Boardwalk Empire is set to end this Sunday with episode 8 of season 5, or the series finale.
THe episode, titled “Eldorado,” will air at 9 p.m. EDT on HBO.
“After a shakeup, Nucky looks to relocate to Manhattan from Atlantic City. Margaret impresses Nucky and a grain-company stockholder; Luciano tends to unfinished business while establishing a mob commission; Willie shares underworld details with his boss, the U.S. Attorney; Nucky visits Gillian at the hospital,” according to the official description.
“In 1897, Nucky copes with a family crisis, while making a deal with the Commodore that will settle his future.”
Show creator Terence Winter says that he’s confident fans will enjoy the series finale.
“It’s like getting in a rocket ship and heading to the moon: It’s a long, long journey, and you’ve got to land on one particular spot. When we finish, we'll have done 56 hours of this; the finale is the culmination,” he told Rolling Stone.
“The stakes are high, and we’ve been conscious of that as we’ve plotted out the final year, and the finale. We’re confident about it.”
He also noted that he’s aware many fans wanted the show to get more seasons.
“The first rule of show business is get off the stage while people still want more,” he said. “You tell the story you want to tell, and when it’s done, you’re done.”
A review for the final episode has already come out--and it says that the finale is “perfect.”
“Rather than blow off excess steam and merely deliver a body count, the writing and acting in season 5’s episodes have surpassed Boardwalk Empire’s usual high standards, offering a pitch-perfect conclusion to a story that is surprisingly human in a world that’s been intentionally strewn with subhuman behavior,” according to the Washington Post.
“After using the context of actual crime history (Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky, et al.) to expand its tale from Atlantic City to Chicago, New York, Florida and even Cuba, Boardwalk Empire has now retracted to what it perhaps always meant to be: a rumination on the state of Nucky’s soul.”
And the writer echoes Winter in noting that there will be secrets that remain after the finale.
“Will Nucky die in the final episode? Will he be somehow redeemed? Does he need to be, really? (Would ’rescuing' Gillian from the asylum suffice?) Is ”Joe Harper,“ the strangely well-mannered kid who has been hanging around Nucky’s operation, merely there to act as an analog to young Nucky, reminding the older Nucky (and viewers) of the meaning of innocence? Or is the kid in fact Tommy Darmody (as so many fans have hoped), the orphaned son of Jimmy (Michael Pitt)? If so, is he back for closure or revenge or neither?” he said.
“Every great story keeps a few secrets to itself. In a season of spilling truth along with the blood, Boardwalk Empire has filled in many of its blanks, but not all of them. It would be fitting, somehow, if this show that deserved many more viewers and much more attention would creep away quietly — even ambiguously — leaving us wanting that little bit more that we'll never get.”
