A Farewell to Bootleggers- Boardwalk Empire Finale

When creator and executive producer Terrence Winter first brought Boardwalk Empire to the screen in 2010, it debuted to an impressive 4.8 million viewers. Winter, previously known for his work on The Sopranos, worked alongside producer Mark Wahlberg and Emmy contender Steve Buscemi, who had at that point long received appraisals for his work as supporting actor in film and television and was ready for a lead part in this drama about illegal bootlegging and power play during the Prohibition.

The critic reaction was a mixture of appreciation and uncertainty, with many arguing after the first season that the show is what can be considered a “slow burn”. True as that may be, Boardwalk Empire’s grand finale this month had a staggering average of 6.6 million viewers. Steve Buscemi has received various criticisms, among which that of not having a main character as captivating as many of the supporting ones, but after five seasons, his performance as fictional bootlegger Nucky Thompson has been classified as outstanding.

If you have kept up with the show, then you will have already lived through the predictably shocking finale. If you haven’t and intend on catching up, be warned: this article will be a spoiler.

First and foremost, death should no longer be a surprise element in Winter’s mobster drama. We’ve already seen Sally (Patricia Arquette), Chalky White (Michael Kenneth Williams) and Nelson van Alden (Michael Shannon) all meet violent ends and the season has shown a steady development of the ruthless duo containing Lucky Luciano (Vincent Piazza) and Meyer Lansky (Anatol Yusef), so it should have been no surprise when Nucky failed to cheat fate by getting out alive of the ongoing war. However, it is still painfully shocking to watch the leading character being shot in the last minutes of the episode by apprentice “Joe Harper” (Travis Tope), who has been revealed to be Tommy Darmody, Gillian Darmody’s (Gretchen Mol) grandson and Jimmy Darmody’s (Michael Pitt) son. Entertainment Weekly’s Sarene Leeds considered the “Eldorado” episode a “rather poetic” ending. Indeed, there is a sense of poetic justice in Nucky’s end, one realizes as flashbacks of his life are intertwined with scenes of his death. We are shown Nucky’s past decisions and mistakes, having sold a 13 year old Gillian to the Commodore and having killed Jimmy Darmody, it seems only poetically just for Tommy to be the one to then get revenge.

source: sky.com

Perhaps a more satisfying scene for the audience is the death of Dr. Valentin Narcisse (Jeffrey Wright). He is first seen giving another of his hypocritical sermons, sharing biblical wisdom to the radicals he then sells out to the FBI. Afterwards, upon exiting the church, he is met by two of Luciano’s men, who shoot him multiple times (just to be sure that no unexpected resurrection might occur).

As for the others? Luciano and Lansky seem to have reached their end goal – they have successfully put together an efficient organized-crime commission which Joe Kennedy (Matt Letscher) and the Mayflower Grain Corporation cannot even begin to compete with. In turn, Kennedy partners up with Margaret (Kelly Macdonald) for a game of stock market swindle. In a different corner of Boardwalk’s universe, Al Capone (Stephen Graham) turns himself in and admits defeat, not before saying goodbye to his deaf son in a heart wrenching scene.

As the series finally comes to an end with a sense of true closure, one can only sum it up by saying that Winter, Wahlberg, Buscemi and co. provided one memorable show, with its highs and lows. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Terrence Winter said “There was a lot of emotion and tears when we wrapped…” and had a message for the fans of the series: “I hope they feel they’ve been told a really fun, exciting, emotionally complete story. I hope they’ll feel satisfied, like when you’ve closed the last page of a great novel.”