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It has grown significantly in her and our absence.
The train has come.
There are telephone poles.
Calling it a camp at this point is pure nostalgia because Deadwood is now certainly a town.
The question of statehood is over.
The task of thisDeadwoodmovie is essentially impossible.
It has to pull us back to the point whereDeadwoodleft off, without feeling cutesy or nostalgic.
New arrivals, new technologies.
Deaths that somehow started more stories than they ended.
Rims reconnoitered, producing more gold than expected.
Booming commerce and growth.
So now there have to be some endings.
Something deep inDeadwoods TV DNA has to fight against its own strongest impulses when its translated to movie form.
Rather than something to deny or skate over, time becomes the central theme.
Deadwood cant keep creating itself, dancing around in the liminal space between nothingness and officially recognized statehood.
Al cannot pretend hes immortal.
Hearsts telephone poles are coming, and nothing Al or Seth can do will stop the future from arriving.
Janes arrival back in Deadwood is the first of several arrivals and returns.
Shes there to check in on the growing Deadwood bank but mostly to stare longingly at Seth.
It did not need to be this way.
In season three, that was Ellsworth.
Alma steps in and buys Charlies land in the auction, foiling Hearsts telephone-line operation.
Hearst survives and the wedding moves forward.
All of this is just plot.
But aside from Charlies death (oh, Charlie!
), the most notable thing about the plot is how little it changes anything.
Seth begins and ends the movie in roughly the same place, as a U.S.
Marshal whos now devoted to his wife, Martha, and their family.
The things that cut most deeply have nothing to do with Hearst.
He is the distraction and sometimes the catalyst.
He is the forward-moving pressure that means no one can wallow in the past.
But the things that matter most are things that wouldve happened anyhow, Hearst be damned.
And Al is dying.
Now its a retreat.
Ends are inevitable, and Al knows it.
Seth Bullocks son died in season two, and Almas pregnancy was not viable.
ForDeadwoodthe TV series, growth was about amalgamation and capital and self-invention.
No one with inherited wealth survived because of their family names.
No one arrived in Deadwood to raise a family.
(Except for Martha Bullock, who had to overcome losing her son in the process.)
It had been on its way for years Seth is a U.S.
The train has come, and more telephones will follow.
Deadwoods independence is over.
There is no space for someone like Al anymore, no space for his power and dominance.
Deaths and ends are inevitable, but beginnings are too.
The future of Deadwood is also Trixie.
Shes been under Als foot for so many years, so thoroughly crushed under his oppressive weight.
She promises shell be with him at the end.
Our Father, which art in heaven, she begins.
Let him fucking stay there, Al concludes.
But he knows hes going, and we do too.
Trixie, watching him, wears his striped suit jacket over her wedding dress, literally assuming his mantle.
The end has come, but the future rolls on.
