Boardwalk Empire: what happened to Arnold Rothstein between season 4 and 5?

Season 4 ends in 1924. Season 5 opens in 1931. In between, Rothstein was murdered — and the show didn't have to invent a thing, because it happened in real life.

The time jump

Michael Stuhlbarg played Rothstein across the first four seasons as the silkiest operator on the show — the New York kingpin who bankrolled bootleggers, mentored Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky, and never raised his voice. When the final season leaped to the dying days of Prohibition, history caught up with half the cast. Rothstein didn't survive the gap.

How the real Rothstein died

In September 1928, Rothstein dropped roughly $320,000 in a marathon three-day poker game — and refused to pay, insisting the game was fixed. On November 4, 1928, he was called to a meeting at the Park Central Hotel in Manhattan and shot in the stomach.

He died two days later, aged 46, and stayed true to the gambler's code to the end: he refused to tell police who pulled the trigger. George McManus, who hosted the game, stood trial for the murder and was acquitted.

Case closed. Officially, never solved.

• September 1928 — loses roughly $320,000 over three days of poker and calls the game rigged.
• November 4, 1928 — shot at the Park Central Hotel.
• November 6, 1928 — dies at 46 without naming his killer. It was also Election Day, and he was sitting on a stack of winning bets on Herbert Hoover he never collected.
• 1929 — McManus acquitted; no one else was ever convicted.

How season 5 handles it

Rothstein haunts the final season through Margaret. Back in season 4, she had fed him a stock tip, and he repaid her with an apartment — doing business under the alias "Abe Redstone" at the brokerage where she worked. In season 5, with Rothstein dead and Wall Street in post-Crash chaos, his widow Carolyn discovers the arrangement and threatens to drag Margaret into court. Margaret takes the problem to Nucky and flips it, engineering a short-selling play that settles Carolyn's claim and makes Nucky a fortune.

Rothstein's last con paid out three years after his funeral.

The gambler to the end

The show gave him a line that doubles as his epitaph. Advising Nucky to settle a dilemma with a coin toss, Rothstein explains in season 2:

"When it's in the air, you'll know which side you're hoping for."

For the record: Rothstein was the real-life model for Meyer Wolfsheim in The Great Gatsby — the shadowy gambler credited with fixing the 1919 World Series. The real Rothstein was widely believed to have done exactly that. He was never charged with it, either.