After the events of the third season finale for the BBC's "Peaky Blinders" which left Tommy (Cillian Murphy) at odds with his family, it is expected that his cousin Michael (Joe Cole) would pose some serious opposition to his leadership when the show returns.

According to a report by the Daily Telegraph, Michael — who is a former accountant who has become a full-fledged gangster — could prove to be a troublesome adversary to Tommy. However, in order to wrest the family's leadership from Tommy, does this mean that he has to go through extreme measures to eliminate his cousin?

Fans of the show who have noticed the parallels between Peaky Blinders' characters with the Corleones of "The Godfather" franchise theorize that Tommy would need to die before Michael assumes his position as the head of the Shelby family.

Murphy — who plays the character — says that with every season, it grows increasingly difficult to detach himself from the character, which he admitted is very exhausting to portray.

"I leave him behind because I go off and play other characters and it's important that you can shake it off totally. But then I became a producer on this series [season 3], so you're kind of involved in the machinations of it, before the show and during it. It's always there, thinking about it," he said.

For season 4, writer Steven Knight promises that the positive feedback for the third season of the show only served to inspire them to come out with even more compelling storylines for the next two seasons.

"The prospect of writing series four and five is truly exciting. I am genuinely thrilled at the response to the third series of the show," he told the BBC.

If the current pattern for the show's release remains the same, the fourth season of "Peaky Blinders" could be released on television by May and get a Netflix release at the end of the same month.