‘Tulsa King’ Boss Explains Those Major Season 4 Premiere Deaths

The premiere of Tulsa King Season 4 was a deadly one for two of the series’ most beloved characters, but the showrunner had his reasons for taking such a big, dramatic swing. And TV Insider made sure to find out what that is! Warning: The following post contains spoilers for Tulsa King Season 4 Episode 1, “WWDD.”

The season began with Dwight Manfredi (Sylvester Stallone) and his crew gearing up for a big payday as distribution for the Fifty was set to begin and make them all filthy rich. To keep Quiet Ray (James Russo) at bay, Dwight broke off a piece of that pie (granted, a smaller one than the New York mafioso wanted, but still) and agreed to send it his way.

Things seemed to be going in an onward and upward direction … until the plane carrying both Cal Thresher (Neal McDonough) and Margaret Devereaux (Dana Delany) went down somewhere over the Pacific during a work trip.

Considering Cal was just named governor of Oklahoma, and Margaret had just gotten her ranch back as a result of her help getting him there, seeing their stories cut short so abruptly was a huge shock.

When TV Insider caught up with Terence Winter at the New York premiere of Tulsa King, we asked the returning showrunner about the decision to end these characters’ lives so suddenly.

“We wanted to put Dwight in the most vulnerable position he could be in, not just from a danger standpoint, but from an emotional standpoint,” Winter explained. “Losing somebody that you deeply care about in such tragic circumstances really starts knocking him off the [moral] pedestal… It totally breaks him down emotionally. He has to rebuild himself.”

Winter, who was the series’ original showrunner and served as head writer in Season 2, returned to the top job for Season 4 and reflected on some of the changes that have happened with Dwight over the years that he wasn’t leading the charge — for example, Dwight murdering two (very deserving) people in brutal fashion at the tail end of Season 3.

Steve Swisher / Paramount+

Related

'Tulsa King' Renewed for Season 5 & Cast Changes Announced

“He certainly, unfortunately, has been put in positions where he’s had to do some really dark stuff to bullies, which unfortunately goes into the territory of being a gangster. He’s still somebody that I think has a moral compass and has some integrity, and despite the ugly nature of the business he’s in, people still respect him and can still see things his way,” Winter said.

However, Winter contends that the crux of Tulsa King is the constancy of change.

“The idea of nothing’s constant except change, and you’ve got to — especially in this business — you have people coming at you from one angle, you’ve got to improvise, keep reinventing yourself every day. And that’s true of life as well,” he said.

– Reporting by Logan Dorrell

Tulsa King, Fridays, Paramount+