Gangster narratives are a dime a dozen. From The Sopranos to The Wire, The Godfather to Goodfellas, creating a premise that feels unique is arguably the hardest challenge a creative faces, with seemingly every facet of the genre being tackled over the last 60-plus years. However, never one to disappoint, Taylor Sheridan manages to smash this target with Tulsa King, which takes a fish-out-of-water approach to the crime genre by placing a big-city gangster in the rural city of Tulsa. While Paramount+’s MobLand leans into the ruthless power struggles of organized crime, Tulsa King finds its appeal in watching an old-school gangster build an unlikely crew, balancing mob violence with Stallone’s comic charm.
With Sylvester Stallone leading the show in what feels like a victory lap at the twilight of an exceptional career, Tulsa King is easily one of Paramount‘s best shows and one of Sheridan’s most impressive achievements, even if he will always be best known for Yellowstone. With Samuel L. Jackson‘s spin-off Frisco King now set to premiere on Paramount+ on December 18, there is fresh reason to revisit Dwight’s criminal empire. The series launches with two episodes before continuing weekly on Fridays, following Jackson’s Russell Lee Washington Jr. from Tulsa King Season 3 into suburban Texas. Its first teaser features Russell plotting with Dwight, making the original series the natural starting point before this new king arrives.
What Is ‘Tulsa King’ About?
Tulsa King‘s 30 episodes, spanning 3 seasons, follow Stallone’s Dwight Manfredi, a mafia capo, after he is released from a long prison sentence. Rather than being welcomed back into the mob after refusing to cooperate with the police, he is viewed as a dinosaur by the younger head of the family, Chickie (Domenick Lombardozzi) and expelled to Tulsa under the pretense of creating a new revenue source. What immediately makes the audience respect Dwight is how he recognizes the expulsion for what it is and turns it to his advantage, turning Tulsa into his own mini New York, complete with his own crew and a legal marijuana store that serves as a money-laundering front.
Collider Exclusive · Action Hero Quiz Which Action Hero Would Be Your Perfect Partner? Rambo · James Bond · Indiana Jones · John McClane · Ethan Hunt
Five legends. Five completely different ways of getting out alive — with style, with muscle, with charm, with luck, or with a plan so intricate it probably shouldn’t work. Ten questions will reveal which action hero was built to have your back.
🎖️Rambo
🍸James Bond
🏺Indiana Jones
🔧John McClane
🎭Ethan Hunt
01
You’re dropped into a dangerous situation with no warning. What do you need most from a partner? The first few seconds tell you everything about who belongs beside you.
02
You have to get somewhere dangerous, fast. How do you travel? How you get there is half the mission.
03
You’re pinned down and outnumbered. What does your ideal partner do? This is when you find out what someone is really made of.
04
The mission is paused. You have one evening to decompress. What does your partner suggest? Who someone is when the pressure drops is who they actually are.
05
How do you prefer your partner to communicate mid-mission? Good communication is the difference between partners and a liability.
06
Your enemy is powerful, well-resourced, and has the upper hand. How should your partner approach them? The approach to the enemy defines the partnership.
07
Things go badly wrong and you’re captured. What do you trust your partner to do? Who someone is when you need them most is the only thing that matters.
08
What does your ideal partner bring to the table that you couldn’t replace? A great partner fills the gap you didn’t know you had.
09
Every partnership has a cost. Which of these can you live with? No one comes without baggage. The question is whether you can carry it together.
10
It’s the final moment. Everything is on the line. What do you need from your partner right now? The last question is the most honest one.
Your Partner Has Been Assigned Your Perfect Partner Is…
Your answers have pointed to one action hero above all others. This is the person built to have your back — for better or considerably, spectacularly worse.
Rambo
Your partner doesn’t talk much, doesn’t need to, and will have assessed every threat in your immediate environment before you’ve finished your first sentence. John Rambo is not a man of plans or politics — he is a force of nature shaped by survival, loyalty, and a capacity for endurance that goes beyond anything training can produce. He will not leave you behind. He has never left anyone behind who deserved to come home. What you get with Rambo is the most capable, most quietly ferocious partner imaginable — one who has been through things that would have broken anyone else, and who chose to keep going anyway. You’ll never need to ask if he has your back. You’ll just know.
James Bond
Your partner will arrive perfectly dressed, perfectly briefed, and with a cover story so convincing it’ll take you a moment to remember what’s actually true. James Bond is the most professionally dangerous person in any room he enters — and the most disarmingly charming, which is the point. He operates in a world of layers, where nothing is what it appears and every advantage is used without apology. You’ll never be bored. You’ll occasionally be furious. But when it matters — when the mission is genuinely on the line and the margin for error has collapsed to nothing — Bond is exactly the partner you want. He has survived things that have no business being survivable. He does it with style. That is not nothing.
Indiana Jones
Your partner will know the history, the language, the cultural context, and exactly why the thing everyone else is ignoring is actually the most important thing in the room. Indiana Jones is brilliant, reckless, and occasionally impossible — but he is also one of the most resourceful, most genuinely knowledgeable partners you could find yourself beside. He approaches every situation with a scholar’s eye and a brawler’s instinct, which is an unusual combination and a remarkably effective one. He hates snakes and gets personally attached to objects of historical significance, both of which will slow you down at least once. It doesn’t matter. What Indy brings is irreplaceable — and the adventures you’ll have together will be the kind people write books about. Assuming you survive them.
John McClane
Your partner was not supposed to be here. He does not have the right equipment, the right information, or anything approaching the right odds. He has a sarcastic remark and an absolute refusal to accept that the situation is as bad as it looks. John McClane is the greatest accidental hero in the history of action cinema — a man whose superpower is stubbornness, whose contingency plan is improvisation, and whose capacity to absorb punishment and keep moving would be alarming if it weren’t so useful. He will complain the entire time. He will make it significantly more chaotic than it needed to be. And he will absolutely, unconditionally, without question come through when it counts. Yippee-ki-yay.
Ethan Hunt
Your partner has already run seventeen scenarios by the time you’ve finished reading the briefing, and the plan he’s settled on involves at least two things that should be physically impossible. Ethan Hunt operates at the absolute edge of human capability — technically, physically, and intellectually — and he brings the same relentless precision to protecting his partners that he brings to dismantling organisations that shouldn’t exist. He is not easy to know and he will never fully tell you everything. But he will carry the weight of the mission so completely, so absolutely, that your job is simply to trust him — and the remarkable thing is that trusting him always turns out to be the right call. The mission will be impossible. He will complete it anyway.
Most of the comedy throughout Tulsa King comes from the contrast between Dwight’s hardened criminal outlook and the more civilized lives the residents of Tulsa lead. Characters such as Bodhi (Martin Starr) and Grace (McKenna Quigley Harrington), who work in the store, are shocked by Dwight’s bold dismissal of the law, yet reluctantly begin to embrace his approach over the course of the series. Other characters, such as Tyson (Jay Will), jump at the chance to be a part of something more dangerous and rebellious than suburban life, creating a fascinating dynamic between the young Tyson and veteran Dwight. Tulsa King manages to maintain tension by giving Dwight enemies from New York and within Tulsa, as he begins to separate himself from Chickie’s family, which keeps Tulsa King feeling like a classic mob show that has been revitalized for modern times. It also allows for fantastic antagonists such as Neal McDonough‘s Cal and Frank Grillo‘s Bill in later seasons, who present both strategic and physical threats to Dwight’s operations.
‘Tulsa King’ Embraces Sylvester Stallone’s Gravitas and Experience
Sylvester Stallone has been entertaining audiences for decades, going back to the Academy Award-winning Rockyand Tulsa King makes an effort to reward Stallone by allowing him to play a character who embodies the idea of a veteran who is always the coolest in the room. Stallone’s deep, charming tone gives the character a level of gravitas, and quips such as “when I play my hand, you won’t see it coming” elevate the character’s intellect, reminding audiences that Stallone is far more than just a physical presence despite his bodybuilder image. Yet, there are still plenty of scenes where Dwight beats up his foes when words fail, allowing Stallone to, at times, reignite his action hero persona.
Some may find it ridiculous at times just how awesome Dwight gets to be, yet Tulsa King does well to hang a lantern on these kinds of issues by consistently acknowledging the character’s, and therefore Stallone’s, age. Even when he is sleeping with a detective or flirting with a ranch owner, it is pointed out that he is no spring chicken, allowing the audience to have a bit of fun and suspend their disbelief at just how unbeatable a force Stallone is throughout Tulsa King. Stallone can laugh at himself, so his hero moments become more appreciated.
Tulsa King‘s drama-comedy approach may lead some to consider it a guilty pleasure, as it isn’t the deepest or most complex show on television. But Tulsa King uses that to its advantage and invites the audience to simply enjoy watching a gangster take control of his life when others seek to put him in a box. In the end, this is exactly why the genre has been a favorite for so many decades, as audiences love to watch a character gain and wield agency. It may not make you want to move to Tulsa, but Tulsa King will have you binging episode after episode, and by the end, you may just believe you can be a king yourself.
Release Date
November 13, 2022
Network
Paramount+
Showrunner
Dave Erickson, Terence Winter
Directors
Allen Coulter, Benjamin Semanoff, David Semel, Guy Ferland, Joshua Marston, Kevin Dowling, Lodge Kerrigan, Jim McKay
Writers
Joseph Riccobene, David Flebotte, William Schmidt, Taylor Elmore, Tom Sierchio, Regina Corrado, Stephen Scaia, Terence Winter
