‘The Westies’ Creators Confirm Why That Shocking Finale Moment Isn’t the End of Sweeney’s Story

The MGM+ series The Westies dives into New York City’s violent Irish gang as a new generation fights the old guard for control. Set in the early 1980s, Season 1 follows Jimmy Roarke (Tom Brittney) as he makes a series of calculated power moves that position him to take over. But leader Eamon Sweeney (J.K. Simmons) isn’t the type to just surrender, setting up a potential Season 2 where loyalty will be pushed to its limits.

During this interview with Collider, creators Chris Brancato and Michael Panes discussed how they came to use a Dropkick Murphys song for the show’s title sequence, wanting to tell a story without clear good guys and bad guys, the dynamic between Officer Glenn Keenan (Titus Welliver) and FBI Agent Birdie Polk (Jessica Frances Dukes), how the confrontation between Bridget (Sarah Bolger) and Colonel Markham came together, the emotional climax of the finale, and where they would like to take the story in the future.

COLLIDER: The Dropkick Murphys song “Dropped on My Head” is your theme song, which seems like the perfect song for this show. Was that the one and only song you guys wanted for the theme song? Did you have other songs you were deciding between?

CHRIS BRANCATO: We were building the title sequence visuals, which are these interesting sketches, while at the same time searching for the right music to put behind them. We auditioned a couple of songs, but the minute they came through with that Dropkick Murphys song, we knew we had the right vibe.

MICHAEL PANES: It was pretty self-evident. It was great energy and a great song.

‘The Westies’ Is a Story About Criminals That Makes You Root for the Underdogs

"We like to put all the characters in various moral dilemmas."

Do you guys see a hero and a villain in this story? This feels like a show where you root for and against all the main characters at some point because they all have things that they have to work through. They all get put in situations and have to do certain things that have consequences. Even though you can understand Bridget, she still kills someone. Is Birdie the only person in this that isn’t corrupt?

PANES: Don’t count out Birdie. We’re human beings. We all have failings and positive things about each one of us, and we try to give that to our characters on the show.

BRANCATO: You bring up a really good point, though. We’re doing a show about criminals. What you have to do is try to establish certain of them as underdogs because we generally like to root for an underdog. You try to give them relatable problems, like a father-son conflict between J.K.’s character and Tom Brittney’s character. The more you can come up with things that people can relate to, even if they’re not criminals themselves, the more chance you have of getting the viewer to attach to the show and watch it. But yes, we like to put all the characters in various moral dilemmas throughout the season.

Especially if you had to pitch this show to someone, I feel like the reaction would be, “Okay, but who’s the hero and who’s the villain?” And the answer would be, “Well, everybody, in their own way.”

PANES: Exactly.

In Episode 6, we get the reveal that Keenan and his wife had a second child that was stillborn, and that she started using drugs and overdosed and died, while he stopped caring about everything. Is that justification for his decisions and behavior? Why did you want to give that background?

PANES: It’s what the character is claiming is motivating him, but we don’t have to necessarily believe him. What’s great about Titus and the way he plays his part is that he makes you believe all these things, but his behavior is one thing and what he says is a different thing. I think that’s true for all the characters on the show. It’s why you’re never going to know who’s the hero and who’s the villain. Both things are in everybody.

Was it also important to figure out when to reveal that? Did you talk about the right moment to reveal that bit of information?

PANES: We didn’t want to reveal it too early because I feel like you have to earn it. You have to be involved in his character. You want to understand why he’s doing the things he’s doing, so you have to feel, intuitively, when the audience is ready to take that in. Does that justify what he’s doing or not? You’ll have to keep watching Season 2 to find out.

I thought it was very interesting that he chose to tell Birdie that, in that moment.

BRANCATO: That’s exactly right.

PANES: People are contradictions. They contradict themselves. I think that’s an interesting area that hopefully makes our show fresh in this genre.

Bridget’s Shocking ‘The Westies’ Finale Confrontation Took Its Final Shape in the Editing Room

"Having the footage in our hands, we could cut it a certain way."

In the finale, Bridget finally gets her moment to take out Markham, but then we get the reveal that he recognized her, and he knows who she is. We see him overpowering her and he clearly intends to rape her, but then you cut away from that, and we don’t go back to that scene until we see his dead body. How did you figure that out? How did you decide what you wanted to show and when you wanted to show it? Was that all very intentional?

BRANCATO: We did think about that. We even wrote it in a couple of different ways. And then, ultimately, we shot it in a way that’s very close to what you saw, but some of it was also editorially, in the aftermath. Having the footage in our hands, we could cut it a certain way. We decided to leave out the moment of her actually killing him and leave it to be discovered by the henchmen later. That was just an editorial choice made after the fact.

Were there also conversations that you guys had with Sarah Bolger involved? I can’t imagine what it must have been, emotionally, for her to go through some of that, because that is such an intense sequence of events.

PANES: Sarah Bolger, who’s an outstanding actress, really met that challenge head on and she was game for it all. We knew we wanted to create a female character that wasn’t just a girlfriend or a side piece. We wanted to create someone with her own agency and her own beliefs. She’s from Ireland. She’s fiery. She’s politically involved. She’s trying to explore her own inner world. She wants to be in love, but she’s got a very dark past. And so, we want to create a female character that was powerful, vulnerable, and all those things. You see that in the climax of her storyline. But we really owe a lot to Sarah for her tremendous willingness to put herself out there.

She could have easily could have gotten lost in the story and never was.

BRANCATO: Yeah, she’s wonderful.

Throughout the last episode, things get further and further out of control between Sweeney and Jimmy. What was it like to have that moment between the two of them in the warehouse, where they have that conversation while Jimmy is pointing a gun at Sweeney’s head?

BRANCATO: We were interested in reprising the beginning of the show, where there’s a similar type of scene. We liked the idea of bookending the season in that fashion. Roarke, in that scene, also proves himself to be a different man than Sweeney. He doesn’t do what Sweeney would have done, had the tables been reversed. That was the intention, just coming from a place of character.

PANES: It’s an emotional climax, in addition to being a story climax.

Eamon Sweeney Is Not Going To Give Up His ‘The Westies’ Throne Too Easily

"We have lots of grist for the mill for a subsequent season."

It definitely feels like you leave this season in a place that sets up Jimmy’s story, especially for next season. Is that the plan? Would a second season be his rise now? Would we get to see more of that?

BRANCATO: I think the fair thing to say is that we haven’t seen the last of Eamon Sweeney, so there will be challenges for Jimmy Roarke, regardless of what his position is within the Westies. I don’t think J.K. is going to give up his throne too easily. And we’ll also see the other characters moving forward with their plotlines. Bridget, played by Sarah, and Allen Leech are going to continue on this path with the IRA in New York. John Gotti is going to unseat Paul Castellano as the head of the Gambino family, at some point or another. We have lots of grist for the mill for a subsequent season.

PANES: And Officer Glenn Keenan, brilliantly played by Titus Welliver, will have many surprises for you.

What is the bigger plan for this? Have you thought about a specific number of seasons that you’d like to tell this story? It feels like, with this many characters, you still have a lot of story to tell.

BRANCATO: Typically, these days, a series goes three, four, five seasons, and we would very much like to do that here. We feel confident there will be another season of the show, and we look forward to hopefully people enjoying it.

The Westies is available to stream on MGM+.​​​