HBO Has Made The Wire's Ending More Devastating 14 Years Later
Warning: This post contains spoilers for We Own This City.
In 2008, The Wire's ending offered a terrifying look at what the future might look like if things didn't change, and 14 years on We Own This City proved the worst actually happened. Both HBO shows — from the pen of former journalist David Simon — depict corruption, but 2022's Baltimore-set spiritual sequel to The Wire took things even further. It's not just the portrait of a broken system, with characters existing on a shifting moral spectrum, it's a horror movie that fully realizes the warning The Wire laid out.
The Wire was far from a happy ending, even if some character arcs seemed to suggest positive progression. Instead, The Wire's final episode reinforced the idea that everything would be a self-sustaining corruptive cycle. Even the institutions meant to uncover and police corruption — the news industry and law enforcement — were themselves corrupted, and there was a very real suggestion that without a complete break, corruption would beget more corruption. If power corrupts in The Wire, the show's ending warned that staying on the path to power would lead to something even darker. But there remained a glimmer of hope that breaking the cycle at least on an individual level could also lead to better.
Related: We Own This City Breaks The Wire's Cardinal Rule
In the wake of We Own This City's first three episodes, the spark of optimism in The Wire's ending has been completely lost in modern-day Baltimore still fighting the same war on crime 14 years later. Even worse, the warning that Baltimore would fall to further corruption, even as the corrupted lied to themselves that they were muddying their morals for the sake of the greater good is terrifyingly
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