The Big Picture
- Avon Barksdale rules the streets of Baltimore in The Wire, but a major character death in the sixth episode of Season 2 alters the trajectory of the show.
- Avon's nephew, D'Angelo Barksdale, tries to break away from his family's criminal legacy, leading to a betrayal by Avon's second-in-command, Stringer Bell.
- After D'Angelo's death, the dynamics of the show shift as Stringer takes control of the Barksdale Organization, and a power struggle ensues with Avon, impacting the remainder of the series.
In 2002, David Simon and HBO partnered to deliver one of the most accurate and thrilling journeys into street crime, drug dealing, the citywide police force trying to keep them in check, and the corruption that ran rampant in City Hall. The Wire, along with shows like Oz and The Sopranos, made HBO the gold standard for gritty original programming.
Simon, a former Baltimore Sun reporter, brought an authentic feel to the stories set in the port city. His characters were unforgettable, including Stringer Bell (Idris Elba), loose cannon Omar Little (played by the late, great Michael K. Williams), Avon Barksdale (Wood Harris), and Avon's nephew D'Angelo Barksdale (Lawrence Gilliard Jr.). The cops hunting them down are just as compelling, among them Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West), Bunk Moreland (Wendell Pierce), and Lt. Cedric Daniels (Lance Reddick).
The game of cat and mouse clicks along at a perfectly measured place for the first season and a half, but in the sixth episode of Season 2, called "All Prologue," one of these characters is killed off, and a decades-long friendship is betrayed. Beyond that major character death, the episode alters the trajectory of the show for the rest of its five-season run.
The Wire
TV-MA
- Release Date
- June 2, 2002
- Creator
- David Simon
- Cast
- Dominic West , Lance Reddick , Wood Harris , Wendell Pierce , Clarke Peters , Michael K. Williams , Deirdre Lovejoy , J.D. Williams
- Main Genre
- Crime
- Seasons
- 5
Avon Barksdale Rules Baltimore in the Beginning of 'The Wire'
Throughout The Wire's first season, as well as into the first half of Season 2, the streets of West Baltimore are run by the biggest drug dealer in town: Avon Barksdale. He fights for control of every street corner and the prime inner-city housing projects, referred to as "the towers," so he can keep his empire thriving. Stringer Bell is his second-in-command, who ensures that everything is handled on the street and that the organization runs smoothly. Below Stringer is Avon's nephew, D'Angelo, who runs a prime piece of real estate within the projects known as "The Pit."
Avon believes in ruling with an iron fist. He isn't about to cede any of the territory he has fought so hard to claim. That typically amounts to more muscle and guns, which leads to more senseless deaths. By the finale of Season 1, Lt. Daniels and his rag-tag group of cops run the perfect wire and are able to pin some serious charges on both Avon and D'Angelo. Avon gets off easy with a sentence of only seven years, but D'Angelo ends up taking the fall for a lot of things he had nothing to do with, earning a 20-year sentence to close out the first season.
The Change in Setting for 'The Wire' Season 2 Caused Some Initial Doubts
According to Rotten Tomatoes, even though Season 2 is more well-received by critics and audiences alike, there was skepticism when the first several episodes left the mean and hardscrabble streets of West Baltimore and moved to the city's shipping docks and the plight of the longshoremen. With the first season taking the country by storm with the Barksdale, Stringer, and the drama surrounding the drug dealing in "The Towers" project buildings, there was some skepticism that having the encore begin with a key plot pivot might take away from the show's momentum. In the first episode, dead sex workers are found in a crate in a shipyard of the stevedore union. We discover it's a human trafficking racket and involves the hardcore dealings of an international crime organization headed up by a mysterious mobster known only as "the Greek" and local dock workers fronted by Francis "Frank" Sobotka (Chris Bauer).
The second proved that doubting David Simon as a showrunner is foolish. It only took him a few episodes to get the audience thoroughly invested in Sobotka, his family, and the other members of the stevedore union before mixing in the same characters from the first season that were so compelling. So what Simon manages to pull off is telling two separate stories that run parallel to each other with almost no overlap. They dovetail occasionally but expand on the old along with the new while also delivering the episode that changed the course of The Wire for the rest of the show's 5 Season run on HBO.
D'Angelo Barksdale Tries to Break Away From His Family's Criminal Legacy
Over the entirety of The Wire's first season, D'Angelo is unable to embrace a life of crime like other family members fully. Although he and his girlfriend Donette (Shamyl Brown), who is also the mother of his young son, have been staying in a nice apartment paid for by Avon, being beholden to his uncle doesn't sit well with D'Angelo. When he is arrested, he wants to make a deal with McNulty and Moreland if they can set him up with a new identity somewhere far away from the mean streets of Baltimore. However, Avon and Stringer know that D'Angelo is a weak link in their code of silence with law enforcement and will be tempted to give up information on both of them. Even though Avon tries to take care of D'Angelo in prison by getting him a cushy library gig, the younger man makes it known that he is going to distance himself from the Barksdale criminal enterprise moving forward.
When Avon gets sent to prison, Stringer Bell begins to take on a larger role in the day-to-day operations of the Barksdale crime organization. Stringer has been striving to work smarter instead of harder, reading Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations and taking macroeconomics courses at the local community college to implement aspects of supply and demand. Even with this new approach, however, Stringer and Avon butt heads over which approach is better. Avon has a propensity for violence and gunplay to maintain order, while Stringer has always wanted to engage in a more cerebral approach to making money.
Avon and D'Angelo doing time behind bars presents the perfect opportunity for Stringer to take control of the whole operation, and one of the biggest decisions he makes changes the course of The Wireover its final three seasons. Out of concern that D'Angelo will snitch to earn himself a lighter sentence, Stringer goes behind Avon's back, hiring a hitman from Washington, DC to kill D'Angelo in prison and make it look like he died by hanging. This is a turning point in the show, as Stringer ultimately usurps Avon as the man calling the shots.
Lawrence Gilliard Jr. Had Mixed Emotions On Being Killed Off a Hit Show
It has to be hard for any actor to find out that their character is being knocked off in a show. First, it's the end of a nice paycheck, but it also means you won't see the people you have formed close relationships with anymore. But being killed off a mega-hit, mega-hot HBO Sunday night show like The Wire is a double whammy. In a 2021 podcast with GeeksetPodcast.com, Gilliard spoke about what was unique about The Wire fandom and what he encounters, "The Wire fans, they'll sneak up on you. You can have anybody come up to you and talk about it. I've had lawyers come up to me (in appreciation of the D'Angelo Barksdale character)...It's such a great show and, sadly, is still very relevant to things going on now."
For a guy who has been part of arguably the biggest and craziest fandoms of all time in The Walking Dead, Gilliard is accustomed to being killed off of big shows and still has fans randomly shouting their favorite quotes on the street. The one quote that he says he gets yelled at the most is the unforgettable "Where's Wallace?" from The Wire and "Tainted Meat" from The Walking Dead. But Gilliard loved working with a young Michael B. Jordan in The Wire and saw it as his responsibility to hand down the acting lessons he had learned to the younger black actors. He still follows the careers of Jordan and other castmates like Tray Chaney, who played Malik "Poot" Carr in the first four seasons of the show. He loves how well those younger guys have done, especially Jordan, one of the most talented performers working in Hollywood.
Not surprisingly, Gilliard's favorite scene in The Wire isn't where he is strangled to death in the prison library. Instead, he told host Young Deuces that it was in the scene where he was interrogated by Bunk (Wendell Pierce) and McNulty (Dominic West) before he went to prison. He tells the two cops that what D'Angelo is isn't a choice. He was born into a life of drugs and hustling with his father and uncle, Avon. He describes it as "an empire" or a family business. "You can't run from it, you know!" He has a very real perspective on who and what his character is all about, and trying to explain to two cops was impossible. Gilliard emphasizes that despite what some fans may say, "D never snitched! That's why he went to prison! He held it down for the family." You can tell that he took his loyalty to the Barksdale drug empire seriously.
After D'Angelo's Death, 'The Wire' Changed in Several Ways
By killing D'Angelo, Stringer initiates a different way of taking care of business on The Wire. When he kills Avon's own blood, he makes a decisive power grab for control of the Barksdale Organization. Once Avon makes a sweetheart deal of his own and gets out after serving just one year, his former lieutenant has supplanted his old way of handling things. While Avon has been doing time, Stringer streamlines the business and implements a mafia-like philosophy that renders Avon's tough-guy mentality and approach almost obsolete. Beyond the shift in power dynamics, Stringer also succeeds in taking D'Angelo, the one character who demonstrates some kind of redemptive core values, off the board.
This move has ripple effects that carry out through the remainder of The Wire's seasons. When it comes time for Avon to serve up Stringer to Brother Mouzon (Michael Potts) and Omar Little in Season 3, Episode 11, "Middle Ground," their irreparably damaged relationship over the ordered killing of D'Angelo ultimately costs Stringer his life as well. But the paradigm shift in tone and mood that came from the events in "All Prologue" remains even beyond Stringer's death. The struggle for the top of the food chain becomes tense and unsettled after the two longtime friends and business partners fall out.
Marlo Stanfield (Jamie Hector) may have been ruthless, and Snoop (Felicia Ramsey) was certainly stone-cold as The Wire later sprinted to the finish line with a satisfying finale. Still, the complex relationship between Stringer and Avon could never be duplicated, and no other character's death hit us quite as hard as D'Angelo's.
The Wire is currently available to stream on Max.
