Tulsa King Season 3 How to watch (and when)
Tulsa King returns to Paramount+ on Sunday, September 21st for Season 3. There are 10 scheduled episodes, with new ones to be released weekly through November 23rd.
Tulsa King Season 3 trailer breakdown
Let’s break down the new doings going down in urban Oklahoma by way of what we can figure out from the Season 3 trailer.
“We want to take out the competition,” Sylvester Stallone as Dwight Manfredi says at the start of the trailer.
A new turf war involving “moonshine” will be a major plot point, with Robert Patrick joining as the season’s new big bad, Jeremiah Dunmire. Known to many as “the cop guy from Terminator 2: Judgment Day,” Patrick has had a long career as a character actor and should bring gravitas to the role.
The fun of Tulsa King is that it knows what it is – B grade pulpy crime fiction with a sprinkling of grit and large doses of fun, bolstered by a still charismatic late career Sylvester Stallone performance and Taylor Sheridan storytelling wizardry.
Tulsa King still gonna Tulsa King
The moonshine story falls within Tulsa King’s tradition of crime fiction that plays it relatively safe – in other words, we’ve never seen Stallone all of the sudden get into the heroin and human trafficking game. In fact, the “worst” thing we’ve ever seen him do is to extort Martin Starr’s character (Bodhi) into handing over part of his legal weed business. Soon of course they became more full-fledged business partners and even grudging friends.
“Family does not leave family behind,” Manfredi says at another point, spotlighting Tulsa King’s theme of “family” loyalty among his newfound Tulsa-based crime syndicate.
Other new faces in Season 3
Kevin Pollak joins as a cop or fed of some kind, yet another antagonist to our guy Sly. Or oh, sorry, Dwight “The General” Manfredi.
Pollak is an outstanding standup comic and impressionist (especially Christopher Walken) who shines brightest as an actor in dramatic roles (see: his very good performance in A Few Good Men). Also: his long-running Kevin Pollak’s Chat Show was really fun.
Things we don’t see in the Tulsa King Season 3 trailer
That one ATF agent (Stacy Beale, played by Andrea Savage) Manfredi was tangled with in the first few seasons (I honestly forget how they resolved her storyline – think she went off to some far-flung new assignment), and much to do with the New York City mob. It does seem like it’s good timing for the show to move on from both of these stories and onto new Tulsa-based turf.
Shoutout section for Martin Starr
As noted above, Martin Starr plays Bodhi, a taciturn pothead turned financial crimes lieutenant under Manfredi.
Important note: we’ll watch anything with Starr. See: Freaks & Geeks, Silicon Valley, and especially Adventureland, one of the best movies of all time that most people haven’t seen.
Stunt casting alert
The trailer breaks the news that legend Samuel L. Jackson will show up in Tulsa at some point this season!
Cybertruck snarking or Elon homage?
We see the fellas rolling around in a Cybertruck in the trailer. It’s played for comedy in the trailer a la Stallone makes a crack about how they’re not going to fly under the radar rolling around in the monstrous contraption, but it remains to be seen if Tulsa King will further satirize or pay respect to Tesla and Elon Musk’s (dwindling?) fan boy alliance.