Taboo never left our heads — eight years later, Tom Hardy is finally catching up

It’s not every day a show disappears for eight years and still feels like it ended yesterday. Taboo didn’t fade. It stayed with you.

Not in a prestige-TV way, with neatly filed fan theories and episode rankings—but like fog that never really lifted. An atmosphere more than a plot, a whisper more than a cliffhanger.

Now, Tom Hardy says Season 2 is officially underway. Not “maybe,” not “one day.”

His exact words: “We’re writing that at the moment.” It was an offhand confirmation during an interview about his MobLand series, but for fans of Taboo, it was seismic. The kind of line you replay just to be sure he really said it.

Tom Hardy stirs the waters with this cryptic Instagram post, shared on 20 February

It’s fitting that the announcement didn’t arrive through a polished campaign, but through cryptic Instagram posts—stormy seas, shadows, the soundtrack from Season 1.

The vibe was less ‘promo’ and more ‘omen.’ That’s Taboo in a nutshell: oblique, ominous, never direct. It was never trying to sell you a story. It wanted to drag you into one.

James Delaney Wasn’t a Character. He Was a Haunting.

Tom Hardy in Taboo © Copyright 2017, FX Networks.

Rewatching Season 1 now feels like flipping through a fever dream you’re not entirely sure you survived.

Hardy’s portrayal of James Delaney was at times unsettling and intimidating. He barely spoke, but when he did, his words hung like a threat you couldn’t quite interpret.

His silence was never empty; it was loaded. The pauses told you more than the plot did.

You don’t “follow” a character like Delaney. You circle him, try to map his edges, knowing full well they’re going to shift.

That’s what made Hardy’s performance feel elemental rather than dramatic. You couldn’t separate the man from the mud, the ink, the ghosts.

A Show That Never Gave You What You Wanted — On Purpose

Taboo wasn’t built for quick consumption. It was resistant to clarity, allergic to catharsis. That’s exactly why it lasted.

It invited you into a world you couldn’t easily categorise: part colonial critique, part gothic noir, part psychodrama.

One minute you’re watching a power struggle with the East India Company. The next, you’re in a séance.

The plot was a slow crawl through trauma, legacy, and moral rot. But the genius of it was in what it refused to explain.

The “gift” Delaney carries, the whispers about Africa, the recurring visions—none of it is neatly tied up. Because in Taboo, knowledge is power, and power is always hoarded.

Which is why the wait for Season 2 wasn’t just about getting answers. It became part of the myth.

Hardy’s Delays Weren’t a Flaw — They Were the Show Continuing

In the years since Season 1 ended, the internet turned Hardy’s absence into a subplot.

Reddit threads dissected deleted Instagram posts. Fans documented the shifting emojis, the music clips, the fleeting captions.

When Hardy shared an image of a ship set to Max Richter’s The Inexorable Advance of Mr. Delaney, comment sections turned into live séances.

And yet, the ambiguity fit. As Hardy’s producing partner Dean Baker put it, they’re working on it—but Hardy’s been busy.

That’s always been the tension with Taboo: the actor’s devotion to the project is real, but so is his restlessness.

Hardy doesn’t seem interested in rushing anything just because the industry says the moment is right. Which, ironically, is exactly the energy Delaney would approve of.

So Where Are We Headed Now?

Hardy has floated everything from jumping the timeline to the 1960s to re-anchoring the story in America, fresh off the ship we last saw Delaney board.

A Vietnam-era reinterpretation of colonial violence, he mused once, could be the next iteration of Taboo. The Delaney lineage, transplanted into the CIA and Saigon. “History and corruption repeating itself,” as he put it.

But co-creator Steven Knight has hinted at something more immediate. In his words, “we know what the story is.” Which suggests less of a leap, more of a continuation.

Knight once described the show as a “triptych,” with Season 3 being the endpoint. That middle chapter is now in motion.

And in that continuation, at least one name from Season 1 seems poised to return.

Jessie Buckley in Taboo © Copyright 2017, FX Networks.

When Hardy discussed the direction of the new season, he referenced Jessie Buckley’s Lorna Bow by name—placing her character on the ship with Delaney en route to America.

That’s more than just a throwaway. It suggests Buckley, whose performance cut through the shadows with sharpness and resolve, may once again anchor the emotional undercurrent of Delaney’s saga.

No full cast list has been announced. But even the idea of Buckley’s return does something subtle: it promises the show won’t just resume, it’ll remember.

This Time, The Audience Is Already Inside

When Season 1 aired, many didn’t know what to make of it. Too slow, too murky, too unwilling to explain itself.

But six years later, TV has caught up. Audiences have changed. We’ve sat through non-linear timelines, historical psychedelia, meditations on empire and trauma. We’re ready now. So is Tom Hardy. Finally.

And if Delaney’s return feels less like a sequel and more like a reckoning, that’s because it is.

Taboo isn’t picking up where it left off. It’s emerging from beneath the surface, still wet, still snarling. Because some stories don’t want to end. They want to haunt.