Picture Atlantic City in Prohibition days. Nucky Thompson runs things. He’s a mix of politician and gangster, ruling over bootlegging and gambling. Power, violence, corruption- these themes are everywhere. And oh, that 1920s lifestyle? It’s all glitz and glam, but with a dark twist. Get ready for a wild ride!

Meet the characters from Boardwalk Empire

Nucky Thompson

Nucky is the slippery, brilliant center of Atlantic City’s chaos, a man who dresses like a mayor and thinks like a chess player — usually three moves ahead, sometimes wildly sentimental about Christmas lights for reasons he won’t explain. He’s ruthless when he has to be but has this weird soft spot for veterans and girls who remind him of his youth, which makes him both maddening and oddly sympathetic. He runs the show with a smile and a ledger and probably keeps receipts for things he never bought because, well, control. Also, he drinks too much and quotes poetry in the wrong moments, and yes, he once almost cried over a baseball game and then promptly ordered a hit.

Margaret Schroeder

Margaret starts off as this quietly fierce immigrant who slowly builds an iron spine under delicate clothes — she prays, she gives to charity, and then she makes deals that would make a lawyer proud. She’s moral but not naive, and her faith is both a comfort and a tool, which is fascinating because she can be sweet as pie and as sharp as a knife in the same sentence. She raises her family and plays social politics like a game of checkers where everyone else thinks it’s chess, and somehow always looks like she ironed her blouse in the dark. Also she knits, probably bad at knitting, and keeps a secret or two in a Bible.

Al Capone

Capone is thunderous and magnetic — all booming laughs and sudden storms, the kind of guy who throws a party and a vendetta in the same night, and somehow both feel inevitable. He loves music, fancy clothes, and generosity when it suits him; he’ll donate to a soup kitchen then break your kneecaps for talking too loud in his neighborhood. He’s blunt, funny, and terrifying, like a carnival barker who also runs a very efficient murder operation, and there’s this odd tenderness around children that makes him human and utterly unpredictable. Also, rumor has it he whistles hymns when he’s nervous, which is either adorable or terrifying depending on who you ask.

Chalky White

Chalky is pure thunder with a velvet glove, the kind of leader who’ll defend his people with a sermon and a shotgun and somehow make both look righteous. He carries ancestral dignity like a coat you want to touch, full of old sayings and sudden, blunt wisdom, and he commands respect in a way that’s more spiritual than theatrical. He’s proud, stubborn, and surprisingly literary sometimes — like he’ll quote poetry then light a cigar and start reorganizing an entire dock. Also, he’s allergic to bad flattery and maybe to shellfish? Nobody’s quite sure, but he hates being underestimated.

Jimmy Darmody

Jimmy is this raw, burning wreck of a man — smart, wounded, charming in a way that makes you forgive anything for five minutes and then fear everything for the next five. He’s a brilliant schemer and a terrible son, full of war trauma and grand plans that implode because he can’t decide if he wants power or just to be loved. He loves cars and classical music one minute and will get into a fistfight over a look the next; very dramatic, very tragic, and always wearing a jacket that smells faintly of gun oil. Also he writes terrible poetry in secret and probably cries at bad wartime movies when no one’s looking.

Gillian Darmody

Gillian is deliciously toxic and heartbreakingly fragile — a Southern belle turned shark, with a voice like warm molasses and teeth like a saw. She’s an expert at playing victim and villain at once, which makes her endlessly fascinating and terrifying; she hoards memories like jewelry and rewrites reality with the greatest of ease. She can be maternal in flashes and monstrously selfish the next, and she decorates rooms with an obsessive love for lace and bad perfume. Also she has a thing for old nursery rhymes and maybe a teacup collection that she insists is not creepy, even when it is.

Eli Thompson

Eli is the always-sweaty, perpetually anxious brother who tries so hard to be loyal it becomes tragic — he’s practical, petty, loving, vengeful, and occasionally self-sabotaging, often all before breakfast. He wants respect and to be taken seriously, and that hunger makes him both dangerous and impossibly human; he’ll follow orders and then mutter about them for days. He’s got a dry, accidental sense of humor, drinks like a man running from something, and clips coupons for the Atlantic City Gazette like it’s a war plan. Also he sings terribly off-key at parties and swears he once outsmarted a judge, maybe.

Nelson Van Alden

Van Alden is the rigid, terrifyingly pious man who flips into obsession and simmering violence when things don’t fit his moral ledger, like a man whose soul is a filing cabinet he won’t open. He starts as a Prohibition agent with a Bible tucked in his breast pocket and ends up a panic-stricken shape-shifter who can balance books and bodies with equal efficiency. He’s awkward around warmth but obsessively kind to children in a way that’s both touching and creepy, and his inner monologues are pure, sweaty panic. Also he dyes his hair at some point? Or he grows a beard? Memory’s fuzzy but either way he’s eternally uncomfortable and you can feel it.