Diksha Sundriyal
Netflix’s crime drama, ‘Top Boy,’ comes to an end with an explosive conclusion for Dushane, Sully, and the residents of Summerhouse. It all started with Dushane and Sully wanting to become the top boy, to be in control of the drug business in east London. They start out as one unit, but soon, differences plague them, and the rift between them becomes their undoing. The final season begins with Sully taking over from Dushane in a coup that costs Dushane his retirement plans. Eventually, however, they discover that they are stronger together, but it’s too late by then. SPOILERS AHEAD
Top Boy Season 3 Recap
Following Jamie’s death, Sully corners Dushane and tells him to back down while settling for a cut Sully would give him. Dushane knows there is no point in fighting anymore, so he decides to retire to a quiet life with Shelley. She reveals her plans to buy a chain of nail salons, for which she needs a lot of money. Dushane decides to tap into the money he’d invested in the Summerhouse, but then it turns out that Lithe and Lizzie have run away with the money.
As Sully takes over the command, he comes face to face with other gangs. Their Moroccan links are severed by an Irish gang. The leader of the gang, Tagdh McGee, sets up a meeting between Sully and his nephew, Jonny. Sully is warned that the McGees are a dangerous bunch. When his family is threatened, Sully decides to play along with their game and agrees to collaborate with them. However, after finally becoming the leader of his gang, he doesn’t want to start working for someone else. So, he comes up with a plan to kill Tagdh and Jonny, and Dushane helps him because securing the gang’s future means securing his own.
Meanwhile, Jaq tries to help her sister Lauryn, who has fallen into depression since the birth of her son. When Jaq discovers that Lauryn is using drugs, she tries to get her sister off it. Things seem to get better for a while as Lauryn lands a job with Shelley at her nail salon. But then, Lauryn dies by suicide, leaving Jaq to reconsider everything she’d been doing until now.
Top Boy Season 3 Ending: Is Dushane Dead?
Leaving the gang was a great opportunity for Dushane to cut himself off from the life of crime and settle into the kind of life he’d envisioned with Shelley. He would get his cut from Sully without ever getting to dirty his hands again. But then, he loses all the money he’d hoped to invest in Shelley’s business. This flips him, and he finds himself back on the road of blood and mayhem.
Dushane asks Jeffery to find out where Lizzie ran off, but when the man fails, Dushane gets angry and kills him. He gets his lawyer to put someone on the task of finding Lizzie, and it turns out she has run away to Ireland. It’ll take more time and money, both of which Dushane doesn’t have, to catch her and get the money back if any of it is left. The detective sets out to find Lizzie but discovers that Dushane’s prints are all over Jeffery’s house and his dead body.
Dushane’s lawyer advises him to leave the country if he doesn’t want to go to prison, but getting out of the country without getting caught would need more money. The lawyer finds a man who can help Dushane, who hides in his mother’s house. The man makes it clear that he needs money upfront. Without it, he will leave Dushane to his fate. With no other option in sight, Dushane seizes his one chance.
Previously, Jaq stole the drugs from Sully’s safe house. After realizing that making an enemy out of Sully is not smart, she decides to return the drugs. She asks to meet him at the community center in Summerhouse, but before she can reach Sully, Dushane finds her. He steals the drugs from her and runs away. He hopes to use the drugs worth millions of dollars to pay his way out of the country. However, when Sully discovers that Dushane has run away with the drugs, he chases after him.
Eventually, Sully catches up with Dushane. When the latter tries to climb up a gate, he is shot down by Sully, who wonders why Dushane would try to steal the drugs. Dushane reveals that he needed to leave but couldn’t come to Sully about it because things had been so fractured between them that Dushane couldn’t trust him. At this moment, Sully realizes how bad things have gotten between them. He feels terrible, especially when he sees Dushane’s dead body. He takes the drugs and leaves his friend lying dead by the gate.
Who Shot Sully?
With Dushane dead and the drugs back in his possession, Sully decides to go away for a while. He meets his daughter to say goodbye to her. While walking back to his car, he realizes he is being followed. On turning around, he finds Stef pointing a gun at him. Sully is not surprised. Since he killed Jamie, he might have known that one of these brothers would target him for revenge. He asks Stef to do what he must, but the young boy decides not to pull the trigger. He says Sully is not worth it and walks away.
A relieved Sully returns to his car and is ready to drive away when someone walks by and shoots him in the head. Sully dies, but we don’t see the killer’s face. So, who was it? Who killed Sully? Was it Stef? He was the closest to Sully then and might have changed his mind about letting Sully go. It wouldn’t have been hard for him to run back and catch Sully off guard. But he’s not the only one who could have done it.
Over the course of his journey in ‘Top Boy,’ Sully made a lot of enemies. He killed people like Dris and Jamie and showed he didn’t take disloyalty lightly. If people betrayed him, they needed to pay for it. He says the same thing to Jaq, even after she promises to return his drugs. He doesn’t get the time to deal with her because he has to run after Dushane, which allows Jaq to go back home and consider her next steps.
This is also when she discovers that Sully killed Kieron for helping her. She knows that once Sully gets his drugs, he will find Jaq and kill her, too, which is why she might want him dead. Jaq had a lot of friends in the gang, many of whom valued her over Sully and Dushane. She could have called upon any of them to kill Sully and save her. Or she might have pulled the trigger herself. It is never confirmed whether the shooter was a man or a woman.
Apart from his own gang members wanting him dead, Sully was also the target of the Fields gang. When Jaq ran away with the drugs, Kieron pointed the finger towards Si, whom Sully beat up, even though he had done nothing. Si and his gang already hated Sully for what he did to Jamie. When he beat up Si for no reason at all, they might’ve had enough and would have decided to make Sully pay for his actions. Any one of them could have been the shooter.
Another possibility is that the shooter was sent by the McGee gang. Sully killed Tagdh and Jonny, but someone else must have taken over from them. That person would have wanted revenge, especially to consolidate their position as a ruthless leader who doesn’t let people get away with killing a McGee. This new leader could have sent a hitman to kill Sully, who shot Jonny in front of a crowd. Or, perhaps, it was some new gang wanting to establish a foothold in the region by wiping out the competition.
The unidentified shooter opens a lot of room for speculation, making the audience wonder who might have done it. But the point of the scene is to show that Sully would never have received a happy ending. There would’ve always been someone like Jamie, wanting to run their own gang, wanting to own the streets. There would always be someone like the McGees, some gang wanting to show Sully they were more powerful than him.
Sully told Dushane that they couldn’t run this business without the bodies. There would always be bloodshed, and they had to be ready for it. This is why Sully never shied away from killing anyone who posed a threat or had betrayed them. Ultimately, he becomes one of those bodies, someone to be disposed of because someone else wanted to get the power and money he had, because someone else wanted to be on top. For that, Sully had to die.
What Happens to Jaq?
Whether Sully was the leader or Dushane, the one person who remained a consistent presence in the gang was Jaq. She was loved and respected by everyone and, above all, trusted. Jaq always tries to do right by her family and friends, which is why she is heartbroken when her sister dies. Jaq discovers that Lauryn had been on drugs, the same that Jaq’s gang was pouring out on the streets. Realizing that she played a part in her sister’s death, Jaq decides to do what she thinks is right. She steals the drugs from Sully without thinking about what to do with it.
Later, when Jaq realizes how stupid she had been to think she could steal from Sully and get away with it, she decides to give the drugs back. The only thing on her mind now is the safety of her family, especially her nephew. It cannot be confirmed whether she got Sully killed to ensure their safety, but one thing is clear. Jaq wouldn’t want to go back into the business again. She saw what the drugs did to her sister and didn’t want her nephew to grow up around the same thing. She doesn’t want him to have the same life she did and then lose him to it. So, no matter that both Sully and Dushane are gone now, we believe Jaq decided to leave this life behind and settle down with Becks in a more peaceful life.
Read More: Is Lauryn Dead? Did Saffron Hocking Leave Top Boy?
