And just like that, the first season of Tulsa King is signed, sealed and delivered. In the finale episode, entitled "Happy Trails," Sylvester Stallone's aging mafioso Dwight Manfredi enjoys a big win and suffers an even bigger loss, leaving us hanging until Season 2. (Is it any wonder a Taylor Sheridan-created show would end on a cliffhanger?)
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Tulsa King has been a strange, but ultimately successful experiment in combining the Western and gangster genres. The crossover of disparate elements — rural, urban, scheming and honesty — teased out what makes each genre so compelling. For the Western, it's the impossibility of the outlaw we respond to. And for the gangster genre, it's the tragic inevitability of criminal downfall that we come back to time and time again. And this season finale is all about the impossible and the inevitable: Even if Dwight could catch a break, would he really break free from the cycle of crime? Let's break down what we saw, what questions went unanswered, and what could happen next season.
Warning: Spoilers ahead for the Season Finale of Tulsa King.
The Origin Story
The episode opens with a flashback to a rainy night in Gotham — ahem, Brooklyn — in 1997. It's Dwight's origin story, so to speak: We see the murder that landed him in prison for 25 years. A much-younger, balding Chickie (Domenick Lombardozzi) and Vinny (Vincent Piazza) beat up a handcuffed "Ripple" (David Deblinger) for failing to pay a debt to the Invernizzis. Manny (Max Casella) begs Chickie to lay off the guy, ultimately calling Dwight for help. In sadistic fashion, Chickie brands Ripple on the face. (This is a Taylor Sheridan show, after all.)
Dwight arrives, demanding that Chickie and Vinny uncuff Ripple. But the dopes can't find the key to the handcuffs, and Chickie's brand (which, let's be real, looks like a potato masher) meets some stray papers, starting a fire. Dwight tries to shoot through Ripple's steel handcuffs, to no avail. The fire is out of control at this point, and Dwight shoots Ripple in the forehead so that he won't burn alive. The police pull up and — bada bing, bada boom — Dwight takes the fall. Turns out he was being literal when he told Margaret in Episode 7 that he saved a man from a burning building.
Dwight Gets Off Easy
We fast forward to present-day Tulsa, where FBI Agent Ruiz (Alessandro Garcia) and ATF Agent Hendricks (Miles Mussenden) question Dwight about his relationship with Stacy. Elliot Evans (Josh Fadem), a young guy wearing a drug rug, waltzes in, professing to be Dwight's lawyer. It turns out Bodhi sent Elliot to save Dwight from the law's clutches. After succeeding in that task, Elliot dips and doesn't return for the remainder of the episode. In any case, it's always nice to meet one of Bodhi's blissed-out buddies.
Dwight visits Stacy (Andrea Savage) in her hospital room. She's out of surgery and doing fine, but she's going to lose her job for consorting with a felon. Dwight swears he'll make it up to her, beginning with finding and killing Waltrip. But Stacy knows the score: Waltrip's secret fortune means he's probably booked it down to Mexico already. Dwight will never get his hands on him now. She then tells Dwight that the ATF is holding Waltrip's laptop and so has access to his funds. Not wise, Stacy.
Stacy was wrong about Waltrip, of course. The guy's too much of an egomaniac to go bum it in Mexico, leaving Dwight to carve out his Tulsa kingdom unchallenged. No, if Waltrip's going down, he's dragging Dwight down with him. At a Black Macadam cabal, he drunkenly waxes poetic about his archenemy: "A parasite doth feed upon its host. And ours? Ours will not stop until we cut him out with a f****** broadsword."
When an upstart biker warns that it's too dangerous to go after Dwight with the ATF and FBI on their tails, Waltrip (Ritchie Coster) shoots him dead. The guy's only tack is to rule by fear. He's the antithesis of Dwight, and his mania is what you get when you take Chickie's aggressive ineptitude to its logical extreme.
Chickie's Defeat
Over on Team Dwight, Manny bares his soul. Chickie, Vinny and Goodie have just arrived in T-town, and Dwight suggests Manny lay low. But Manny refuses to run again. Remember, Manny is a changed man. He won't abide intimidation from Chickie — or from a lousy neighbor and his unruly dog. (Manny's transformation from wimp to bruiser in Episode 4 played like a mini Coen Brothers movie, and it remains this viewer's favorite episode of the season.)
Dwight, Manny and Tyson (Jay Will) confront Chickie's crew at a rooftop pool, and The General does not mince words: "You sent me out here to basically die. Exile," he tells Chickie. "The point is, we're done. So I want you to pack your s***, get on a plane and stay the f*** out of my town." Dwight declares that his time in the Invernizzi family is over, and he invites Goodie (Chris Caldovino) to join his cause. Goodie, predictably, does a heel-turn and leaves with Dwight. Cue the fist pumps.
How to Steal $8 Million
After washing his hands of Chickie, Dwight delivers a rousing speech to the crew at the Bred-2-Buck to strengthen their resolve before the impending war with Black Macadam. He tells the gang that there are two choices when life gets tough: Give up in fear, or barrel through and come out the other side stronger. In order to beat Waltrip, they must "cover each other's backs and become part of each other's family," Dwight says. "We do that, I swear to you, we're gonna put this fire out once and for all."
Step one? The long-awaited theft of Waltrip's hidden money. Bodhi hacks into Waltrip's laptop remotely and transfers the entirety of the $8 million out of Waltrip's account. We cut to the ATF Office, where a lowly agent is shocked to see Waltrip's account balance hit 0. Then we get some very satisfying shots of Waltrip yelling (grunting? baying like an animal?) when he sees his account's been drained. Finally, we see that Dwight has sent Stacy a get-well-soon flash drive. She plugs it into her laptop, opening a bank account containing $1 million. Quite the care package.
Before the big showdown with Black Macadam, we get some touching, invigorating ra-ra moments from Tyson and Mitch. Dwight offers Tyson a way out (again), but the kid credits Dwight with helping him become self-reliant. "That's the way to live your life: Stand up for what you believe in. Take what you want. You look after your friends," he tells Dwight. "You showed me that, man."
For his part, Mitch (Garrett Hedlund) has a newfound sense of purpose and an appreciation for what a solid friendship can do for your mental — and it's all thanks to Dwight. "One day this fella who looks like he stepped out of some mob movie walks into my joint. Can't say what exactly, but something told me this man was going to change my life."
Black Macadam vs. Team Dwight: Round 2
At long last, Black Macadam and Team Dwight come head-to-head. The crew is nervously shooting pool and playing cards at the Bred-2-Buck when they hear Macadam's motorcycles pull up outside. They kill the lights, grab their weapons and run to their stations behind the bar. Macadam advances slowly as Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight" takes over the soundtrack. It's throwback, slightly gauche, totally awesome and exactly what you'd hope for in this show.
The shootout begins when Waltrip's crew steps over the tripwire Team Dwight has cleverly set up, triggering a round of bullets from unmanned guns. Our hidden heroes then pop out from under the bar like Whac-a-Mole, guns blazing. At one point, secret weapon Grace (McKenna Quigley Harrington) covers Dwight's back and blows away two bikers. She's definitely the MVP of the battle.
When Tyson is hit, Dwight goes berserk. Waltrip is the last man standing in the Macadam camp, and The General clobbers him. (No one throws an on-screen punch quite like Stallone!) "Do you still think I overplayed my hand?" he asks Waltrip as he shoves his head through a wall-mounted buffalo horn. Disgusting way to go. When Waltrip is finished, the gang stands silently in the aftermath of the battle. They all live to tell the tale.
A Royal Betrayal
After the shootout, we fast-forward to three months later. Tina (Tatiana Zappardino) and her sons are visiting Dwight in Tulsa. They watch as the boys take Pilot for a spin at Fennario Ranch. Dwight finally tries his hand, mounting Pilot for the first time — and looking like he actually enjoys it. He's an Okie and proud of it.
Over at the ATF Office (a.k.a. bureaucratic hell) Agent Hendricks and a supervisor reprimand Stacy for flagrant violations of protocol, then offer her job back on "one condition." Yikes...
It's all fun and games before Stacy's betrayal comes to light. The Bred-2-Buck has returned to its former glory. (No casino yet, but at least the bullet holes are gone.) The entirety of Team Dwight is there for the reopening. Mitch is onstage singing "Ramblin' Man," followed by "Never Been to Spain," which he dedicates to Dwight. It's a fabulous use of Garrett Hedlund's country music chops. (By the way, Hedlund's new song "Tulsa Night" is out now.)
Dwight is dancing with Tina when Security Guard Fred (yes, that's how the character's name is listed in the credits), played by Justin Garcia-Pruneda, tells him there's a woman out front for him. He walks outside to find Stacy waiting there, looking like a million bucks. The cops immediately pull up and Stacy whispers to Dwight that she's sorry. Agent Hendricks arrests him for attempting to bribe Stacy. (Hendricks is holding the flash drive to the million-dollar bank account Dwight gifted her.) Tina runs outside, devastated, and the season ends with Dwight cruising through Tulsa in the back of a cop car.
Oof. Tough look for our guy Dwight. He tried to reform, but, alas, the thug life chose him. All jokes aside, it makes sense thematically that Dwight wouldn't last a season without another run-in with the law. Think about it like this: The show is a Western-gangster crossover dramedy. In the Western genre, going back to John Ford movies, the outlaw is bad for civilization. He upsets the social order of a Western town and ends up riding off into the sunset — if he can survive long enough to get outta Dodge, that is.
Similarly, in gangster movies, the mob man can't break the vicious cycle of criminality. Part of that is due to the fact that he may not be able to make a living on the straight and narrow. And part of it is because the mob is family-based, so the pressure to remain loyal to your blood relatives overtakes any sense of reason or decency. Al Pacino's Michael Corleone in The Godfather is the clearest example of this vicious cycle perpetuated through multiple generations of a family.
Overall, Tulsa King has been a strange but successful exercise in genre-blending, teasing out the most interesting shades that both unite and divide Westerns and gangster pics. Besides, it's pretty awesome to see Stallone push the envelope and try something new in his seventies. And he'll get to do it again: Tulsa King has been renewed for a second season.
Questions and Predictions for Season 2
- We never learned whether Pete, Chickie or both put a hit out on Dwight while he was in prison. Manny told Dwight that Pete ordered the killing, but this episode clarifies that Manny left New York (and abandoned the Invernizzi crime family) in 1998. Would Manny really know the truth of the matter, given that he left the game so soon after Dwight's arrest?
- Chickie is still at large, and if Domenick Lombardozzi returns for Season 2, something tells me the touchy Invernizzi patriarch will not be happy with Dwight's newfound freedom.
- Before Dwight goes tearing up Tulsa next season, the charges against him must be dropped. But how? The evidence is there; the ATF has the flash drive used to bribe Stacy. I suppose Dwight could cut a deal and become an ATF or FBI informant. But who would he rat out? Chickie? Alas, he doesn't have anything solid on the guy.
- Does the ATF/FBI know that Dwight stole Waltrip's money? Bodhi is a seasoned hacker, so I'm guessing there's no digital footprint of the virtual robbery. But where does the ATF think Waltrip's millions went, and where do they assume Dwight got the $1 million bribe in the first place? If they assume he stole it from Waltrip's pot, they could get a warrant to search all his associates' homes and businesses. (Fingers crossed that Bodhi still keeps his bad-guy flash drives in top-secret wall compartments.)
- Now that Dwight's been arrested for bribery, his businesses (and business partners) are vulnerable. The Higher Plane is safe; Dwight's name isn't anywhere on Bodhi's business. But what about the Bred-2-Buck? Is Dwight a partner on paper? And what about the millions of dollars Bodhi is funneling into the casino? It's stolen money, so we can only hope it's untraceable.
- After Stacy's betrayal, Dwight may feel free to heat things up with Margaret. Her ex-husband Brian could pose a serious threat to Dwight's romantic hopes and business prospects.
- Finally, will anyone find out that Chickie ASSAULTED EMORY and MURDERED HIS FATHER?! We can't go another episode without these bombshells seeing the light of day.
When Will Tulsa King Season 2 Premiere?
There's no word yet on when Tulsa King will return for its planned second season. Judging from other Sheridan shows like the Paramount+ crime drama Mayor of Kingstown, we can probably expect Season 2 to drop in about a year's time, in early 2024.
In the meantime, you can catch the stars of T-town in a bunch of exciting new projects this year. Sylvester Stallone will appear in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and The Expendables 4. Garrett Hedlund will star opposite Star Wars alum Daisy Ridley in revenge thriller The Marsh King's Daughter. Finally, if you find yourself missing some of that Caolan Waltrip lilt, you can watch Ritchie Coster in the upcoming cage-fighting drama Rumble Through the Dark.
Until Season 2, Salut!
The entire first season of Tulsa King is now streaming on Paramount+.
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