by Tim Gordon
In the expanding mythology of Taylor Sheridan’s America, every frontier has its own code. In Tulsa King, that frontier is no longer the open plains of the West but the concrete expanse of Oklahoma. The story follows Dwight “The General” Manfredi, a New York mobster released after serving 25 years in prison, who is sent by his family to build a new criminal outpost in a place that is part oil town and part outlier. It is an outlaw story stripped of horses and deserts but not of grit or heat.
Sylvester Stallone, in his first major television role, steps into Manfredi’s shoes with the quiet confidence of a man who has been carrying weight for decades. There is something Shakespearean in his swagger, a man out of time holding onto the old codes of respect, loyalty, and reputation. Sheridan and showrunner Terence Winter (The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire) shape him not as a stereotype but as an echo of a fading America, one where honor and violence still share the same space.
Power has always been at the center of Sheridan’s stories: who holds it, who loses it, and what it costs to keep it. Tulsa King reflects that theme perfectly. Manfredi’s Tulsa may look different from the ranches of Yellowstone or the oil fields of Landman, but the struggle is the same. The men may swap saddles for suits, but they are still fighting to stay relevant in a world that has moved on. Dwight’s ambition mirrors Sheridan’s larger universe, the constant drive to carve meaning from chaos and to claim a place in a system that no longer recognizes its old rules.
Tulsa itself becomes a living character, caught between its blue-collar roots and its newfound ambition. It is part boomtown, part borderland, where money, muscle, and survival intersect. That sense of tension is the heartbeat of the series. Like Landman, it is about men chasing opportunity on unstable ground, where survival is not about domination but about adaptation. Sheridan’s storytelling captures the collision of eras, where the old guard refuses to vanish quietly while the new world forgets to look back.
What separates Tulsa King from the traditional gangster story is its tone. Stallone finds a surprising rhythm in Dwight’s awkward attempts to adjust to modern life: learning smartphones, encountering vape pens, and stumbling through small-town etiquette. Those moments of humor give the story a pulse that feels both familiar and fresh. It is a crime saga filtered through a lens of irony, where the absurdity of change meets the resilience of an old-school survivor. Sheridan and Winter turn Dwight’s dislocation into a metaphor for aging, relevance, and reinvention.
The writing balances toughness with melancholy. Sheridan’s characters are rarely nostalgic, but they are often haunted by time. Dwight may be a gangster, but he carries the quiet ache of someone trying to matter in a world that no longer operates by his rules. His code, built on loyalty and respect, feels almost quaint beside a culture obsessed with profit and speed. Yet it is precisely that code that gives him dignity. Sheridan seems to suggest that even in a corrupted world, integrity—however imperfect—still matters.
Stallone’s performance deepens that idea. He plays Manfredi not as a caricature of mob life, but as a weary philosopher who happens to break bones for a living. There is vulnerability beneath the bravado, and humor beneath the violence. At seventy, Stallone brings a physicality and weariness that only time can give. He is the rare actor who can make toughness feel like both a weapon and a wound.
Visually, Tulsa King extends Sheridan’s trademark aesthetic of modern Americana. The city’s skyline replaces the open sky, but the themes are the same. This is still a story about space, territory, and belonging. The show’s Oklahoma setting, with its blend of industry, dust, and neon, becomes a perfect metaphor for America’s evolving identity. Like Dwight, Tulsa is trying to figure out what it wants to be—part tradition, part transformation.
Where Yellowstone redefined the ranch and Landman explored the oil empire, Tulsa King reimagines the gangster as a modern cowboy. Dwight is not just fighting his rivals; he is fighting time itself. He has traded the mob’s neon lights for the dust of Oklahoma, but his code remains unbroken. He is not seeking to conquer new land; he is trying to survive in one that forgot him.
That is what makes Tulsa King more than a crime story. It is Sheridan’s meditation on the American myth, the belief that reinvention is always possible, no matter the cost. Manfredi’s journey becomes a search for dignity in a culture that values youth over wisdom. Like every Sheridan protagonist, he is reaching for a horizon that keeps moving, chasing redemption even when he knows it may never come.
The result is a crime saga with the soul of a Western. Stallone may arrive in a Cadillac instead of on horseback, but the spirit is the same. A lone man steps into a hostile land, trying to bring order to chaos and meaning to a life shaped by survival.
In Tulsa King, as in Landman, Taylor Sheridan reminds us that the American frontier never disappeared. It just changed its address.
The outlaw endures. The myth lives on.
