TL;DR: The Season 3 finale of Tulsa King gives Dwight Manfredi his most explosive showdown yet, leading an all-out assault on the Dunmire compound to rescue his sister and end the war once and for all. With a rare Stallone performance that balances brutality and heart, Samuel L. Jackson stealing scenes like he’s collecting trophies, and a bloody payoff years in the making, this finale solidifies Tulsa King as one of TV’s most entertaining crime dramas. Intense, stylish, emotional, and deeply satisfying.
Tulsa King Season 3
Every season of television has one moment where the show stops flirting with chaos and commits to absolute, full-throttle mayhem. For Tulsa King Season 3, that moment arrives like a steel-toed boot to the teeth. This finale doesn’t tiptoe; it doesn’t negotiate; it doesn’t even pretend to sip water before sprinting a marathon. It dives head-first into straight-up mob warfare, lights a match, and invites the audience to roast marshmallows over the Dunmire family’s flaming empire.
And as someone who grew up watching Stallone action movies on scratched Blockbuster DVDs — the kind that made the VCR wheeze like it was developing asthma — this finale scratched an itch I forgot I had. Season 3 has been building toward a reckoning, and the finale finally unleashes Stallone’s Dwight Manfredi in full General mode, with the calm ruthlessness of a man who has already planned where each enemy will be buried.
Welcome to Tulsa King at its wildest, funniest, and most explosively satisfying.
Dwight’s Bad Morning: When a Missing Bedspread Means Somebody’s Getting Shot
The episode kicks off like a classic mob movie gut-punch. Dwight wakes up expecting a coffee, a quiet morning, maybe a gentle argument about campaign politics. Instead, his sister Joanne’s room looks like a hotel suite after checkout. Bed made. Curtains tidy. No sister. And the moment Dwight mutters that single syllable of profanity, you can feel the temperature of the room shift like winter just rolled into Tulsa’s zip code.
This show knows exactly how to weaponize tension. Kidnapping stories can often feel procedural, but here it hits hard because Joanne has always been Dwight’s anchor — the one person whose judgment he submits to without argument. And Annabella Sciorra brings so much steel to Joanne that watching her get captured feels like watching someone manhandle a national treasure.
But Jeremiah Dunmire doesn’t care about national treasures. He cares about winning the distillery war he started, and he thinks dangling Joanne from a metaphorical cliff will force Dwight to surrender. The man clearly hasn’t read the handbook on how to deal with mob bosses. Rule one: never touch their siblings unless you have a death wish or a plot device removing all your fears.
Joanne, for her part, handles the kidnapping with the kind of dry contempt my aunt used to reserve for telemarketers. Jeremiah offers her coffee, claims he’s never hit a woman, rambles about his mother’s moral teachings — and she looks at him like she’s grading his midterm essay and he’s currently failing with a 42 percent.
When she calmly tells him he’s already lost, I felt the same electric satisfaction I get every time a video game boss realizes I’ve brought a rocket launcher to a sword fight.
Cole Dunmire’s Turn: The Most Unlikely Redemption Arc, and Yet…
Cole Dunmire has spent most of this season trapped between loyalty, fear, and the kind of generational trauma that makes family therapy bills spike. Watching him find Joanne tied up like a bargaining chip — only to immediately free her gag and offer water — finally cracks something in him. And Beau Knapp plays it beautifully, giving Cole that glassy-eyed, exhausted energy of a man waking up from a lifelong fever dream.
His decision to switch sides is the first real curveball of the episode. Not because it’s unbelievable — the writing has paved the road — but because it adds a critical layer to the final battle. Cole isn’t just switching teams. He’s defecting from a legacy of hate and violence because he’s seen where Jeremiah’s path ends. And unlike most sons in Southern crime families I’ve seen in media, he doesn’t want to inherit a kingdom built on scorched earth and bad whiskey.
His map of the Dunmire compound becomes the key to everything, and it’s the only moment in the finale where everyone stops shouting long enough to realize that sometimes survival comes from the unlikeliest ally.
Samuel L. Jackson Steals the Episode Like He’s Auditioning for NOLA King
There’s no polite way to say this: every time Samuel L. Jackson appears as Russell, the show instantly becomes fifty percent better, like someone pressed a button labeled Boost Charisma.
His bromance with Dwight might be my favorite subplot of the season. Watching him promise the kind of retribution that only Samuel L. Jackson can verbalize — poetic threats designed to insult your ancestors — is worth a subscription fee all by itself.
When Dwight tries to politely send him away to avoid further bloodshed, Russell responds with the stubborn affection of a friend who refuses to leave the bar even after last call. And honestly, I would trust this man in any firefight, apocalypse, or Black Friday sale stampede.
The Assault on the Dunmire Compound: Tulsa King Finally Goes Full Mob-Warfare
This is the moment the finale becomes cinema.
Dwight’s army — a Frankenstein blend of casino guys, neighborhood allies, and Bigfoot’s gaggle of refrigerator-shaped cousins — rolls toward Jeremiah’s compound under cover of night. Stallone’s Dwight has always been a strategist at heart, and here he orchestrates the attack like a conductor leading a symphony of controlled chaos.
I don’t know who decided to give Bigfoot’s crew grenade launchers, but I would like to personally thank them. The first explosion hits with the comedic timing of a Looney Tunes gag and the destructive power of a Michael Bay daydream. Jeremiah, mid-rant, has just enough time to shout What the hell?! before the world erupts around him like karma finally showed up with receipts.
The battle is sharp, fast, and shockingly organized. Gas canisters roll across floors. Russell and Mitch sweep hallways like seasoned tacticians. Tyson abandons his suit for tactical gear, finally leaning into his role as Dwight’s protégé. And for once in this show’s history, the team doesn’t lose a single soldier. It’s surgical, brutal, and deeply satisfying.
And then Dwight finds Jeremiah.
The Burning Manfredi Moment: Revenge Served at 2,000 Degrees
The Dwight–Jeremiah confrontation is the moment the entire season has been leading toward. There’s no monologue. No cat-and-mouse game. No drawn-out negotiation.
Dwight beats him nearly senseless, ties him up, and raises him on a winch like a man about to demonstrate Old Testament justice.
His speech about the Jesus lizard — the one that can run across water until one wrong step sends it into the jaws of a predator — is pure mob-myth poetry. And Jeremiah, bound and trembling, realizes too late that he is the lizard and Dwight is the predator waiting beneath.
When Dwight burns him alive, the scene walks a razor-thin line between brutality and catharsis. It’s horrifying. It’s righteous. And it’s the only ending that fits the season’s moral logic: Jeremiah lit this war. Dwight ended it.
The Aftermath: Whiskey, Permits, Deals, and One Last Threat from the Feds
The episode could have coasted on the battle alone, but the aftermath pulls everything together beautifully.
The whole crew toasts their success like they’ve just finished a heist movie. Russell gives a speech that feels like a warm, bourbon-soaked hug. Dwight and Margaret share a moment that feels like foreshadowing for Season 4 political chaos. Mitch gets coaxed onstage to sing because this man will do anything for Dwight except stop complaining.
But then Special Agent Musso arrives like a jump scare in a suit. He gives Dwight the federal permits he’s been chasing all season — distillery dreams unlocked — in exchange for the drive containing Deacon’s confession.
It’s classic mob storytelling. Every victory comes with a new chain attached.
As the finale fades to credits, Dwight returns to his seat, kisses Margaret, raises a glass, and enjoys a rare moment of peace. The General won the war… but the next one is already simmering.
