In The Westies, Jimmy Roarke (Tom Brittney) has spent the season trying to survive Eamon Sweeney’s (J.K. Simmons) world, navigating shifting loyalties, uneasy alliances, and a mounting body count as the Westies begin to crumble. But after watching Sweeney sacrifice anyone he considers a threat, including members of Jimmy’s own crew, Jimmy finally realizes that survival isn’t enough anymore.
In the last episode, Sean (Rohan Mead) was arrested on cocaine charges and killed by Sweeney, while Glenn Keenan (Titus Welliver) was exposed as a traitor after Sweeney threatened his son. Meanwhile, Bridget Walsh (Sarah Bolger) is driven by revenge for her murdered family, even as her ex Brendan’s attempt to woo her further complicates their relationship.
Now, Jimmy decides he’s done waiting for his turn. Warning: Spoilers ahead for The Westies Episode 8 “The Irish Goodbye.”
The lines are drawn
Everyone is a bit miffed these days. Mickey (Stanley Morgan) wants revenge for what happened to Sean, but Jimmy warns that killing Sweeney would be suicide. They need to get the jump on him first. And Sweeney feels equally betrayed. As his men push him to eliminate Jimmy and his crew, he recalls practically raising Jimmy, even fondly remembering dangling him off Pier 84 for stealing his wallet. To Sweeney, Jimmy is simply “emotional over Sean’s death.”
“Eamon is a guy who’s hangin’ on,” 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.”
Does Bridget get her revenge?
Elsewhere, Bridget attempts to honey-trap Colonel Gerald Markham (Harry Hadden-Paton), a British officer who she believes is directly responsible for the death of her family during the Troubles. She’s in disguise with a hidden dagger and a plan, but Markham is onto her. His agents tracked her down by following her accomplice, Father Michael O’Donnell (Michael Cram), who “got sloppy in his old age.”
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Markham also reveals a devastating truth: Her ex-boyfriend and coconspirator Brendan (Allen Leech) gave up Bridget’s parents in exchange for his freedom. Markham sexually assaults Bridget, but she turns the tables on the monster, slashing his throat. Bridget emerges shaken, trying desperately to keep herself together.
Bridget confronts Brendan about her parents, demanding to know how he got out of prison and whether he traded their names for his freedom. Brendan insists he loves her, but Bridget pulls a gun and calls him a rat. She accuses him of using her and warns that if he comes near her again, she’ll kill him.
Do Jimmy and Sweeney go to war?
At the bar, Jimmy and his crew spot a car filled with Sweeney’s men and clear the place of innocents before a massive shootout erupts, wounding Connor and killing Declan, marking the beginning of their war with Sweeney. The crew retreats to the apartment and breaks the news to Bridget.
The next day, Jimmy calls Sweeney and seemingly tries to make peace. “All my life you have been nothing but good to me,” he says, claiming he was angry about Shawn but now understands Sweeney did what he thought was right. Jimmy says he doesn’t stand a chance and doesn’t want anyone else hurt. He wants to talk.
It’s a setup. Jimmy lies that he’s at the body shop, and it works: Sweeney sends Eddie Breen to kill him, instructing Eddie to make it “quick and painless.”
Both Gotti and Keenan are being played
Meanwhile, John Gotti (Hamish Allan-Headley) is getting a haircut when one of his men discovers an FBI bug above the bar. They realize the feds have been listening from a vacant unit upstairs, and Gotti orders the place stripped.
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At the FBI, Birdie is furious, while crooked cop Glenn Keenan learns his son Danny has escaped rehab. Keenan still believes Jimmy is the key to bringing down the Westies, calling him the smartest member outside of Sweeney.
Danny takes a bus back to New York and goes straight to Sweeney, who brings him into the crew and gives him a gun. He tells Danny he needs protection from “rats” like his father, revealing Keenan wore a wire to set him up with the feds. “You know what we do with rats, right?” Sweeney asks, deliberately pitting Keenan’s son against him.
How does Jimmy plan to get the jump on Sweeney?
Jimmy and Mickey capture Sweeney’s right-hand man, Eddie (Vincent Walsh), giving them a bit of leverage, and then Jimmy makes his biggest power play yet. He meets lawyer Ruby Stein (Richard Schiff), pays what he owes him, and proposes that Sweeney “retire,” with Jimmy taking over with Paul “Bit Paulie” Castellano’s (Ron Lea) approval. Jimmy plans to sell a massive amount of cocaine and needs Stein to launder the money, offering him a cut.
Jimmy also secretly meets Keenan. He won’t become a rat, but they agree to work together to take Sweeney down for their own reasons. Keenan gives Jimmy three kilos of cocaine from the evidence locker.
Gotti asks his men if they heard from Jimmy and the Irish. They moved the product, so why didn’t they hear from him?
Does Keenan reconcile with his son?
Keenan returns to the bar and finds his son Danny waiting with a gun, ready to end his father’s life. He tells his son he was sent away to protect him, but Danny pulls the weapon. Keenan disarms him, tells him he loves him, and begs for forgiveness before Danny takes off.
“They’re estranged; they don’t see each other, but suddenly he sees his son in potential peril, and I think there’s an awakening there,” Titus Welliver told TV Insider. “He’s never going to be Father of the Year, but there’s an awakening, and in the process of that awakening, there’s a forced kind of reflection that Keenin doesn’t want to deal with, because he is so filled with self-loathing and self-hatred. I think that this is what then becomes his focus, to try to save his son, because it’s too late for him.”
How does Season 1 of The Westies end? With brains, not blood
Stein takes Jimmy’s proposition to Paulie and tells him that his association with Sweeney may be changing thanks to a new Irish upstart. Paul doesn’t like it, but Stein points out that the Gambinos have a cocaine problem: Paul may hate the drug trade, but his men will sell it anyway. Stein offers to launder the money and make them both rich.
Back at the garage, Jimmy uses the heavily drugged Eddie to lure Sweeney into a trap. Eddie calls and claims Jimmy is dead, asking Sweeney to meet at the warehouse. Suspicious of how Eddie sounds, Sweeney sends in a man to check before taking his crew to deal with Jimmy himself.
It all leads back to the garage from the beginning of the series. After Sweeney’s men are killed, Jimmy captures his former mentor and ties him to a chair, mirroring what Sweeney did to Vinnie. Sweeney insists he was looking out for Jimmy, but Jimmy says the recently departed Shawn, Davey, and Pat probably wouldn’t agree. He also reveals he’s made his own deal with Paul, proving the Italians don’t care which Irishman is in charge.
Jimmy accuses Sweeney of spilling Irish blood to suck up to the Italians. Sweeney says he loved Jimmy like his own son and reminds him how much Jimmy once looked up to him. Jimmy points a gun at Sweeney and pulls the trigger — but it’s empty. He isn’t like Sweeney and never will be. He only wanted Sweeney to know what it feels like to have a gun pointed at his head by someone he trusted.
Jimmy has something better planned. He leaves Sweeney tied up with Eddie and the three kilos of cocaine from the evidence locker, then tips off the police. Both men are arrested.
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With Sweeney gone, Jimmy and Mickey enter his office as the new bosses of the Westies, taking over his operation at the Javits Convention Center. Gotti calls, but when Jimmy makes it clear they have other plans, Gotti threatens to kill them. Jimmy and Mickey are done playing by anyone else’s rules.
Now, they do things their way, as the season ends with Jimmy in charge. But that doesn’t necessarily mean a happy ending.
“There’s so many stories for [showrunners] Chris [Brancato] and Michael [Panes] to tell,” Tom Brittney explained to TV Insider. “I mean, it ends in a very open-ended way. It’s a cliffhanger of an ending for the season, and I’m just excited to see what happens between our guys. They’ve got this constant threat of the Italians; it’s kind of only going to get worse for them. They’ve got a lot more to fight next season.”
What could happen in The Westies Season 2?
Should the series be renewed, “Like everything that happens in the first season, [Jimmy and Sweeney’s] relationship will evolve and come to unexpected places, because if the father-son analogy is correct, and we all have fights with our parents, but they’re still our parents. So, I’ll just leave you with that,” said cocreator Michael Panes.
“I would say you’re going to continue to see the struggle between Eamon Sweeney and Jimmy Rourke, so you’re going to have that father-son dynamic at play, you’re going to see John Gotti starting to climb the ladder of the Gambino family, and eventually supersede Paul Castellano as the boss,” explained cocreator Chris Brancato. “You’re going to see the Gambino crime squad bring down its clamps on both groups as hard as possible. So, all of that stuff is second-season action, and we do expect to make a second season. So, stay tuned.”
The Westies, Season 1, Streaming Now, MGM+