Peaky Blinders is, on the surface, a show that’s heavily targeted at men. A gritty historical drama about a family of gangsters and petty thieves, the series turned Cillian Murphy’s violent, chainsmoking, flat cap-wearing Tommy Shelby into a cultural icon.

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But in much the same way that Tommy himself – psychologically traumatised, haunted by ghosts and regret – contains hidden multitudes, so does the show in which he stars. Because Peaky Blinders, unlike so many of its television brethren, also features a cast full of complicated, fully realised women right alongside its laddish anti-heroes.

From undercover agent turned love interest Grace Burgess to indomitable matriarch Polly Gray, the women of this series all have their own agendas, histories and motivations. (And they are all more than capable of going toe to toe with any of the Shelby men.)

The women of Peaky Blinders are essential to the show’s existence in every way that matters, which is why it’s so unfortunate that the franchise’s movie continuation chooses to abandon them so thoroughly. Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man barely includes any of the kinds of female characters that helped make the series so strong, and the ones who do appear exist almost as an afterthought in the larger world of its story.

Where the series featured nearly a dozen major female characters throughout its run — all of whom significantly impacted its story — there are only two women of note in the entirety of The Immortal Man.

One of them, the mysterious Kaulo, is a Romani fortune teller whose motivations are murky and whose identity is almost completely subsumed by the ghost of her dead sister. The role is not just underwritten, but also largely pointless.

It’s clear she’s meant to add the same flavour of gypsy mysticism that Polly once did to the movie’s canvas, but she gets little to do beyond providing various forms of motivation for the men in her orbit. (No one should be surprised that she also gets to sleep with Tommy, though it’s hard to imagine a less sexy love scene.)

But it is Ada Shelby who is treated most abominably.

The only female Shelby sibling, Ada has always had a complicated relationship with her family and its legacy, often openly disapproving of its business and methods. But she has also always been a quiet source of its power, though the ways in which she wields it – influence, information, emotional intelligence – look very different than any of her brothers.

As the series progressed, Ada often served as a bridge between the more violent street-level world of the Peaky gang and the political circles Tommy moved in as his influence expanded. It also didn’t hurt that she was one of the few characters (outside of Polly) who was unafraid to speak her mind to her brothers, and she often served as a moral counterbalance to some of Tommy’s more unhinged decisions.

In Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man, we learn that it is Ada who has stepped into the vacuum of her brother’s absence, winning election to Parliament in the seat Tommy once held. She is the first to speak out against the way her nephew Duke is using the Peaky Blinders for his own benefit. She is also the only person willing to attempt to bring him to justice for stealing weapons intended for the front lines and physically harming some of her constituents in the process.

This brewing intra-family conflict is initially fascinating, but ultimately fruitless, as Ada is brutally murdered at the movie’s halfway point by British fascist collaborator John Beckett. What’s worse, however, is that her abrupt assassination is ultimately much more about Tommy than it is about Ada herself.

One of the Shelby family’s most intriguing figures becomes little more than a plot device, her death a devastating twist meant to motivate her brother to fully commit himself to the fray once more. (This honestly doesn’t make a ton of narrative sense, given that Tommy already had plenty of reasons to want to take down Beckett, a literal Nazi who is plotting to use his son to help bring about the downfall of his country.)

To his credit, Cillian Murphy sells the hell out of Tommy’s reaction to Ada’s loss, both during a scene in which he seems to see a premonition of her death and one in which he visits her dead body to confess his worst crimes against their family. His grief over her death is palpable, and it’s evident that he, at least to some degree, holds himself responsible for it. Had he come back to Birmingham when Ada originally asked him to, after all, this probably wouldn’t have happened.

But her death doesn’t really register on the movie’s larger canvas, at least not beyond how it immediately impacts Tommy. Duke, who is ostensibly a major reason that his aunt is dead, is whiny and petulant when confronted by his father about her murder, and doesn’t bother to show up to her funeral.

In fact, Ada Shelby’s pyre burns with just a half dozen mourners in attendance, all of whom are either direct relations (Tommy, her two kids) or gang-affiliated old-timers (Charlie, Curly, Johnny Dogs). Did the rest of Birmingham – let alone the younger generation of Shelbys this franchise is clearly hoping to build a sequel on – just forget about Ada, too? Wouldn’t someone have noticed a member of Parliament getting gunned down in the street? How in the world did it come to this?

There are obviously many reasons – narrative space, runtime, actor availability perhaps – that surely dictated how large a role Ada could play in Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man. But no matter those constraints, her character, who has played such a key role throughout Peaky Blinders‘ run, deserved better than to end her life as a post-script in her brother’s story.

Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man is available to watch now on Netflix.