Contains Spoilers to Episode 1 Season 2 of The Gentlemen titled The Road to Kingdom
In the opening episode of The Gentlemen Season 2, Bobby Glass is shown to still hold final say over everything that happens in his weed empire, but he’s also shown to have a rather eccentric decision-making hierarchy that includes consulting a mythical bathhouse spirit before making a call.
The Bannik
You ever heard of the myth of the Bannik?
Yeah. The shapeshifting spirit that supposedly frequented the steam rooms of Northern Europe.
The story goes that your Bannik, well, he’s a… he’s a mischievous kind of spirit.
Sometimes he appears as a naked little man stroking his beard, smoking a pipe. Now, you ask the Bannik a question, any question you want, but the Bannik, he won’t answer you directly, you see.
He can’t talk. He can only touch.
Now, if it’s a good omen, you’ll feel his little hand pat you on the back.
But if it’s a bad one, well, he’ll scratch you with his sharp little claws.
-The Gentlemen Season 2 Episode 1
The series deliberately keeps us guessing as to whether we’re watching an eccentric mobster who’s lost the plot, or genuine magical realism, never quite confirming or denying whether Bobby Glass has, in fact, lost it.
Later in the episode, Bobby asks the Bannik whether Eddie can be trusted, and we see him afterwards with scratch marks on his back, supposedly the Bannik’s warning. And it’s not entirely wrong, Eddie is, at that very point, quietly working against a decision Bobby has already made. Whether that’s prophecy or simply Bobby’s own instincts reading Eddie correctly is a case yet to be made.
The Bannik is a bathhouse (banya) spirit found across Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian folklore, and the show’s depiction is actually fairly faithful in the mythology, the appearance, touch-only communication and the bathhouse setting.
And never mind how Bobby Glass manages to have a sauna and chef-quality meals in prison, running a multi-million-pound criminal enterprise clearly has its moments.
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