Dwight Manfredi doesn’t do quiet endings, but “Tulsa King” just gave him something close to a clean one. The Sylvester Stallone crime drama wrapped its third season on November 23 with an episode called “Jesus Lizard,” resolving its central war, crowning a few winners and losers, and — most intriguingly — planting the seed for a whole new chapter of this expanding underworld. It’s a finale that closes a book while cracking open the next one.
For the uninitiated, “Tulsa King” follows Dwight “The General” Manfredi (Sylvester Stallone), a New York mafia capo who, fresh out of a long prison stretch, gets exiled to Tulsa, Oklahoma, and proceeds to build a criminal operation from scratch in unfamiliar territory. It’s a fish-out-of-water gangster story powered almost entirely by Stallone’s late-career charisma, and it’s become one of the cornerstones of the Taylor Sheridan television machine. Three seasons in, the fish has very much made the pond his own. Warning: beyond this point there are spoilers for Tulsa King Season 3 and its finale, “Jesus Lizard.”
Dwight Manfredi doesn’t do quiet endings, but “Tulsa King” just gave him something close to a clean one.”
The finale pays off the season’s big conflict, the so-called whiskey war, and it doesn’t hedge — there’s a definitive winner, and the power map of Dwight’s world gets redrawn. The episode wrings real tension out of a kidnapping, with Dwight’s sister Joanne (Annabella Sciorra) hauled off to the villainous Jeremiah Dunmire (Robert Patrick), who coldly tells her she can blame her own blood for her predicament. Joanne is ultimately saved, though Dunmire slips away to lick his wounds, and one of the season’s power struggles resolves with the character Thresher installed as Oklahoma’s new governor. The pieces, in other words, land where they need to.
Notably, “Tulsa King” breaks its own pattern here. The first two seasons ended on cliffhangers, leaving Dwight’s fate dangling to hook viewers into the next round. Season 3 chooses a more definitive close, tying off its threads rather than yanking one taut. It’s a confident move for a show that no longer needs the cheap hook — and it can afford the confidence, because Paramount+ has already renewed it for a fourth season. Dwight isn’t going anywhere.
The most interesting thing the finale does, though, is look outward. Buried in the episode is the introduction of a new figure — an aging hitman who will be played by none other than Samuel L. Jackson in an upcoming spinoff, “NOLA King.” Using the “Tulsa King” finale to plant the seed for a Jackson-led offshoot is a savvy piece of universe-building, the Sheridan machine doing what it does best: turning one successful show into the launchpad for the next. Stallone opened the door; Jackson is about to walk through it.
That’s the real story here, beyond any single plot beat. “Tulsa King” has quietly become a franchise anchor, not just a hit in its own right but a foundation for expansion, and the arrival of a star of Jackson’s magnitude signals how much faith Paramount+ has in this corner of the Sheridan empire. What started as a vehicle for Stallone to prove he could carry a prestige-adjacent crime series has grown into a small ecosystem, with more branches sprouting off the trunk.
None of it would work without Stallone, who remains the beating heart of the thing. There’s a genuine pleasure in watching a bona fide movie icon this deep into his career find a role this well-suited to him — Dwight lets Stallone be funny, menacing, and unexpectedly tender, often within the same scene, and he clearly relishes every minute. The show is, at bottom, a great late-career showcase for a star who’s earned one, and Season 3 gave him plenty of room to play.
So “Tulsa King” closes another chapter with its king still very much on his throne, its world expanding, and a Hollywood legend waiting in the wings to start a story of his own. It’s the rare finale that satisfies as an ending and excites as a beginning. Dwight Manfredi came to Tulsa a stranger and built an empire. Now that empire is big enough to spin off empires of its own.
What Do You Think? Was ending Season 3 without a cliffhanger the right, confident move for “Tulsa King,” or do you miss the hook that closed the first two seasons? How excited are you for Samuel L. Jackson’s “NOLA King” spinoff — and is expanding the “Tulsa King” world the smart play, or a sign the franchise is stretching thin? Three seasons in, where does Dwight Manfredi rank among Sylvester Stallone’s great characters, and how long should this show keep him on the throne?
See you on the next binge!
