Episode 7

Two men are shot dead at a convenience store by a masked gunman, and the gunman is later revealed to be Anthony Kinsella, Amanda and Jimmy's teenage son. It is the season's most consequential killing, it belongs to a boy, and it is followed by the ordinary image of a child being sent to his room. The ambulance the audience expects never comes: the getaway driver, checking whether they are being followed, hits and kills a pedestrian on the way out. The episode clears the board before the finale, and almost everything in it is decided in conversation rather than shown.

The hour opens on a death. Nuray Batuk's father is found dead by Hamza, who chooses not to tell Nuray; she arrives minutes later and is distraught, and later, from his balcony, watches Hamza and his associates and hears him admit the family fears looking weak because of how she has handled the Kinsellas. She tells him she will show her ruthless side to anyone who crosses her. It is the last configuration the Batuk strand needs: Nuray begins to suspect Hamza, and that is what Amanda will trade on in the finale.

Frank (Aidan Gillen) reaches bottom. He is drunk in a pub, collected by his driver Dan, promises to take care of him without saying how, and then abuses the priest who tells him he will never be happy with the life he is living. Bren confirms a job with a man named Derek Ward and offers Lee Reid money for it, then asks Ward for a dress he wants for his granddaughter, whatever it costs. Michael (Charlie Cox) goes to the pharmacy to find Molly and is told she is off until after the holidays and will be returning as a married woman, which ends the season's one tender thread in a single line at a counter.

Birdy turns up at Frank's door and tells him she has a plan to get them free of Bren, though the episode does not say what it is. Amanda (Clare Dunne) takes an alarmed call from Rory Hayes warning that Bren is recruiting men, and goes to Michael with the news that Nuray's father, Rafit Batuk, has died; the evening becomes intimate. Anthony watches a viral threat video directed at Viking, shows it privately to Bren, and is told Bren will handle it. Jimmy later shows the same video to Bren and reveals that Glen Wright was the man who killed Jamie, and asks to do the payback himself.

The shooting of Glen and Finn is the episode's strongest passage, and its power lies in who holds the gun: a fifteen-year-old who has been passed between three adults and does not need to announce what he has become. The weakness is that the hour is over-full, with Molly's marriage, Nikki's release, the concealed death of the father, the fenethylline schedule and the Derek Ward sequence all competing, so that it reads as a summary rather than an arrangement. Its significance is that it produces the two facts the finale turns on, that Anthony has killed and that Frank has decided to leave.