Tom Hardy Was Reportedly Getting Fired From MobLand. Paramount+ Just Renewed It for Season 3 With Him Still the Lead

Normally, a streamer waits to see how a season performs before it commits to another one. Paramount+ didn't bother waiting this time. On September 3, with MobLand Season 2 still two full weeks from its premiere, the streamer announced a third season was already happening — and, more importantly, that Tom Hardy would be in it. Given everything that had leaked out of that production over the previous four months, that second part was very much not a given.

A renewal that answers a question nobody was sure about

Paramount+'s own announcement didn't bury the lede: "The Harrigans aren't going anywhere," it read, naming Hardy specifically as part of that promise. Hardy returns as Harry Da Souza, the Harrigan crime family's endlessly resourceful fixer, while Brosnan and Mirren come back as Conrad and Maeve Harrigan, the husband-and-wife team running the empire Harry keeps patching together. No premiere date or episode count has been set for Season 3 yet, and production isn't expected to start until the fall — which makes the timing of this announcement the real story. Streamers almost never renew a show two weeks ahead of a season premiere; they wait for ratings, for reviews, for some read on how an audience actually responds. Paramount+ skipped that step entirely, which tells you the decision was made for reasons that had nothing to do with Season 2's eventual numbers.

Those reasons trace back to a show that was already a hit well before any of this drama started. MobLand's first season debuted in March 2025 to roughly 2.2 million global viewers on premiere day, Paramount+'s second-biggest series launch behind Landman, and viewership climbed another 298% over its first week as word spread. By the time Season 1 wrapped, it had settled in as the streamer's second-most-watched original series overall, trailing only 1923, with critics landing it at a solid 77% on Rotten Tomatoes. A writers' room for a potential Season 3 was already up and running by May. On the numbers alone, renewing this show was never really in doubt. Whether Tom Hardy would still be attached to it, on the other hand, very much was.

What actually happened on that set

Season 1 was run by creator Ronan Bennett, and by every account production went smoothly. Season 2 brought in Jez Butterworth, the Edge of Tomorrow and Ford v Ferrari writer, as showrunner — and reports that surfaced in May described a set that had gone sideways fast. Multiple outlets, citing unnamed sources, said Hardy had stayed in his trailer for hours at a stretch while Brosnan, Mirren and the rest of the cast waited on him, that he'd pushed to rewrite dialogue on the day of shooting, and that he'd grown frustrated watching a show built around his character evolve into more of an ensemble piece for Brosnan and Mirren. One report, attributed to Puck's Matt Belloni, went as far as saying Hardy had already been fired and that Paramount was quietly floating Colin Farrell and Idris Elba as replacements. Butterworth, according to those same reports, was stretched thin across other projects — including Sam Mendes' upcoming Beatles biopics — and reportedly threatened to walk off MobLand entirely rather than keep working under those conditions.

None of that fully checked out in the end, but it wasn't invented from nothing, either. By late June, Hardy, Butterworth and executive producer David C. Glasser sat down together in London to hash things out, with Guy Ritchie — an executive producer and director on the series — helping broker the peace. Whatever was said in that room, it worked: Season 2 wrapped its remaining reshoots, and by September the same three men who'd reportedly been on the verge of splitting were photographed together at the show's London premiere. Hardy hugged Mirren on the carpet, called the whole saga "a storm in a teacup," and told reporters it was "a privilege" working alongside actors he described as having come before him in the business. Mirren, for her part, had already offered the more measured read weeks earlier, chalking the friction up to "a clash of styles" between actors who simply work differently — not exactly a denial, but not a feud either.

Why Paramount didn't flinch

Brosnan put it best at that same premiere, telling reporters the cast is "rock solid as a company, as a family," and that everyone shows up and does the work even if they're not exactly grabbing pints together after. That's a fairly ordinary description of how a lot of working actors get through a demanding shoot, and it's a useful reminder that "creative differences" and "on-set friction" cover an enormous range of behavior — from genuinely toxic sets to two professionals with incompatible prep styles who eventually figure out how to coexist. Season 2, when it lands September 18, follows the Harrigans trying to hold a united front while new rivals close in on their fractured empire, with Harry once again stuck in the middle of it all — a plot that, fittingly, isn't so different from the position the show's producers found themselves in over the summer. Ten episodes will roll out weekly through a November 20 finale, with Paddy Considine, Joanne Froggatt, Lara Pulver, Anson Boon, Jasmine Jobson, Mandeep Dhillon, Janet McTeer and Toby Jones rounding out a returning supporting cast that never seems to shrink.