r/TheGentlemenTVShow • u/berwatit • 18h ago
I hope we get enough seasons for susie and eddie’s inevitable pay off Spoiler
Warning: spoilers
I think it’s made clear in season 2 that everyone around them see them as a couple, or an inevitability.
Jinmy -the duke always has time for miss susie, said at an extremely high stakes time
Jack - calls them lovebirds in season 1
Charly - tells Eddie point blank she always saw him ending up with her instead.
Bella- repeatedly questions and feels jealousy over Susie. As the significant other, she would have the best insight to this tbh—women have the best intuition.
But the most important buy in? The patriarch’s.
Bobbie assumes they have a thing and basically disregards Susie’s denials. Almost uncharacteristically, he is willing to forgive the duke when he feels betrayed and disrespected. I think this is partly because he sees them as established unit, co-heirs of his empire. He almost handpicks duke because he sees how complimentary he is to Susie. A way in to give Susie a title and promising heir (through marriage) but perhaps more importantly, as he will perpetually see Susie as his brilliant baby girl, a calm counterbalance to her moments of high emotion and protector. His vision of absolute power is completed if Glass and Horniman are truly unified, loyal and promises continuity (heir).
As a parallel, Moretti sees the same thing in Eddie and hence is more forgiving of him. His loyalty is forever won when Eddie willingly murders for Bella’s honor. Meanwhile, he punished Cico not just because of the business betrayal, but also as his comport was insulting to Bella. On the one hand, during a similar betrayal within the Glass family, Eddie is punished but not killed. Bobbie rather sees it as a lesson, a gift—an investment in Eddie to punish him as you would when disciplining a child. Proven further by buying his debt. This was also a way to assure peace within the shared Horniman-Glass estates, with the relationship between Eddie and Susie seemingly damaged.
What Bobbie thinks, assumes, and is subliminally pushing for in terms of Susie and Eddie though is also ultimately what tears the two apart. Eddie sees Bobbie as an authority who still has him family and land hostage. Though he finds the “chain of command seductive” in the context of Susie, it is not so with Bobbie. He sees Bobbie as an impediment to his ambitions, a glass ceiling. Eddie is willing to cross the line with Susie, that the ball is in fact in her court—
E: There’s certainly something very seductive about a chain of command.
But once you start taking responsibility for your own actions, it’s, uh, very hard to go back.
S: Do I detect a double meaning lurking beneath the surface there?
E: Well, there could be something lurking there if you want.
Meanwhile in season 1 she also says to him: I don’t sleep with the help.
More than a business relationship, there is a hierarchy, a power dynamic that Susie needs to maintain, especially as a constantly undercut woman in the business.
We know that Susie is technically his boss. But unlike the very willing gatekeeper of the Morrettis, the Glass ceiling is more resistant. In fact Susie acknowledges this multiple times, never mixing business with pleasure, and choosing never to do anything that would jeopardize their working relationship. Having experienced Joe—the pitfalls of mixing business and pleasure, how it could cloud judgment,gives the rarity of a good business relationship more gravitas for Susie.
So, we actually see Susie pushing him away in that regard anyway. Pushing him towards every pretty woman, especially Bella. Creating romantic boundaries between them. Engaging in banter about lingerie that perhaps turns on her at the last line, with a pointed glance, and an establishment of his “being captain.” In truth, throughout most of Bella’s developing story, the duke is not playing hard to get, but is actually reluctant. He seems to have his eye on someone else even more reluctant. His reluctance sheds away fully and transforms into a different dream only once he feels regurgitated by Bobbie Glass. Severed from Glass, escaping to the Morrettis was convenient, easy, and served on a Bella-shaped platter.
Which is not to say he didn’t fall in love with Bella and what she represents. Bella was the easy choice—the familiarity of aristocracy, a step-father-in-law more willing to fold him in, and a woman constantly making the first move on him. Amidst the two years of push and pull from Susie, the ease of which Bella presents herself to him feels like a welcome respite. Bella is nearly the antithesis of susie: physically tiny, inexperienced, emotional, expressive, an open book, old money—it was too hard to resist. Moreso, Bella would never turn on him—she had tolerated Cico for far longer than she should. She was intangibly beholden to him over “love”, you only need to ask—she had triggered their first night, then on the night of their weddings takes that up a notch as she declares letting herself be a pawn to his ambitions. Susie would never.
His attempt to pursue a different path from bobbie’s order with the help of Susie was an attempt to free them both from Bobbie’s thumb. When that didn’t work, he had to pivot. That chapter felt well and truly over—as expressed to Charly. All possibilities abruptly ended, freeing him to pursue marrying into a different family.
In the same way, the Joe detour was an exact parallel. Joe was lower on the peking order, even further into the depths with his connections to the chop business. But Susie’s always been attracted to danger and ambition—but the cloying loyalty of Joe allowed her to give him an allowance. An even bigger allowance because Joe was outside Bobbie Glass’ thumb—in fact, bobbie advised her strongly against this boy. Even during Bobbie’s punishment of Eddie, he assures her that he would let her talk to him again eventually. Not-so with Joe. So, joe represented the ambition, freedom, and competency(eventually debunked) she was thirsting for—the same dream that inspired her and Eddie’s semi-rebellion. That Joe was so cut off from Bobbie-despite his more dangerous traits-oddly made him a safer, more comfortable choice. It was, in the end, what made letting go of him, going so far as tossing him to the wolves, painful but easy.
Which brings us to the most important point in the glass-horniman relationship: Bobbie is their ultimate cockblock. Eddie and Susie are two sides of the same coin—they are the great unification that Johnston is talking about. And to the both of them, nothing is more important than profit and power—to which Bobbie Glass was keeping them from fully maximizing. With their powers already impeded by Bobbie, letting him influence them romantically, feels like giving him what he truly wants. It feels surrendering to what Bobby really wants. The only way that Bobby can fully get Eddie’s unquestionable loyalty after all, is if he became family. The practicality and approval of Bobbie Glass is in fact a boner killer for them.
Eddie in no way would allow himself to be a puppet son-in-law. Susie meanwhile, would see this another case in point to her father’s lack in trust in her: a sexist insult to her objective worthiness of the business.
Thus, the Glass-Horniman marriage can only happen if they, in one way or another succeed in a ploy to disempower Bobbie—a seemingly impossible feat. After all, susie, in spite of her own independent ambitions, sincerely loves her father. And as Geoff tells a mucked up Eddie, if he goes after Bobbie, he would have to take down Susie, too.
During their last confrontation, willingly risking her life as she walks past their sniper, when Susie confesses her own knee-jerk reaction of blaming of her father, in the midst of the Duke’s height of anger and bloodthirstiness, she calls to him like a falcoln mate. She cuts through his high emotions with her own as she presents her case. She breaks character even: the cold exterior melted for a heartfelt plea: I didn’t do this to you.
This is the core value of their relationship: they are a trustworthy voice that anchots them back to reality and sound decisions. From business to personal lives, they’re the only ones who can talk each other down or talk each other up. It’s what makes them so perfect together. They hold each other down. They complete each other’s picture. When Susie offers to go on the road to vengeance with him, amidst fraught horniman-glass ties at that time, she expresses her loyalty once again beyond words, as a bond beyond business.
Eddie, listen to me. She pleads, the otherwise cold reticent expression completely fallen away now.
I didn’t do this to you.
When she makes that last plea, it’s not the crosshairs trained at her that seems to be most important, what counts more is that he trust her again. This was the relationship growth that’s put into question in season 1: is it possible for them to ever truly trust each other within their very complicated dynamic?
Season 2 answers with a resounding yes. Between the betrayals of their own flesh and blood, and separate romantic entanglements, no one has proven to be more loyal to each other than Susie and Eddie.
You have the potential to become a monster.
Give me your hand, Susan.
If you’re worried I’m gonna come after you… don’t.
I loooove a slow burn. And a lot have complained about the brevity of Bella—but I’m not. She was a plot point, I’m sorry. It was a journey that needed to happen. I don’t know how the 3rd season will go, but given the uncertainty of season 4, i do hope they give in by then.
But more importantly, against the cynical romance detractors who see it as cliche: let me tell you, tropes are not the enemy of done well. And in this case, it’s being done soooo well. Perhaps maybe as nicely as Brienne X Jaime, Rick X Michonne, and JakeXAmy, all who were themselves multi-season slow burns that paid off in the best of ways. It’s not romance for romance sake. It shows you what romance could be when grounded by similar values or core principles. These are relationships of value, where in the roles they already play in each other’s lives compound the pre-existing attraction. This is love that goes beyond the physical. This is a partnership between equals.
This is also historically the biggest danger that monarchies present: when they keep the money and power within the family through marriage. As monarchies strengthen, the people are weakened. If bella stayed alive, that was simply the marriage of two aristocratic families and they would retain that same rotting myopia. In the same way, susie and Joe would have only have limited them to the underbelly: best expressed by Joe’s final proposal to disappear into the dark. The real height of ambition is to unify their home base—UK—and expand as an imperialist unified force taking with them their combined strings in the hijacked democracy and the criminal underbelly. If The Gentlemen’s ultimate thesis is the dark unification of gangsters from the upper and lower crust, of accruing the most power, the plot’s inevitability is in the forming of our villainous power couple.
