Lots of spoilers for season four of Boardwalk Empire below.
Richard Harrow never stood a chance.
Oh, we were led to believe he could make it out. We had to think he had a chance. Without hope there can be no true devastation. Richard—who spent the first two seasons pining for his friend Jimmy Darmody's home life and the third caring for Jimmy's orphaned child in the whorehouse run by Jimmy's monstrous mother—had finally achieved the life he wanted. A job that didn't involve killing people for a living. A wife. A kid. A house out in the sticks.
It wasn't enough. It wasn't secure enough. It's telling that when Richard needed a straight job, Nucky Thompson, the boss of Atlantic City, was happy enough to grant him the favor and get him work, no strings attached. It's equally telling that when Richard needed another favor—one that touched on Nucky's criminal empire—the strings were quite thick. In exchange for his new life, Richard would have to take that of Nucky's latest nemesis.
But he missed. And Chalky White's daughter paid the price.
With one errant bullet fired on the order of Nucky Thompson, the lives of his two most useful allies were destroyed. Richard, a "no women, no kids" type, was as emotionally devastated as he was physically wounded. Chalky was covered by bits of his daughter's skull.
Meanwhile, Nucky's brother is on the lam, headed to Chicago to avoid a charge for killing a federal officer. His nephew will forever have a murder charge just around the corner. His German body man killed himself earlier in the season, disgraced.
Nucky, like a certain HBO mobster before him, corrupts everything he touches.
But it was Richard's death that was particularly harrowing for fans of the show. You knew he was done for the moment we saw him on a train, seemingly fine after being gutshot hours before. The sky was bright, the sun shining. And then, miraculously, he is at the house of his new family, everyone lined up and waiting for him. As his wife walks toward him, the camera cuts back and his face—long covered by a grotesque mask that put Harrow on just the wrong side of the Uncanny Valley—is whole.
As she approaches, we are mercilessly sent back to Atlantic City's Boardwalk. Waves are crashing in the background. Harrow is slumped up against a column. His mask has fallen off. A tear slides down his cheek. As we fade to black and the credits roll, the waves continue to beat against the shore. They will never cease. Some things are unstoppable.
No one gets out of Nucky Thompson's Boardwalk Empire unscathed.