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A Thousand Blows steps out of the bareknuckle boxing rings of Victorian London to focus on bleaker themes in the second season of Steven Knight’s historical drama. While there are still plenty of wince-inducing brawls, A Thousand Blows season 2 is less about gritty fight sequences and more about the fight for survival in an unforgiving Victorian London.
Like the first season, Knight has once again mixed fact with fiction, using real historical events to inspire the narratives throughout the series, which he describes as “stepping stones” for creating a foundation to the overall storyline. “Usually, you’ve got a date, maybe a fight that happened, a boxing bout that happened or a robbery that happened for real,” he explained. “You know these things happened, and then it’s up to you to find out why they would have gone from that to that.”
Knight confirmed that the second season is roughly 35% based on real-life. That formula adds a layer of authenticity to the show that it balances throughout with emotional story arcs to thread the varying narratives together, from Hezekiah Moscow’s (Malachi Kirby) journey from lion tamer to heavyweight champion to Mary Carr’s (Erin Doherty) daring department store robberies as the leader of the notorious all-female crime gang the Forty Elephants.
In season 2, Hezekiah is seen dusting himself off from the aftermath of the fatal boxing bout at the end of the first season. Still reeling from the loss of his brother Alec (Francis Lovehall), he feels more far from home than ever before.
These emotions weigh him down, but they’re also the spur for a new redemption arc that ties into Knight’s belief about the timelessness of basic human motivations. “It doesn’t matter how far back in time you’re going,” he says. “People were the same. The same motivations, the same emotions, jealousy and passions.”
Partly due to Knight’s focus on these themes, season 2 has a lot less boxing than the first chapter. That gives it a more relatable feel for those with less interest in pugilism, with the series referencing real historical events like the Matchgirls’ Strike of 1888 at the Bryant & May factory. “They used white phosphorus, which was poisonous and caused horrible diseases for the workers,” Kirby noted. There are also echoes of Jack the Ripper that further ground the show in a layer of authenticity of the time.
Doherty summed up the atmosphere of the period: “Life was fragile then, it was easily lost… When you understand how many people would just die on the streets, the stakes are incredibly high.” Adding: “When you’re trying to find the human in it all, it’s not too hard because it was so terrifying and bleak.”
For Darci Shaw, who plays supporting character Alice, it was digging into that bleak history that helped her to fully understand what was at stake. “I read quite a bit about the period and the state of women in homelessness at the time, and I think that just helps to understand the stakes and why these women [the Forty Elephants] are so confident and will do whatever it takes because they don’t have a choice,” she said.
Other supporting characters like Edward ‘Treacle’ Goodson are also given more depth. James Nelson-Joyce, who plays Goodson, credits Knight’s scripts for the character’s complexity in season 2. “Steven’s writing is unbelievable,” he said. “You’re never playing one thing. There’s always layers, always something underneath what’s being said.”
Despite one extremely heartbreaking storyline, Treacle and his brother Sugar Goodson (Stephen Graham) don’t play as big of a role in the second season, leaving space for Hezekiah’s and Mary’s comeback act to take centre stage.
The stakes are no less serious, though. While there’s less boxing than in the first season of A Thousand Blows, the brawls remain brutal, but it’s the characters’ battles outside the ring that give the second season its dramatic force.
All six episodes of A Thousand Blows season 2 premiered on January 9, 2026, on Disney+ (internationally) and Hulu (US).
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amelia.schwanke@futurenet.com (Amelia Schwanke)
