Thomas Shelby (Cillian Murphy) has been teetering between the collective reality shared between he, his family and friends and the inner reality lived solely by his own occupancy ever since returning from WWI. In season 6, episode 2, it is clear Thomas has none but his shadow left in that collective reality. Is this choice by his own design? No, I do not believe so. While he could have made more conscious choices along the way that brought him closer to the collective reality with his loved ones (as he eventually did with Grace (Annabelle Wallis), only to lose her in the end, which undoubtedly pushed him further towards his own private reality) I believe his fate was sealed beyond his choosing the day he went to war. It was war that altered and redirected his destiny, as we see in the show that no man truly returned home. For Thomas the initial and ongoing example of this is his flashbacks to the war, a common symptom of PTSD. But he refused to share this with anyone, instead choosing to keep it to himself, to keep it bottled up. So he pushed on, he kept busy. He became busy because peace made him restless. Silence held the realities he couldn’t face, and so he muffled the silence by keeping his thoughts so busy that he forgot about the past. But the past never works that way, it has a way of seeping up through the mud no matter how deep you think you can bury it. In season 6 episode 2 he is markedly detached from collective reality. He has shut everyone out, unable to love or truly connect with anyone out of his own fear and pain. In this sense, Thomas is a victim. He has lost control and yet somehow still presents the facade of personalities people expect of him, this is most obvious in his appearance at the Labor Party rally for volunteers. He has enough awareness to know he is broken, but something keeps him from letting anyone in to help him.
This show is not to see Thomas healed and living peacefully at the end, though my own desires wish it would. The complexity of Thomas’ mental state is rich, it is a stunning example for examining human consciousness in relation to traumatic events. What is it with certain individual’s consciousness that gives them the endurance to keep going while fellow survivors fall victim to the same psychological repercussions? Thomas of course has been slowly breaking down over the course of the show, but his ability to refuse and delay the ensuing psychological darkness that has been lying in wait at the edges of his mind for so long is extraordinary. He is equaled in mental strength to none, it was only Polly (Helen McCrory, RIP :() and Grace who could see him clearly and shake him out of himself at certain moments. But without them, he is left in a world of his own, despite the efforts of his wife Lizzie (Natasha O'Keeffe) and his sister Ada (Sophie Rundle) to reach him, two characters who are both acutely aware that Thomas is not okay in the least. Only an equal to his own experiences could save him from insanity now, someone who has lost their mind from the result of trauma and carved out for themselves a way to live in peace with their life and in the knowing that it is unlikely to ever be understood by another living soul. This of course, is my own wish for how such a story would end.