[WARNING: The following interview with Boardwalk Empire showrunner Terence Winter contains spoilers about the show's second season finale that aired Sunday night.].
“This is the only way we could have ended, isn’t it?” Jimmy asks.
“This is your choice, James,” Nucky replies.
And with that build-up, Boardwalk Empire executed one of the most surprising moves in recent TV history — killing off James “Jimmy” Darmody (Michael Pitt), the show’s second-biggest character after Enoch “Nucky” Thompson (Steve Buscemi).
Below, Boardwalk Empire showrunner and executive producer Terence Winter, who wrote tonight’s finale, talks to EW about why Jimmy had to go, how he broke the news to Pitt and gives some hints about his plans for season three — which include a time jump and the introduction of new brash young character. And at the end of the interview, there’s a link to our exclusive interview with Pitt.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: When did you first know that you were going to kill off Jimmy?
TERENCE WINTER: Probably at the very beginning of season two. The idea was to try and push things to their absolute limit, even if it makes it difficult for yourself and your writing team. If you take things to their logical extreme with the situation we created, Jimmy has betrayed Nucky, he tried to have him killed. You want to be honest about the storytelling. In the pilot, Jimmy told Nucky: “You can’t be half a gangster anymore.” We wanted with the first two seasons to follow that trajectory, where he goes full season from being the guy who doesn’t want to get his hands dirty to actually pulling the trigger himself. And what’s the strongest version of that? To pull the trigger on the very guy who told him, “You can’t be half a gangster anymore.” It’s like, “Guess what? You’re right. I can’t. And here’s me now fully becoming a gangster.” Anything short of Nucky doing it himself wouldn’t feel real, it wouldn’t be real. And it would be a cheat for us to say, “We want to keep our beloved character Jimmy Darmody alive.”
One of the things I wanted to do by design in the finale is make the audience pissed off [at the start of the episode]. I wanted people to say [when it seemed like Nucky and Jimmy would reconcile], “Oh great, after all that, it’s all going to be forgotten and Jimmy is going to be back in Nucky’s good graces.” I wanted them to think right up to the very end that Nucky is going to forgive him and take him back. It was a really hard decision. You’re sort of blowing up your own show, in some ways. Now we’re back in the writers room trying to figure out where we go from here without Jimmy Darmody.
Read the full interview at InsideTV@EW.com
