03-05-2025
'MobLand' Star Annie Cooper Unpacks Her Character's Shocking Fate
The stakes of MobLand are now officially explosive. In the fifth episode of the twisty Paramount+ crime drama, the very end revealed an event that will almost certainly redefine the entire trajectory of the series. But how did we get here? And does the shocking ending of Episode 5 really mean the end for one specific character? Actress Annie Cooper, who plays Vron — the matriarch of the Stevenson family — tells Men's Journal that because she's such a fan of Guy Ritchie, that even if this is the end, "Doing this show was a dream." Spoilers ahead.
At the end of "Funeral for a Friend," despite Richie Stevenson's (Geoff Bell) stern warning to Conrad (Pierce Brosnan) and the Harrigans, it seems that some semblance of peace between the two crime families has been achieved. Harry (Tom Hardy) and Kevin (Paddy Considine) didn't need to start shooting, and nobody pulled the pin of a grenade. And yet, in the final moments, when Vron (Cooper) gets into her car, it explodes. It seems Maeve (Helen Mirren) has exacted her revenge on the Stevensons, almost right after the delicate truce was struck.
"She was playing with fire, right?" Cooper tells Men's Journal. "But yeah, an explosive ending for Vron to say the least. But she did give Maeve a piece of her mind before the end."
Cooper also reveals that it wasn't always clear to her at what point in the story her character would walk into an exploding car, and she's loath to confirm if her character is indeed and in fact dead. "I mean, did she survive? I don't know."At this point in the series, it's easy to see the Stevensons as the victims of the cruelty of the Harrigans, even if the Harrigans are, in theory, the family we're supposed to be rooting for. "I love Vron, she's the matriarch of the Stevenson family, and she is tough," Cooper says. "She is assertive and she's unfazed by violence. But, it doesn't get worse than her situation at this point. She's just lost her only son, and it's also having one of the Harrigans having something to do with it; it's bad blood."
Cooper also points out that just because it seems that her character has just been blown up in a car bomb, there are a million ways she could still appear, even if Vron has been deceased. TV shows tend to have flashbacks, meaning there could be plenty more that we might see of Vron before the end.
And with five more episodes left in MobLand, there are still quite a few twists left in the series, and Cooper hints it only gets more intese from this point out.
"I mean, it would be nice to have seen a bit more of her in action, right?" Cooper says. "So let's see what happens."
