In Tulsa King, Sylvester Stallone's Dwight "The General" Manfredi lives in the real gritty crime world of organized crime and loyalty and betrayal. The character is presented as a 75-year-old mobster who spent 25 years in the slammer, as he was convicted of manslaughter.
Dwight's highest loyalty to the boss and adherence to the code of omertà, forbade him from collaborating with law enforcement, even as the latter offered reduced sentences for testimony. But in lore about Tulsa King, Dwight had a pretty horrific prison life because at one point someone tried to assassinate him. His own mafia family organized this act due to distrust and paranoia over the man.
As he is destined to exile in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with the task of establishing a new criminal empire, his loyalty is tested again when he is released. By then, he is very resolute about the mob life despite what it brings to him.
What were the crimes committed by Dwight “The General” Manfredi on Tulsa King?
Dwight Manfredi was enrolled in the house of Invernizzi, which was a popular section of New York's Italian-American mafia when he was still a teenager. A Brooklyn boy, Dwight's early life and background sent him in a rather quiet direction, but he wanted to live in the more glamorous-crime world.
But it also meant advancing through the ranks of the Invernizzi crime family: he would be a capo, a high-ranking man in a role given meaningful responsibilities in the mafia. His loyalty came at a cost. This crime (the murder of Richard McLeevy, also known as Ripple) placed Dwight away. Ripple was a man with whom Dwight espoused a certain level of respect.
At his boss's request, Pete "The Rock" Invernizzi, Dwight committed a murder in 1997 and was charged with manslaughter, wherein he was sentenced to 25 years of imprisonment.
According to the story of Tulsa King, the sentence that was handed down to Dwight proved to be an impossible challenge. As a result, he was assaulted in prison during an assassination attempt orchestrated by his mafia family since they feared that if pressured, Dwight would betray them.
He survived only by killing his attacker in the process of self-defense, tattooing him as a resilient and loyal character, but this encounter only fueled his resentment towards his mafia superiors who had left him to rot.
Dwight’s time in prison before getting released, as seen in Tulsa King
The sentence given to Dwight was a test of loyalty and endurance on Tulsa King. For 25 years in the federal prison of Pennsylvania, Dwight was presented with opportunities time and again by the authorities to cooperate against his mob family, but he rejected them all.
He kept himself busy with literature and poetry as he tried to "keep what's left of his brain from deteriorating", surviving the brutal environment of prison, as he reflected on himself in the series. Loyalty had gotten Dwight nothing in return at his parole; he was shipped out instead to Tulsa, Oklahoma.
This place, he felt was a trial and a betrayal. Season 1 takes off from the moment Dwight arrives in Tulsa. With much reluctance, he starts erecting his criminal empire, and the first pawns in this empire are a local marijuana dispensary.
He gradually expands his reach further, going into much bigger operations such as handling a casino and implementing a wind farm project to make money. His transition into the new world is characterized by bewilderment and rancor, feeling lost from the streets of New York to the city that was foreign to him.
Often, part of his reflections, unwittingly, reveals a sense of disillusionment in life, especially in the one he chose. One such line he says in Tulsa King season 1 episode 1:
“I married this life, and after keeping my mouth shut for all these years, I’m gonna see if it married me back.”
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