is a man very much at the helm of it, and he’s bought into the possibilities of what both worlds can bring him, both as an aristocrat and a criminal,” James told Netflix.

Eddie reaches for greater influence, and he may have started out trying to protect his inheritance. He now seems far more interested in building something of his own.

The first season left the pair in an unusual position. Bobby had engineered events to determine whether his daughter and Eddie could work together, and the experiment succeeded. By the finale, Eddie had crossed a significant moral line by executing a rival, while Susie had found herself with a new partner capable of operating inside the family business.

Their relationship has always carried a certain buzz, though neither has exactly abandoned themselves to it. Eddie’s ambition is moving outward. Susie, meanwhile, has her own stake in the Glass operation and her own complicated relationship with her father. If Bobby’s decisions become as reckless as the synopsis suggests, the two may have to decide whether loyalty to him is worth the cost.

Theo James and Kaya Scodelario return as Eddie and Susie, with much of the first season’s ensemble coming back alongside them. Ray Winstone reprises his role as Bobby Glass, the incarcerated crime boss whose influence continues to loom over the empire. Daniel Ings returns as Eddie’s spectacularly chaotic brother Freddy, while Joely Richardson, Vinnie Jones and Giancarlo Esposito are also back. Esposito returns as Stanley Johnston, the American billionaire whose own dealings with the criminal world left him behind bars at the end of Season 1.

The new season brings a sizeable crop of new faces. Hugh Bonneville joins the cast, alongside Benedetta Porcaroli, Michele Morrone, Sergio Castellitto, Amra Mallassi, Tyler Conti and Benjamin Clementine. There are also a couple of particularly unexpected additions. Professional boxer Chris Eubank Jr. makes his acting debut, while Love Island presenter Maya Jama takes on her first dramatic role, playing a fixer for a Middle Eastern tycoon.

The casting follows a familiar Guy Ritchie instinct for putting recognisable personalities into unfamiliar territory. Vinnie Jones, after all, made his acting debut in Ritchie’s Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Jama now gets her own introduction to the director’s particularly manic corner of the crime genre.

The Gentlemen Season 2 premieres on September 3, 2026. Netflix has yet to indicate that the season will be released in anything other than its standard format, so viewers can expect the new instalment to arrive on the streamer from that date.