Episode 5 of Tulsa King Season 3 was largely centered around the inauguration party of Montague Distilleries. Mitch, Cleo, Grace, Bodhi, Joanne, Goodie, Bill, Margaret, and Bigfoot were busy ensuring that the critics and potential investors in this business venture were treated well. Meanwhile, Musso had sent Dwight on a mission to meet with Deacon and lay the foundation of his professional relationship with that terrorist. Initially, Dwight was hesitant, because the party was his priority, but when Musso threatened him, he went to the meeting with Deacon, and he took Tyson along with him. Dwight and Deacon’s interaction went pretty smoothly, and Tyson didn’t get a whiff of the fact that Dwight was working for the Feds. As Dwight and Tyson started heading back to the distillery, Jeremiah, with the help of Sackrider, sent a health inspector named Leery to poke holes in the liquor storage unit and shut down the whole operation. Before Leery could do any damage, Bigfoot crushed him underneath some kegs of liquor and killed him. Realizing that something had gone wrong, Jeremiah took his crew, and Sackrider as well, to Montague Distilleries, wrecked the whole place, and claimed in front of the guests that the bourbon that Dwight and his team had put on display was stolen material. When Dwight went back home to set his head straight, Bill showed up trying to know about his meeting with Deacon. Dwight got a little too defensive and ended up exposing his duplicitous nature. Soon after that, Bill was arrested by the Feds. What happened next? Let’s find out.
Spoiler Alert
Dwight Plans to Sell Booze Illegally
In Tulsa King Season 3, Episode 6, Dwight comes clean about his association with Musso to Joanne. Naturally, Joanne asks him why he is bowing down to the Feds, and Dwight says that he and his whole team are at a stage where they have a whole lot to lose. And the thing about success is that the higher you get, the more daunting the fear of failure or a setback seems. Musso knows that, which is why he’s using Dwight’s thirst for becoming one of the most powerful gangsters in America against him. Speaking of hindrances to Dwight’s rise, Leery’s body is found in the bourbon storage unit at Montague Distilleries, and Mitch tells Bigfoot and Cleo that the police may just buy the narrative that they’re trying to sell, which is that Leery died due to a workplace accident while conducting a routine inspection in the dark. Bodhi is miffed about all this, though, because the crime scene was staged in a way so that Bodhi would find the body first. Since Bodhi hasn’t gotten over Jimmy’s death yet, seeing Leery in that state (he had his skull crushed like a watermelon) has caused his trauma to resurface. As he complains about this to Mitch, he apologizes to Bodhi and assures him that it’s all for a good cause. A hilarious cut to a member of Tulsa’s ABLE (Alcoholic Beverage Laws Enforcement) department proves that the murder and Bodhi’s horrifying experience have all been for nothing because the distillery has been shut down until the investigation into the incident is completed.
Cleo, Mitch, Bodhi, and Bigfoot notice Cole watching all this from afar and realize yet again that the Dunmires are using every tool in the shed to put Dwight out of business. So, Dwight has a sit-down with his team, and he tells them that they’ll need to sell their booze illegally until Montague Distilleries gets its license back. Bodhi points out that this can’t be a long-term solution because this isn’t a cheap venture. Hence, Dwight reveals his “Plan B,” which involves expanding the distillery’s reach beyond Tulsa and going for national distribution. Since that sounds satisfactory to everyone, Dwight brings this meeting to a close and advises everyone to stay on standby until further instructions are given.
Mitch and Cleo are ordered to head over to Shreveport to meet someone called Johnny Wednesday because he can help them move the liquor. As Mitch and Cleo exit the scene, Goodie comes in to tell Dwight that Bill’s gone missing. Since Dwight is the last person who saw Bill in person, Goodie wants to make sure that Dwight hasn’t done anything drastic, like killing Bill. Given how Dwight genuinely has nothing to do with Bill’s disappearance, he says that they just talked and that’s about it. Then he begins theorizing about who might be the guilty party here. He thinks that the Dunmires aren’t behind this—because they don’t really have a reason to kidnap Bill—but since Quiet Ray had given Bill a call to turn him against Dwight—something that Bill refused to do—Dwight thinks that Ray might be behind his disappearance. He has avoided getting in touch with Ray all this while, but he thinks that now is the time to talk to him. So, he gives Ray a call and asks him if he could meet him at a neutral place—a restaurant called Bubbles in Hot Springs, Arkansas—and Ray accepts Dwight’s request.
Cole Attacks Dwight and His Crew
Grace, Mitch, Cleo, and Bodhi can be seen assessing the 2 cars that’ll be used to transport the “illegal” liquor. Next, Mitch and Cleo head over to Montague Distilleries to acquire the booze, and to get into the storage unit, they zap a couple of police officers who have been stationed there so that the distillery remains inoperable. With the packages secured, Mitch and Cleo take one of the cars and head towards Shreveport, while Grace and Bodhi take the other one to get to St. Louis, and they hit the road. News of this incident has evidently not reached Sackrider’s ears, because he is seen proudly talking about how ABLE has shut down the distillery and that he has put a GPS tracker in Dwight’s car so that they can know where he is at all times. That’s not enough for Jeremiah, though. Hence, he orders Sackrider to go and make sure that Montague Distilleries is permanently shut down, and he tells Cole to put Dwight six feet under if he wants his father’s approval. Without wasting another second, Cole assembles a team to go after Dwight and kill him as soon as he makes a pit stop during his trip to Arkansas.
Bodhi gets a call from Art, one of Bill’s henchmen, asking him if he knows where Bill is. Of course Bodhi doesn’t know anything about this particular issue. That said, a brief scene featuring Bill in the federal prison supposedly operated by Musso proves that he is the one who had Bill arrested. That’s it, though. We don’t get any clear explanation for why Musso has taken such a wild decision. I suppose it’s because Bill was really close to figuring out that Dwight is working for the Feds. He had his men secretly follow Dwight, and they almost spotted him at his meeting with Deacon. If Bill got a little too trigger-happy, he might have killed Dwight, thereby ruining Musso’s whole plan to get revenge against Deacon. So, I think that’s why Musso felt that it was better to take Bill out of the equation. Given how people like Bill have a lot of felonies to their name, it won’t be a big deal to justify his arrest. On top of that, if he can force Bill to work for the Feds as well, then it’ll be a double win for Musso.
Mitch and Cleo are pulled over by a highway patrol officer, while Dwight, Bigfoot, and Tyson realize that they are being tailed by Jeremiah’s men. When Dwight, Bigfoot, and Tyson stop at a gas station, Bigfoot knocks out the men who were sent to kill Dwight. Cole notices this from afar and is disappointed in his men. The highway patrol officer that stopped Mitch and Cleo openly admits that he has been sent by Cole to harass them. So, when he is busy “inspecting” the cargo that the couple is carrying, Mitch and Cleo get the better of the officer and make a run for it. They show up at Johnny Wednesday’s doorstep, and he turns out to be a man of few words; he just gives Mitch and Cleo the cash, his men unload the liquor, and he assures them that their product is in safe hands. The only unit that has faced no hitches so far is the one comprising Grace and Bodhi, and even that’s irking Grace because, based on Art’s call about Bill’s disappearance, trouble is brewing somewhere. Bodhi tells Grace that they are definitely going through a rough patch, but they have to trust Dwight’s plan because, if they succeed, the long-term benefits to this strategy will be pretty good.
Cole Tries To Kill Dwight
In the ending of Tulsa King Season 3, episode 6, Dwight and Ray sit down for the meeting, while Bigfoot, Tyson, Vince, and some of Ray’s henchmen sit around them. After beating around the bush for a while, Ray finally arrives at the topic of the booze production business that Dwight has started over at Tulsa, and he says that he wants a piece of the pie. Since there’s no reason for Dwight to welcome Ray into this project, he straight-up asks Ray if he’ll stop harassing him once he gets a share of the profits and Ray says that he will. From that brief response, Dwight understands that Ray doesn’t have any interest in the booze; he thinks it’s a profitable enterprise, and that’s the only reason why he wants to poke his nose into it. Dwight confirms that Ray is nagging him by bringing up his partners in this business because Ray says that he doesn’t care about anyone else’s opinion. And as soon as Ray says that he wants 80 percent of the profits, Dwight goes on the offensive and sort of derails the conversation.
Before getting into that, I just want to address the 80 percent part. Is Quiet Ray a joke? I mean, I thought that Tyson made a bad judgement call when he said that, by the looks of it, Ray seemed like he was not in his element. Which was why when Dwight told Tyson that he shouldn’t judge a gangster by their looks because their actual strength is in their mind, I sort of sided with Dwight. But when I heard Ray say 80 percent, I just laughed out loud, because what’s the basis for demanding that much? It’s so stupid. Going back to the conversation, if Ray is dumb, Dwight does something that’s equally dumb. He accuses Ray of abducting Bill. Since Ray has nothing to do with it, he gets offended and lashes out at Dwight. Before Ray and Dwight can clear the air, Cole and his henchmen show up at Bubbles and open fire at Dwight. Almost everyone manages to get out of there unscathed, including Cole, but this attack somehow causes Ray to assume that Dwight is the one who ordered the hit on him.
As Dwight, Bigfoot, and Tyson head back to Tulsa, we get a brief scene between Mitch and Cleo, who seem to be planning to leave this whole business in the rearview mirror and keep going wherever the road takes them. I mean, yeah, sure, that makes sense, because why should they spend their youth on a business that might lead them to jail? Goodie gets word of Armand’s death, and it seems he died by suicide. Firstly, there’s not a lot of info on Armand to even speculate, and secondly, this feels like a cheap way of concluding Armand’s arc because maybe the actor who plays the character, Max Casella, didn’t want to return for the third season. In addition to all, Dwight tries to reconnect with Ray, but he doesn’t receive Dwight’s call and instead smiles menacingly at the camera, as if he has gotten Dwight under his thumb. Has he, though? Also, is Ray really so idiotic that he thought that that assassination attempt was orchestrated by Dwight even though he was the one ducking behind the table with Ray? I don’t know, man. We are 6 episodes in, and, apart from Jeremiah, none of the antagonists seem solid. Both Musso and Ray are really annoying, and even if their journeys come to an end in this season itself, their presence in this series will feel like a waste of time, at least in my opinion. If you have any thoughts on the same, feel free to share them in the comments section below.
