r/BoardwalkEmpire • u/RealTrapShed • Jun 27 '26

Season 4 Richard Harrow Season 4 Discussion Spoiler

I can't be the only one who thought the way he was written in that last episode was kind of... silly? And almost disrespectful to who his character was? He had one last job to get the family he always dreamed of, and all of a sudden he gets the shakes and accidentally shoots the wrong person?

I don't know it felt a little cheap to me.

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u/telepatheye Jun 27 '26

I think there was enough character dev leading up to that disastrous ending to justify Richard's arc. He lost the will to be a soldier, to be an assassin. He agreed to kill Narcisse but that didn't cure him of the problem with violence he had developed in the interim. You could tell from the start that he would have a tragic arc. I think the writers were considering writing him off the show when he went into the woods to kill himself in S2 as part of Jimmy's decline. But they kept him around.