Richard Harrow’s Boardwalk Empire Season 4 Exit Explained

Here’s how fan-favorite Richard Harrow exited Boardwalk Empire during season 4. Jack Huston is an actor hailing from the Huston dynasty, which includes his legendary director grandfather John Huston (The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre), aunt Anjelica Huston and uncle Danny Huston. After making appearances in films like Irish horror Shrooms or sci-fi monster movie Outlander, Huston landed his most famous role when HBO’s Boardwalk Empire cast him as Richard Harrow.

The Terence Winter created Boardwalk Empire is a gangster drama set in Atlantic City during Prohibition, and is mainly focused on the political and criminal activities of Steve Buscemi’s Nucky Thompson. The show ran for five seasons, receiving acclaim for its writing, production design and the ensemble cast, which included Kelly McDonald, Michael Shannon and Michael Pitt as Nucky’s protege Jimmy. The show also had a habit of creating awesome supporting characters, including Michael Kenneth Williams’ Albert “Chalky” White and Jack Huston as Richard Harrow, a former sniper and disfigured war vet who Jimmy befriends in season 1.

Richard’s tragic backstory combined with Jack Huston’s touching performance made Harrow arguably Boardwalk Empire’s best character. Harrow was also lethally effective with firearms, with his shockingly effortless season 3 massacre of Gyp Rosetti’s men considered his defining scene. Sadly, like pretty much every major character on Boardwalk Empire, Harrow had to meet a tragic ending at some point.

Boardwalk Empire season 4 opened with Richard Harrow having left killing behind, but despite trying to leave Atlantic City and reconnect with his estranged twin Emma, he’s later forced to return to the city. This is where he reconnects and later marries Julia (Wrenn Schmidt), and he becomes embroiled in a custody battle for the late Jimmy’s son Tommy, after Jimmy’s mother Gillian (Gretchen Mol) is arrested for murder. Richard later asks Nucky for the location of Jimmy’s body – with Nucky having arranged for his death during season 2 – to help with Gillian’s conviction. Nucky agrees but only if Harrow will assassinate Dr Narcisse (Jeffrey Wright), who is causing trouble for Chalky.

Boardwalk Empire’s “Farewell Daddy Blues” sees Harrow take up a sniper position in the Onyx Club during a meeting between Narcisse and Chalky. The trouble is, Harrow hasn’t killed anyone in a long time, and his hands start to shake as his crosshairs line up on Narcisse. He steadies his shaking hand, but when he finally takes the shot, Chalky’s daughter Maybelle (Christina Jackson) stepped into his line of fire and is killed instantly. Harrow is shot while trying to escape and after making his way under the boardwalk, he has a vision of returning to his family with his own face healed, before it’s revealed he died of his wounds during the night. Harrow’s passing certainly counts among one of Boardwalk Empire’s saddest deaths, and the character was much missed during the final season.

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Padraig Cotter
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It’s pronounced Paw-rick, not Pad-raig. Now that’s out of the way, a brief introduction. Padraig has been writing about film online since 2012, when a friend asked if he’d like to contribute the occasional review or feature to their site.

A part-time hobby soon blossomed into a career when he discovered he really loved writing about movies, TV and video games – he even (arguably) had a little bit of talent for it. He has written words for Den of Geek, Collider, The Irish Times and Screen Rant over the years, and can discuss anything from the MCU – where Hawkeye is clearly the best character – to the most obscure cult b-movie gem, and his hot takes often require heat resistant gloves to handle.

He’s super modern too, so his favorite movies include Jaws, Die Hard, The Thing, Ghostbusters and Batman. He can be found as i_Padds on Twitter making bad puns.

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