After his wife was murdered by a Philadelphian butcher/gangster ( William Forsythe) that Darmody had double crossed trying to maintain his loosening grip on power, he returned to Atlantic City in a remorseful mood attempting to broker peace with Nucky, his former ally, boss and defacto progenitor.īut Darmody had made his bed with his grand betrayal (something it seems that he knew in his final moments) and Nucky used him to help turn the tide of his conviction (by having Darmody kill key witnesses) and then murdered him as payback. With a disatisfied wife, Angela ( Aleksa Palladino), trying to escape his cold and distant manner, the still emotionally shellshocked WWI veteran turned unlikely Atlantic City figurehead soon realized he didn’t possess Nucky’s keen finesse and art of dealmaking. As this coalition grew stronger in power, it looked like Nucky would not only lose it all, but potentially face the electric chair.īut for Darmody –who was essentially like a son to Nucky, the father figure putting him through college and taking care of him since he was a child - the crown weighed heavy. They posited the young Darmody, the heir of the Commodore (Coleman), should run the city in Nucky’s place. Attorney hovered (represented by Michael Shannon and Julianne Nicholson), investigating Nucky for various criminal charges (election fraud and murder, culminating in very public indictments and trials), the underlings struck when he was on the ropes politically, putting a stranglehold on the booze and convincing the local politicians that Nucky was now a liability and they should jump ship. And as the Bureau of Prohibition and the Assistant U.S.

Thanks to the colluding influence of his manipulative mother ( Gretchen Mol) and estranged father ( Dabney Coleman, also Nucky’s mentor and predecessor), Nucky’s own ward James “Jimmy” Darmody (a brooding Michael Pitt in probably his finest role to date) and his pals organized their own coup d’etat that included Eli Thompson, Rothstein’s low-level foot soldiers (“Lucky” Luciano and Meyer Lansky) and low-level wannabe gangster Chicago’s Al Capone ( Stephen Graham). As Nucky said in the key line of season 2, episode 8 to Rothstein and Johnny Torrio ( Greg Antonacci), Chicago’s mob boss, “the pups have grown fangs, gentleman.” Yet, frustrated by Nucky’s scheming ways, getting too big for their britches and craving a bigger piece of the pie, the true conflicts of season 2 were all the ambitious underlings. ‘The Idol’ Is Already at Odds with Itselfīut shady businessman are always (and constantly) making deals with the devils, so by Season 2, Nucky and Rothstein had come to a mutually benefitting and understanding truce.

Boardwalk empire season 3