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| “ | You can't be half a gangster anymore, Nucky. | „ |
| ~ Jimmy warning Nucky Thompson. |
James "Jimmy" Darmody is one of the villain protagonists of the first two seasons of Boardwalk Empire. He is the son of Atlantic City political boss Commodore Louis Kaestner and the protege of Nucky Thompson, the city's treasurer and most powerful bootlegger.
He was portrayed by Michael Pitt, who also portrayed Mason Verger in Hannibal, Paul in the remake of Funny Games, Harry Baker in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and Justin Pendleton in Murder by Numbers.
Biography[]
Early Life[]
Jimmy is the son of Atlantic City crime boss Commodore Louis Kaestner and brothel owner Gillian Darmody; he was conceived when the Commodore raped Gillian, who was only 13 at the time. The Commodore had little interest in his son, so Jimmy was raised primarily by his mother and Nucky Thompson, the Treasurer of Atlantic City and the Commodore's protégé. Unbeknownst to Jimmy, Nucky had essentially pimped Gillian out to the Commodore when she was a child in return for being promoted to Atlantic City Sheriff.
As a young man, Jimmy is accepted to Princeton University thanks to Nucky's influence, but is expelled after getting into a fistfight with the dean, who had made an unwelcome pass at Gillian. That night, Jimmy and Gillian get drunk and have sex. The next day, Jimmy finds out that his girlfriend Angela is pregnant with his child. Scared, wracked with guilt, and with nowhere to go, he enlists in the Army to fight in World War I. He is badly traumatized by the horrible things he sees and does during the war, and returns home after suffering a shrapnel wound in his leg, which leaves him with a permanent limp.
Season 1[]
After Jimmy returns home, he marries Angela and helps her raise their son, Tommy. Nucky, who has by now succeeded the Commodore as the boss of Atlantic City, gives him a job as his driver and bodyguard. When Prohibition goes into effect, Nucky has him guard his shipments of bootleg liquor. Seeking to impress Nucky and his father, Jimmy and his friend and fellow bootlegger Al Capone rob a liquor convoy owned by Nucky's competitor, gangster Arnold Rothstein. This causes problems for Nucky, but he manages to get Jimmy out of trouble and sends him to Chicago under the protection of mob boss Johnny Torrio.
In Chicago, Jimmy befriends Richard Harrow, a disfigured fellow veteran with whom he starts his own bootlegging operation. Harrow also shoots a rival gangster who had disfigured a prostitute whom Jimmy had been fond of. When Nucky brings Jimmy back to Atlantic City to help him fight Rothstein, Jimmy takes Harrow with him, and Nucky hires him as his personal assassin.
Jimmy helps Nucky solve his conflict with Rothstein, but their relationship is ruined when Jimmy finds out that Nucky had helped the Commodore rape his mother. Desiring revenge and wanting to make a name for himself, he secretly joins his father and Nucky's disgruntled brother Eli in plotting against him.
Season 2[]
After the Commodore has Nucky arrested for election fraud, Jimmy takes over Nucky's bootlegging and prostitution rackets, and then his father's political machine after the Commodore suffers a stroke. Jimmy reluctantly orders Nucky's assassination under pressure from his business partners, Capone, Meyer Lansky, and Charlie "Lucky" Luciano, but Nucky survives and warns him of his father's duplicity.
Jimmy goes into business with mobster Manny Horvitz, but their operation is threatened when Nucky blows up his liquor warehouse and causes a labor strike among the city's African-American kitchen and service workers, crippling the city's hospitality industry and leaving Jimmy with no product and no customers. Desperate, he resorts to buying inferior medicinal alcohol from bootlegger George Remus.
Strapped for cash, Jimmy runs up large debts with Horvitz, and tries to have him killed to avoid reprisals. Horvitz survives, however, and takes revenge by killing Angela and her lesbian partner. Jimmy is devastated by Angela's death, and numbs the pain with alcohol and heroin. When Gillian speaks disrespectfully of Angela, whom she never liked, an enraged Jimmy attacks her. The Commodore comes to her defense, prompting Jimmy to stab him; at Gillian's urging, he stabs the Commodore again, killing his own father.
To make amends with Nucky, Jimmy and Harrow help him in the election fraud case by killing the prosecution's star witness, corrupt Alderman Jim Neary. That night, Jimmy gets a call from Nucky, who says that he has captured Horvitz. Jimmy knows it is a ruse to lure him in and kill him, but goes willingly after saying goodbye to Harrow. Sure enough, Nucky and Horvitz pull guns on Jimmy on him when he arrives, but Jimmy accepts his death, telling Nucky that he truly died during the war; he even talks Nucky through the mechanics of shooting someone. Nucky then shoots Jimmy twice in the head, killing him.
Jimmy's murder has major repercussions throughout the rest of the series, and ultimately brings on Nucky's own death 10 years later when a grown Tommy shoots Nucky dead for killing Jimmy and betraying Gillian.
Personality[]
Jimmy was a smart, brutal criminal, possessing the charm to win people over through his smooth talk and respect. However, he was generally quiet and reserved, which nearly caused him to miss out on business opportunities in his early days as a crime boss. After returning from the war, Jimmy wanted to step out of Nucky Thompson's shadow, starting to risk his life daily in the bootlegging business. In addition, he came to live with the traumas that the horrors of war brought to him. Growing up amidst the perversion of Atlantic City, Jimmy received a twisted fatherly influence in Nucky Thompson. In addition to having a strange relationship with his mother that bordered on a sexual level. Because of this, Jimmy grew up with an introspective and closed mind, rarely letting other people get too close to him. Jimmy always felt like an outsider in his own life.
Although he claimed to commit crimes for the sake of his family, Jimmy was actually trying to feel alive with violence, drugs, and power. In the war, he lived through experiences traumatic enough to kill a part of him, which made Darmody sink into a disturbing inner loneliness. This disconnection from the relationships around him left Jimmy careless, which made him make numerous mistakes in his attempt to take Atlantic City for himself, including trusting Nucky Thompson again. Darmody tried to feel something meaningful after the war but found himself unable to, claiming to have died in the trenches of France years ago.
External links[]
- Jimmy Darmody on Wikipedia
- Jimmy Darmody on the Boardwalk Empire Wiki