The Westies has come to an end, but who takes control of the Irish-American gang in the finale? Find out below.
Created by Chris Brancato and Michael Panes, the eight-part MGM+ series centred on New York’s real-life Irish-American gang the Westies during the early 1980s.
The construction of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center promises a financial windfall on the gang’s Hell’s Kitchen turf, but tensions between its younger members and old-school leadership threaten their fragile truce with the Italian Mafia.
J.K. Simmons stars as Westies leader Eamon Sweeney, alongside Tom Brittney as ambitious younger gangster Jimmy Roarke and Titus Welliver as troubled NYPD officer Glenn Keenan.
The season concluded with its eighth episode, ‘The Irish Goodbye’, on Sunday (August 23). Watch the trailer below.
The ending of The Westies explained: who takes control of the gang?
Jimmy Roarke defeats Eamon Sweeney and takes control of the Westies, but decides to frame his former mentor for possessing stolen cocaine rather than kill him.
Their relationship finally collapses after Sweeney orders Sean’s murder following his arrest on drug charges. Sweeney then sends his men to attack Jimmy’s crew at their bar, but Jimmy survives and pretends that he wants to make peace. He correctly predicts that Sweeney will send his right-hand man Eddie to kill him, allowing Jimmy and Mickey to capture Eddie and use him to lure Sweeney to the gang’s warehouse.
Jimmy also secures the approval of mafia boss Paul Castellano for his takeover and obtains three kilograms of cocaine from Keenan. After Sweeney’s remaining men are killed in an ambush, Jimmy points an unloaded gun at his former mentor and pulls the trigger. He explains that he only wanted Sweeney to feel what it was like to be betrayed by someone he trusted, before leaving him with the cocaine and alerting the police.
In the final scene, Jimmy and Mickey move into Sweeney’s former office at the Javits Center. John Gotti calls demanding an explanation, but they reject his authority now that they have reached their own agreement with Castellano. Gotti responds by threatening to kill them, meaning Jimmy has won control of the Westies while immediately placing its new leadership in danger.
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