Taboo Season 2: Everything We Know

In 2017, Tom Hardy's brutal period drama hit the BBC running. Taking the unusual Saturday night time slot usually reserved for more 'wholesome' entertainment, Taboo would prove to be a massive hit with global audiences.

Tonally uncompromising, unusually graphic and set against one of the most fascinating periods in British history, Taboo has garnered international acclaim, leaving fans wondering when season two will arrive.

James Delaney, recently returned from Africa, beset by his dark past and rumoured associations with black magic, is in possession of something more valuable to the Crown and the East India Company than a handful of diamonds - land. Delaney sets out on a dangerous path as he positions himself at the centre of a battle for trading rights in the Americas, leading to murder, betrayal and the promise of adventure.

With rumours surrounding the second season circulating, we take a detailed look at where Delaney and his rogue agents are heading. The second season holds the promise of answers to his nefarious past, and a descent into the diabolical world of slavery, international espionage, and the war between Britain and America over Nootka Sound, the most valuable asset on both sides of the Atlantic...

“Taboo heads west and becomes a little bit more narcotic, more opium-affected..." said co-creator and writer Stephen Knight in 2019, speaking with the Radio Times.

The final episode of Taboo's eighth episode run ends with a seemingly victorious Delaney aboard a sloop, The Good Hope - bound not for the Americas like both the audience and Atticus suspect, but instead for Ponta Delgado in the Azores.

Having successfully evaded capture from both the Crown and The East India Trading Company with a shipload of gun powder, Delaney's intentions remain something of a mystery.

The Azores are an autonomous region of Portugal, and an archipelago in the mid-Atlantic, hundreds of miles to the west of Portugal and even further from the States, so what business does Delaney have there? Knight's comment regarding narcotics and opium suggest either a money making scheme or prior knowledge of a drug trade that Delaney plans to manipulate.

The Azores were a key trading post and The Good Hope is laden with gunpowder - munitions that could be used to disrupt the blockade of British ships discussed in the first episode of season one. Whatever Delaney is up to, rest assured there will be conflict on the high seas as he is now the target of some very powerful men with a great deal of money at stake, in fact, all the tea in China, according to Sir Stuart Strange...