Sixty-one people die in this episode alone, bringing the season’s body count to 103. Oh, Prohibition.

We all knew it would come to this – for all of Boardwalk Empire’s considerable highs and begrudging lows, the season three finale was exactly the sort of bloodbath everyone has been waiting for.

It wasn’t a perfect episode of television, but for a show as complicated as Boardwalk Empire – generally catering to its own rules rather than audience expectations – “Margate Sands” managed to come full circle and end the season on a high note, despite nearly every character being left in relative limbo.

As is evident in the opening assassination montage – a gangster movie classic, keep that in mind – full scale war has broken out in Atlantic City. Indeed, this is the war Sicilian upstart Gyp Rossetti has been promising us since the earliest episodes of season three, and now we are finally seeing it start to play out.

Watching the violence unfold is great, especially as it’s interspersed with the mayor of Atlantic City trying to answer to citizens’ fears. As great as it all is, it calls into question the pacing of the entire season.

If we’ve known that this war has been coming for so long, why did we only get to watch it play out in episodes 11 and 12? The feelings of fear and paranoia that these two episodes generated helped to define a story that almost lost its way somewhere around mid-season.

As a standalone episode, the level of condensed chaos that “Margate Sands” achieves is truly wonderful, however. Through Jimmy Darmody and later through Richard Harrow and other characters, the recently concluded first World War has long been a backdrop to the this series, and here, we see the malaise of war setting in on both Gyp and Nucky Thompson’s men as they struggle for the city.

By the end of the war, Nucky has once again risen to the top of the heap, coming out ahead of his competition, although not without his own scars. Whenever Nucky goes into full strategy mode he is nearly indestructible, and he doesn’t fail to deliver in his final blow to both Gyp and everyone else who tried to use him over the course of season three.

After amassing a small army between Chalky White and Al Capone, it turns out Nucky’s ace-in-the-hole was the Overholt distillery he took in the deal with Andrew Mellon. In the first of many pay-offs, we see how the whole Gaston Means / Harry Daugherty subplot – relatively boring though it was – ties into the main story arc for Nucky.

Nucky offers the distillery to Arnold Rothstein, in exchange for Rothstein’s help in getting Joe Masseria to remove his support from Gyp, stripping him of most of his forces.

Rothstein and Masseria aren’t off the hook, though. Nucky orders Chalky and Al to murder all of Masseria’s troops as they flee Atlantic City and then directs Andrew Mellon to prosecutor Esther Randolph, indicating to her that he wants Arnold Rothstein arrested for illegally obtaining and using the Overholt distillery (a double sided attack: Now Rothstein has gained nothing and is likely to be embattled by Esther).

Altogether, this is the classic Nucky masterstroke, blowing down all of his enemies in one fell swoop. It’s ingenious and dirty, as well as noticeably more ruthless than ever before. By the end of “Margate Sands” we have the full vision of gangster Nucky – long gone are the days of the smiling man in the public eye. Nucky is done with the life he knew, choosing instead to skulk into the shadows like the creep he has become, the real classic gangster that defined crime by the mid-1920s.

(Remember: Season three began on New Year’s Eve of 1923, and judging by the weather, it ended only a few months later, so we still haven’t reached the height of gangster classicism).

Nucky is very open with Eli Thompson about the kind of man (and businessman) he wants to become: more reclusive, more mistrustful and certainly more cruel. It’s left to the viewers to put this all together, but if you take everything that’s happened – especially the death of Billie Kent which, suspiciously, was never mentioned again – all the near-death experiences and toxic feelings of guilt have worn Nucky down.

He’ll always be smarter than men like Gyp, but that doesn’t preclude him from being as violent. Even the way that Nucky disposes of Gyp is indicative of this change. Instead of giving Gyp the respect of seeing Nucky kill him, Gyp’s right-hand man Tonino Sandrelli stabs him in the back as a payment for Nucky sparing his life.

This final act says as much about Nucky as it does about Gyp. Gyp has been a formidable adversary only because he is so out of touch with civility. Despite what Masseria has tried to teach him, Gyp is pure id, fueled solely by his animalistic desires and impulsions.

“There is only so much you can teach a person,” Rothstein says in another scene, referring to Lucky Luciano’s similar inability to be civilized. Masseria nods in agreement, and not soon after, withdraws his support from Gyp.

Gyp’s lack of control throughout season three has a direct implication in Tonino’s final act. Weeks ago, when Gyp killed Tonino’s cousin over a petty argument, I put forward the assertion that Gyp’s social failings would be his downfall. Obviously, Tonino had no other choice but to kill Gyp, yet there’s something about his expression when he kills his boss that tells us he isn’t entirely broken up about stabbing the man in the back and then in the heart.

Gyp’s downfall plays out perfectly in what is arguably the season’s greatest sequence of events, neatly wrapping up Gyp, Gillian Darmody and Richard Harrow’s plots.

Throughout the season we’ve seen the relationship between Gyp and Gillian grown, although there was always the expectation that the pair would become partners in crime in the war against Nucky.

With Gyp taking up residence in Gillian’s home against her wishes, the whole situation becomes a lot more complicated than that. What evolves between the pair on “Margate Sands” is an incredible power struggle played out in Gyp’s warped bedroom fantasies.

Gyp wants to use Gillian for his own desires while she merely wants the man out of her and her grandson Tommy’s life. When she enters Gyp’s room prepared to cull him into bed, the strife begins. Neither person is ever comfortable in the scenario, as both attempt to figure out what the other needs – Gyp is constantly working toward being strangled, while Gillian is trying to follow his scattershot sexual urges long enough to get him into the bed, where she can overdose him with heroin like she did earlier in the season with Roger McAllister.

Bobby Cannavale gives his last great performance as Gyp in this scene, using his whole body to let it be known that he is the purest manifestation of the id. Only moments later, this attribute is almost the death of him, as Gillian makes an attempt on his life. Turning the tables on her and injecting the heroin into her arm, Gyp is drawn away before he can truly finish her off, leaving her alive to cause trouble in future seasons.

Gyp watches in frustration as Masseria’s men leave – he may have survived Gillian, but his impulsions and failure to complete his mission for Masseria will be his downfall anyway.

At this point, Richard explodes into the Artemis Club to show his true colors – yes, he’s a killer, but Richard did not go out for blood so much as he went out to save Tommy. Nucky’s endgame was pretty fantastic, but there is very little as satisfying as watching Richard go into full Terminator-mode and take down Gyp’s most loyal subordinates.

So, yes, this is also Richard at his finest – the silent, violent, seemingly remorseless killer. He’s spent the entirety of season three trying to domesticate himself, having thought he’d paid all his debts when he killed Manny Horvits in episode one.

Here, though, we see that even our most scarred hero has to re-enter the warzone to get what he wants. It’s a bit heavy-handed when Richard returns with Tommy to Julia’s house covered in blood, leaving her drunk father to tell him never to bring the war “home.” That being said, the fantastic cinematography of his rescue attempt alongside Gillian and Gyp’s struggle makes for some seriously engrossing television.

Elsewhere, we find that Lucky and Meyer Lansky’s heroin trade plot thread amounted to nothing more than giving Arnold a bargaining chip for convincing Masseria to withdraw support. It’s pretty clear from how the scene plays out that a rift is being drawn between Lucky and Arnold, but the heroin subplot throughout the season still feels like a load of wasted time just to create that bit of drama.

(Quick history lesson: don’t worry about Lucky, he goes on to be one of the most successful and feared gangsters in history. As for Rothstein, who’s most famous for supposedly fixing the 1919 World Series – well, no spoilers here, but you might want to go look at his Wikipedia page if you get a chance)

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but even Margaret Schroeder’s much maligned women’s health subplot paid off in a more interesting way. All season, we’ve been left wondering why we should care that Margaret is interested in supporting sex and pregnancy education for women. Although it’s a very short two scenes, the answer is quite interesting.

After the earlier revelation that Margaret is pregnant with Owen Sleater’s baby, we now see Margaret – who has moved to New York City to live in the Irish slum – entering a doctor’s office seeking an abortion. It’s a devilishly interesting amalgamation of all her problems, mixing her leaving Nucky, the pregnancy, Owen’s death and her women’s rights crusade into one harsh concoction.

We see that she did indeed go through with the procedure, but has come out transformed in more ways than one. When Nucky arrives in New York City to get her back, Margaret won’t have anything to do with him. It seems as though he may have lost her for good, but again, we’ll have to wait until next season to find out.

In the end, we are left with more questions than answers. What we do know is that Gyp is dead, and that this chapter of Boardwalk Empire is closed. Every other character, meanwhile, has been left dangling mid-sentence, some even mid-transformation.

The big question comes in how season four will be structured. There are a lot of lessons that can be learned from the good and the bad in season three, the most obvious one being the somewhat jilted pacing.

Moreover, I worry that Boardwalk Empire is due to fall into a rinse and repeat pattern per season. The genius of the first two seasons was how the stable cast of characters evolved, some from small-timers to dangerous allies, other from heroes to enemies, vice versa and so on. The introduction of Gyp in season three gave the show a fresh start, but now that he’s dead, there’s a large character gap to fill between Gyp and Owen.

The worst thing a show like Boardwalk Empire could do at this point is ignore the characters they already have – as it did this season with Chalky, Meyer, Lucky and even Al for most of the season – and just start pumping out a new villain every year, Dexter-style (and Dexter has been lame for a while now).

Season four is several months away, mind you, so we have plenty of time to ponder our characters’ collective fates.

From what creator Terrance Winter has revealed so far, next season will come with another time jump, so expect the boardwalk to be an entirely different place when we return.

Until then, just remember, you can’t be half a gangster.

So don’t even try.

Tidbits:

-WHY NO NELSON VAN ALDEN?? Where’s Michael Shannon when you need him, honestly? Sure, the character didn’t fit into the episode, but maybe a little check-in would be nice. But oh, well. I guess I’ll just have to wait to see Shannon kick some Superman ass as General Zod in Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel. I suppose that isn’t too far off from Nelson, right?

-I’m going to reiterate something here – we better see a lot more of Chalky, Meyer, Lucky and Al next season. This is the ONLY show on television where these awesome (mostly) historical figures are series regulars, and each character could carry their own show if need be. Hopefully, as Boardwalk Empire moves into the new era of big gangs all these guys will start to stand out more (Yes, I know Chalky was a not a real person, but there were people like him, and he deserves to be on the list).

-And now, the shocking conclusion to our season-long body count. Shit gets intense here, boys and girls. Let me put down some ground rules here, very quickly. This is an ESTIMATION of the number of people that were killed on season three – I’ve done my best to be exact but, especially on this episode, you can’t always be sure if the person you saw get shot died. That being said, I’ll be counting all deaths that we see onscreen, either when they happened or soon after (the guy on the beach in the opening montage, he counts). Furthermore, if a scene occurs and it’s unclear the number of dead, I’ll use dialogue clues from the episode to form a count, as you’ll see. So let’s go… (Reminder: last week’s overall season count: 42)

—Opening Montage: In the opening montage, as I said, we can’t be sure every single person died that we see get shot, but for sake of argument (and becomes they were mostly violent executions) we’ll count each one. In that opening montage alone, there are 21 murders shown onscreen. The reporters chasing the mayor mention something about “11 bodies” already piling up, but we’ll assume that those are included in the 21 we see die onscreen. I can comfortably say that this scene earns the award for most deaths shown onscreen (and accounted for) in a single scene on this season and likely in the entire series.

—Abortion: Earlier in the season, I counted a woman’s miscarriage as a death, so we’ll count Margaret’s abortion as a death as well (put your politics aside, for the moment – the woman is an Irish Catholic in the 1920s, after all).

—Harrow: Here’s where things start to get tricky. It’s hard to follow exactly how many people Richard kills when he invades the Artemis Club, so we have to use some other clues. First, when Nucky and Eli show up later, the camera pans over six dead bodies. Along with that, we also count the guy that Richard shot in Tommy’s room, who Nucky and Eli do not see. What’s confusing here is that Gyp states earlier in the episode that he only has nine loyal men other than Masseria’s army, and Masseria’s army bolts out of the whore house before Richard arrives, gun in hand. That’s all well and good, but Gyp is seen escaping with two other cronies while Tonino hides in the closet. If you do the math, adding the three survivors to the seven we see dead, then Gyp actually had 10 guys, not nine. Then again, maybe he wasn’t counting Tonino, but why wouldn’t he? And why would he lie to Masseria and say nine if he was only hiding one more guy anyways? Or maybe just one of Masseria’s men stuck behind? Regardless, we’ll count this scene as seven dead, given the bodies we can actually see, and just assume some discrepancy or miscommunication occurred. Gyp is kind of a fool, as we know.

—Massacre in the Woods: Things get even trickier here. Much like the Tabor Heights massacre, there’s no real way to watch this scene and count all the bodies – it just wasn’t filmed that way. I mean, we’ve got Al pointing a Gatling gun at a caravan of cars in the dark, so what do we do? Well, just like Tabor Heights, the answer is in the dialogue. On the episode after that first massacre, someone in Tabor Heights mentions the number of people who died, so we were able to get the number right and correct our season-long count. Here, we have our good buddy Gyp, who earlier in the episode lets Masseria know that there are exactly 31 of the big boss’ soldiers left alive. After that conversation, we know we can count anyone else of Masseria’s who dies as one of those 31 goons. In the woods massacre, the pervading logic would be that Chalky and Al kill every last man – we even see a survivor being dragged from his car and put down with the rest. Taking all that into consideration, I feel very comfortable granting this scene with award of most kills overall (but unaccounted for), at 31. Feels strange, doesn’t it? As if they know I’m making this count, and they all want to make sure I get it absolutely right. I mean, there wasn’t really a need for Gyp to explain the exact number of men he had left unless they wanted my kill count to be right, right?

—Gyp: And finally, who could forget Gyp, the last man to die in season three? That’s quite the dubious honor. If you watch his last scene with Masseria, it’s clear that the boss has already given up on his one-time prodigy. The way in which Masseria fixes the clock is a blatantly passive aggressive move, and incredibly strong despite its simplicity. The fact that it goes over Gyp’s head is great too. Not long after, Gyp is lying dead on the beach because of his own incompetence, and while I’m happy with how his story played out in the final episode, I’m not entirely sure if I was done with the character. In fact, of all the deaths this season, I have the biggest problem with Gyp’s passing (Owen is a strong contender, purely because his death only served to further Margaret’s character and did nothing for Owen’s story at all). We spent a lot of time with Gyp this season, and yes, I understand that he was never destined to be anything more than a violent monster who needed to die, but really, his performance on the last episode left me wanting more. Maybe that’s a good thing though. All right, anyway, that’s one final death for the ledger, which means…

-Incredibly, this episode alone had a body count of: 61

-and…

-This season’s body count, in TOTAL: 103

Boardwalk Empire, for that alone, I salute you.