How does the Deadwood movie end?

It took HBO thirteen years to give Deadwood an ending, which is longer than the actual gold rush lasted, and somehow the movie still managed to stick the landing. If you've been putting off the 2019 film because you couldn't handle saying goodbye to Al Swearengen — same, and also, buckle up.

The setup: ten years later, same bastard

The film jumps a decade past the series finale to 1889, as Deadwood celebrates South Dakota's statehood and everyone's least favorite mining tycoon rolls back into town. George Hearst is now a U.S. senator from California, and he wants Charlie Utter's land for a power line project. Charlie, a man of impeccable taste, tells him to pound sand. So Hearst has him killed, because character development is for other people.

From there, the dominoes:

• A very pregnant Trixie publicly heckles Hearst in the thoroughfare, which finally tips him off that she — not the murdered Jen — was the one who shot him ten years ago;
• Hearst tries to use that knowledge as leverage over Al, who is in no condition to knife his way out of problems anymore;
• Alma Ellsworth swans back into town and outbids Hearst at auction for Charlie's claim, an all-timer of a rich-widow power move;
• Bullock arrests Hearst for Charlie's murder, and the town nearly beats the senator to death in the street — communal catharsis, frontier edition.

Hearst survives, because he's a real historical figure and also because evil in Deadwood never fully loses; it just gets escorted out of frame, humiliated.

The wedding, the baby, the deathbed

The heart of the ending isn't the plot — it's Al, who is dying of liver failure after several decades of treating whiskey as a food group. Ian McShane told The Hollywood Reporter:

"You don't drink like Al does without some cost."

While Al fades, Trixie and Sol finally marry at the Gem — after the birth of their son, Joshua, because this town has never once done things in the correct order. Al leaves the saloon to Trixie. Jane and Joanie get their reunion. Snow falls on Deadwood for the first time in the show's history, which is the kind of quiet visual poetry that makes you forgive the thirteen-year wait. Almost.

The final scene

Trixie sits at Al's deathbed and begins reciting the Lord's Prayer — "Our Father, which art in heaven" — and Al, with his dying breath, delivers the last line of the entire saga:

"Let him fucking stay there."

Perfect. No notes. The camera finds his hand in hers, his finger twitches once, and we're out. Creator David Milch, who wrote the film while battling Alzheimer's, had once said of endings that "the biggest lie is that we're entitled to a meaningful conclusion" — and then went ahead and wrote one anyway. Some lies are worth telling beautifully.