Disney+ and Hulu have released the first full trailer for season 2 of A Thousand Blows and confirmed a 9 January 2026 launch for the Victorian boxing drama, with all new episodes dropping that day on both platforms. The series, created by Peaky Blinders writer Steven Knight, brings back Malachi Kirby, Erin Doherty and Stephen Graham in lead roles.
Set one year after the events of season 1, the new run finds Jamaican fighter Hezekiah Moscow a shadow of his former self, while bare-knuckle champion Sugar Goodson has drifted away from his family and sunk into drink. In the East End district of Wapping, power has shifted and the streets feel spent, until Mary Carr storms back into town with her lieutenant Alice Diamond.
The trailer leans into that reset. Mary moves through alleys, pubs and boxing yards, recruiting allies and restarting the Forty Elephants, the all-female crime syndicate at the centre of the series. Voiceover teases “the dawn of a new era” as Hezekiah hunts revenge, Sugar hauls himself toward sobriety and Indigo Jeremy tightens his grip on the gang’s rackets.
Season 2 keeps its focus on class, race and survival in 1880s London, drawing again on the real Forty Elephants shoplifting ring and the illegal boxing scene that surrounds it. Knight returns as creator and executive producer alongside Graham and Hannah Walters for Matriarch Productions, with The Story Collective and Water & Power Productions also on board.
Disney notes that much of the principal cast from season 1 will reprise their roles, including James Nelson-Joyce, Darci Shaw, Hannah Walters, Nadia Albina, Morgan Hilaire, Jemma Carlton, Caoilfhionn Dunne, Jason Tobin, Susan Lynch, Daniel Mays, Gary Lewis, Aliyah Odoffin and Robert Glenister, while Ned Dennehy and Catherine McCormack join the ensemble. With seasons 1 and 2 shot back-to-back, the show returns less than a year after its February 2025 premiere, which drew strong notices for its period world-building and performances.
Ahead of the trailer drop, Disney hosted a world premiere of season 2 in London, with Knight, Kirby, Doherty and Graham on hand, underlining the streamer’s push for high-profile British originals that can play both domestically and on Hulu in the United States. For viewers, the new footage signals a heavier role for Doherty’s Mary Carr and a three-way power struggle that now runs the show.
