WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Deadwood: The Movie, which premiered Friday on HBO.
Thirteen years ago, the wordsmith Al Swearengen famously said, "Tell your god to ready for blood," a warning that heralded the particularly bloody third and final season of Deadwood. Against all odds, HBO returned to the muddy, forsaken mining town Friday with Deadwood: The Movie, which finds the characters as violent, and as fond of profanity, as ever. And, as expected, not everyone survives the reunion.
The film picks up in 1889, a decade after the events of what turned out to be the series finale, as South Dakota celebrates its impending statehood. The occasion opens old wounds, as George Hearst (Gerald McRaney), now a U.S. senator from California, returns to Deadwood, and immediately resumes his rivalry with Seth Bullock (Timothy Olyphant) and Al Swearengen (Ian McShane). When Charlie Utter (Dayton Callie) refuses Hearst's offer to purchase his property, over which telephone lines need to cross, the senator orders two assassins to murder him.
Charlie's untimely death is ahistorical, as so many elements of Deadwood are; the real Charlie Utter left Deadwood for good sometime after the devastating 1879 fire, and lived into the 20th century. Nevertheless, the murder of the fictional version sets off a bloody chain of events: When Hearst's assassins attempt to string up the sole witness to their crime, Samuel Fields (Franklyn Ajaye), one of them is shot and killed by Bullock. In a subsequent confrontation in which Bullock attempts to get the surviving assassin to name Hearst as his employer, the killer is murdered, and two of the senator's guards are shot dead in the chaos. Samuel later dies from his injuries.
However, the death toll doesn't end there, of course. After Hearst, flanked by a sheriff and a deputy from another town, crashes the wedding reception for Saul Starr (John Hawkes) and Trixie Starr (Paula Malcomson), Bullock drags the senator to jail in an echo of the events of Season 3. But his deputy Harry Manning (Brent Sexton), who is secretly on Hearst's payroll, attempts to shoot Bullock, only to be killed himself by Calamity Jane (Robin Weigert).
Left ambiguous is the fate of Al Swearengen, who spends the entire movie in ill health, and the final act settling his affairs. The story ends with, first, Jewel (Geri Jewell) singing at his beside, and then with Trixie holding his hand while reciting the Lord's Prayer. Like Charlie Utter, the real Al Swearengen saw in the 20th century, so perhaps we can imagine that Deadwood's version lives to curse another day.
For those keeping track, that's seven confirmed dead by the end of Deadwood: The Movie, with Al a question mark.
Deadwood: The Movie stars Timothy Olyphant, Ian McShane, Molly Parker, Paula Malcomson, W. Earl Brown, Dayton Callie, Kim Dickens, Brad Dourif, Anna Gunn, John Hawkes, Gerald McRaney, Leon Rippy, William Sanderson, Robin Weigert, Jeffrey Jones and Sean Bridgers.