A Thousand Blows explodes (literally) in season 2 teaser

The gritty Steven Knight series returns to the ring on January 9.

By Emma Keates | October 29, 2025 | 12:03pm

Photo: Robert Viglasky/Disney+

TV News A Thousand Blows

A Thousand Blows explodes (literally) in season 2 teaser

A Thousand Blows‘ first season dealt pretty much that exact number of hits to its scrappy East End protagonists. The brutal season one cliffhanger left both Hezekiah’s (Malachi Kirby) and Mary’s (Erin Doherty) futures in question, after the former went a little too far in the boxing ring and the latter was left isolated from her lover and closest compatriots. But as in any good Steven Knight show, you can’t keep the gang down for long. “One year later, Hezekiah’s a shadow of the man he once was whilst Sugar Goodson (Stephen Graham) is estranged from his family and drinking himself to death,” Hulu’s season two synopsis reads. “Just as Wapping is about to sigh its last breath, Mary Carr bursts back into town with her loyal second, Alice Diamond (Darci Shaw), to reassemble her gang and reclaim her crown. As always, Mary has a plan; one which will involve all those she holds dearest. And this time it’s riskier than ever.”

While Mary seemed poised to escape London at the end of season one, she’s back in the mix in a new season two teaser. Whether it’s her doing or not, the East End is about to explode—literally. We see multiple fires and big blasts in the clip, including one set by Hezekiah himself. Meanwhile, Sugar is building a team of his own, even though some of them might wish him dead. “We’re in danger,” he says, “and we can’t afford to doubt each other.”

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Disney ordered two seasons of the bare-knuckle boxing show early in the process, so Knight said he thought of its first and second installments as one 12-episode season in an interview with Collider. “In Season two, the stakes are much higher,” he said. “It’s the same characters on a continuation of the journey, but now the journey has so much more jeopardy in it. If anything, the engine of it and the energy of it cranks up quite a lot. I can’t tell you where it goes, but it goes to some great places.” We’ll see exactly what those places are when all six episodes of season two premiere January 9 on Hulu.