After a season of uneasy betrayals and escalating bloodshed, The Westies heads into its finale teetering on the brink of collapse as the Irish gang turns on itself. Long-simmering tensions between Eamon Sweeney (J.K. Simmons) and his surrogate son Jimmy Roarke (Tom Brittney) finally erupt, creating a generational divide that threatens the very existence of the Westies.
Episode 7 “A Boy Made of Trouble” pushes Jimmy and Sweeney’s relationship past the breaking point after Jimmy’s buddy Sean (Rohan Mead) is arrested on drug charges. Jimmy and Mickey (Stanley Morgan) believe Sean will stay loyal, but Sweeney fears he’ll talk and, after discussing the problem with Gambino’s top soldier John Gotti (Hamish Allan-Headley), Sweeney has Sean killed, betraying Jimmy.
Glenn Keenan (Titus Welliver), the cop on the take who is currently working with the FBI, uses the situation to turn Jimmy against Sweeney, playing him a recording of Sweeney and Gotti discussing Sean. Jimmy confronts Sweeney, and things get heated as their relationship seems beyond repair.
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Meanwhile, Bridget (Sarah Bolger) moves forward with the IRA plot, going undercover to get close to the man connected to her parents’ deaths.
The episode leaves both the Irish and Gambino organizations increasingly fractured and sets up the finale’s showdown between Jimmy and Sweeney.
Jimmy and Mickey Flanagan struggle to stay one step ahead of the law, Sweeney, and the powerful Gambino family, but every move carries devastating consequences. They see themselves as the new generation and the future of the Westies, but Sweeney has very different ideas.
“Eamon is a guy who’s hangin’ on,” J.K. Simmons explained to TV Insider. “He’s clawed his way to the top, and people tend not to have all that long a lifespan at the top of these kinds of organizations, because there’s always somebody gunning for you, whether it’s from outside or inside your organization. So it’s survival.”
Meanwhile, Keenan finds himself pulled into a dangerous balancing act between serving as an FBI informant and protecting his son, who has fallen under Sweeney’s influence and into the very life Keenan wanted him to avoid. Bridget Walsh, meanwhile, is forced to confront painful truths about her past.
The finale brings the show’s themes of family and loyalty to a head as the battle between the Westies reaches its breaking point. Jimmy and Sweeney finally go head-to-head as loyalties are tested and relationships are destroyed, placing the future of Hell’s Kitchen’s Irish gang in jeopardy.
The Westies, Series Finale, Sunday, 9/8c, MGM+