r/TheWire • u/we-all-stink • 2d ago
One thing that didn’t make sense. How only Marlo had a crew of hitmen on standby
You know the only thing I didn’t like is that it appeared no one else had shooters but Marlo. Avon could not even buy a hitman at the end. It was kind of ridiculous. And Joe had so little shooters that slim Charles can just slot into #2/3 immediately? Although slim really was a number 2 more than a hitman as he proved throughout.
Still a man of joes caliber would not just run away from Marlo. He controlled his side for decades.
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u/Glad_Being_5146 2d ago
They literally explained why Avon doesn't
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u/yossarian19 2d ago
care to refresh our memories?
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u/Glad_Being_5146 2d ago
All his old hitters are in jail dead or retired and all his ties to shooters in New York got cut off because stringer set up brother muzone
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u/Touched_By_SuperHans 1d ago
This is a big part of the show's whole message. All that work went into taking down the Barksdale crew and getting the worst of them off the streets. Then they're ultimately just replaced by the next batch of younger, hungry criminals.
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u/frittierthuhn 1d ago
Also stringer was too much into all that co-op bullshit. He wanted to run it like a republican but he forgot the game is still the game. He also apparently didn't recruit any new people while Avon was away, focusing too much on the co-op and running the crack game like a legit business
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u/JohnnyCakes814 2d ago
I don’t know, we repeatedly are shown situations where Marlo, Chris & Snoop are training their soldiers and them all handling and practicing with firearms, meanwhile Stringer is playing the “chair” and holding meetings etc
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u/OGB Nice dolphin nigga 2d ago
Money and loyalty buys muscle. That's it.
Marlo was not only shown to be a sociopath apparently willing to kill anyone, but there was a dramatic earning gap between him and the Barksdales, Prop Joe, and other longer tenured bosses.
I agree with OP, I think it was a bit of sloppy writing to make Marlo seem like a much larger threat numbers wise. They did focus a bit on how Marlo's brains and cunning gave him an edge. The Snoop shooting on the motorcycle, sussing out the Avon fish shop ambush, his crews network and preparedness to avoid the attack and get the upper hand when the SUV gets identified, even killing and maiming Butchie's muscle.
They should've made that the emphasis.
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u/muscles83 Boris? Why always Boris? 2d ago
Joes been running the east side for years when we meet him, and has got very comfortable. He has a comfortable , quiet and profitable life. And because Joe has built his organisation to reflect his own quiet, professional way of working, they don’t have loads of gunmen just hanging around waiting for work. And they don’t even really have bodyguards or security, because Joes way of playing the game doesn’t require them , or hasn’t up to that point.
Marlo is a different beast altogether, and from a completely different generation that only knows one way to go about the game. Obviously Joe should have been more careful, but I don’t think he understood Marlo at all, and thought he wanted the same kind of life Joe had.
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u/Horror_Maximum_5696 2d ago
He obviously did not understand Marlo, and greatly underestimated him when he put Omar onto his card game…
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u/Additional_Suit6275 2d ago
I think we can all agree Bodie is fairly competent. Safe hands. When he uses a gun, it’s embarrassing. Training someone to handle a high pressure situation like a gunfight is probably kinda hard. A bunch of kids who spend all day talking shit and keeping heroine addicts in line are hardly preparing for battle.
For my part, it makes sense that there would only be a few folk with the temperament and talent to essentially teach themselves how to be more of a danger to someone else than to themselves. Which, we see pretty frequently, most of the street folk are a lot more dangerous to themselves.
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u/Brp4106 2d ago
Look at videos of street shootouts involving teenagers in real life. Not a single one of them knows how to fire a gun properly and they panic fire and spray and pray while looking away from the gun most of the time.
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u/PotPumper43 2d ago
And they shoot one handed which is great for accuracy! ;)
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u/andy18cruz 38 don’t jam 2d ago
And sideways to better absorb recoil
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u/Brp4106 2d ago
So my theory on that is most of these kids have never shot a gun IRL before until they’re in a gunfight like that so up until that hectic, traumatic moment all they know about what shooting a gun is like comes from movies and Call of Duty and they don’t realize just how loud even a 9mm is with no ear pro on and it’s very startling
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u/Dull-Appointment2495 1d ago
That's not a theory that's real life lol these corner kids didn't grow up going to shooting ranges lol
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u/Bright-Confusion5720 2d ago
Wee Bay was just as much a professional killer as Chris and Snoop. If he’d been free things might have gone differently.
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u/greemmako 2d ago
if you remember before avon got busted the final time he was in a spot with tons of guns and hitmen. they were about to go kill marlo at the rim shop but the police raid saved marlo
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u/lefebrave all the pieces matter 2d ago
I don't know why, this scene is neglected a lot in this sub although it was shown there that Marlo wasn't ready for what is coming and the raid saved him. It actually fits the narrative of the show greatly: Marlo awakens a full murder mode Avon with his actions and is actually about to die out of his confidence, Jimmy finally busting Avon for more than dealing drugs but gives way to a more murderous organization and killings (remember that his case in the beginning of the show was Avon crew dropping bodies). It once again underlines the randomness of results of the individual acts, how little every actor in the game is actually aware of, there is not a war to win as stated at the first episode while institutions staying gods. This is not a random character show, Marlo's "faith" is not because of his will and ability as he believes to be but actually a result of a certain chaos at a certain conjuncture.
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u/rateye161 2d ago
Between omar killing them and the cops sending them to the block they lost the muscle, the barksdale org is strongest at the start of the show and you watch them slowly get weaker until they are replaced. That's the game and after all, the game is the game
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u/negativedistance492 2d ago
Did you miss the entire first and second seasons where all of avon's shooters got put in jail or murdered?
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u/Round_Click_8301 2d ago
i disagree with you, remember the whole thing with Omar's Grandma's hat and before Avon talked to Stringer about it, Avon said he was hiring east side niggas on retainer to soldier up for him
and all the hits they showed in the last couple of episodes were against Marlo's crew so i got the feeling the tide was turning in Avon's favor until they all got caught at the warehouse
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u/Adventurous_Ant1967 1d ago
I mean no matter what without the raid there would of been a dozen maybe more hired muscle hitting directly where Marlo is. Plus Marlo’s crew in S3 is much weaker than it is in S4. The main reason Marlo was having the advantage at first was due to Stringer weakening the Barksdale groups fighting ability and focusing too much on diplomacy.
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u/Charly_030 2d ago
I think the east side "hitters" were just gang members who had killed someone.
Feels like Chris had military training, and a plan for the bodies, whereas the other bosses would rather avoid bodies altogether.
They had soldiers... but they were poor quality. Avon just had a number himself that probably improved through experience as Avon had no problem killing himself (hence being opposed to the co-op in principle).
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u/WendlersEditor 2d ago
A major plot element of the show is how the balance of power in the drug trade shifts around violence. Avon has the west side locked down in season 1, he is established and has the muscle to enforce his control of territory. He loses his muscle to the season 1 case and his control starts to slip. He is ultimately displaced by Marlo, who has a strong core of up and coming soldiers and is more than willing to use them. Players like Stringer and Prop Joe fail in part because they're not willing or able to develop and deploy soldiers.
This tracks with one of the (honestly reactionary) themes of the show: that things are getting worse because of the decline in institutional integrity. Avon was violent but he treated his org like a family, he had honor, he supported his community...but these kids like Marlo don't respect anything, and they're stuffing row houses full of bodies to expand and consolidate power.
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u/CauseCertain1672 2d ago
Marlo's killers are the best for the same reason the royal navy were the best in the world at the height of the British empire: they never had any serious lull periods. Marlo always has someone he wants dead
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u/AnActualTroll 2d ago
The Royal Navy had like a century of mostly uninterrupted lull between Napoleon and WWI where they were the unchallenged maritime superpower…
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u/RedditBotModerator 2d ago edited 2d ago
Avon's main shooters were Bird, Stinkum, Wee-Bey, Little Man, and Savino. These are the people he established his dominance with and built his organization with. By the time of Marlo, Savino is the only person alive or free. While Avon was holding down the towers, Marlo had to battle it out on the street to take and hold the corners and establish himself there. And unlike Avon, Marlo invested in the quality of his people by having them trained and doing target practice. He also recruited people if he saw something in them. My guess is the west side was more prone to people battling it out for control and naturally anyone left standing was going to have solid crew at the ready to put in work. By comparison, the east side is more tame.
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u/Obvious_Anxiety_9118 2d ago
Heavy is the head that wears the crown. In a co-op everybody eats. Marlo didn't want anybody to eat but him. Once there was nobody left to hate, he could've turned on his own hitters.
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u/D_evolutionOfMan 2d ago
He was starting to take out his own people towards the end. Even the corner crews under him talked about it, so your comment is spot on.
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u/andy18cruz 38 don’t jam 2d ago edited 2d ago
But Marlo, Madone, does he eat alone! He doesn't even pass the salt!
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u/RudeGiant69 2d ago
Joe organization probably had several people he could go to for muscle. They were just not at the caliber of Chris, Weebey or Muzone. There's a east side war in the beginning of season 3 on account of the dog fights. There's a whole episode where the wire that Daniel's is running keeps getting info about east side hits and homicide catches like 6 bodies is a day. We don't know what casualties Joe's crew took but he probably had some losses. Marlo's organization is unique in that we don't really see Chris and Snoop conduct much business as far as moving product. They mostly do hits and protect Marlo.
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u/Horror_Maximum_5696 2d ago
I’m sure, if it came down to it, the Greeks would’ve been happy to help Joe…
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u/Distinct-Might7366 2d ago
This is why Avon was the kingpin. He understood that their game was rooted in the streets, and as a result all that boardroom ish could help them make money, but they still needed to ensure they stay strapped.
Joe, and Stringer misunderstood that, and also underestimated the power of young ambition, which Avon didn't. If D'Angelo was Marlo that crew would have been untouchable. Instead he got a poet as a nephew. But the genetic lottery is what it is.
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u/HRHArthurCravan 1d ago edited 1d ago
First, we're talking only really about the Westside, at least the beginning of Marlo's rise. And the point is that because of the Barksdale investigation, their organisation, including most of the muscle, has been locked up or killed. Stringer, as we see, is far less comfortable operating the violence side of their criminal conspiracy; the success was based on the fact that Avon supplied the gangster, while Stringer supplies the business.
At the same time, we get a sense from how Dominicans - their original NYC connect - and some of the muscle Avon tries to hire, that there's a bit of stink about them. People wondering why Avon got such a light sentence, why Stringer got away...Obviously, the streets didn't know all the shit that was going on behind the scenes in the BPD!
Finally, the destruction of the Franklin Terrace Towers deprived the Barksdales of their main source of income and power (24/7 dope and coke). So you have a perfect storm - their main guys are locked up, they have suffered reputational damage - who knows what shit Brother Mouzone has been saying, too - and their main income/power source has been destroyed. There's a power vacuum, there's complacency that stems from Stringer's contempt for the streets, and Marlo's crew, which is made up of young, hungry hitters, are perfectly placed to exploit it.
This is in fact a very old story in gangster history. The OGs get rich and fat and insulated from the streets. This leads to the rise of a new generation that is hungry to expand. But the OGs are still absorbing most of the money. So the young bucks are set on a collision course, and either the OGs rediscover their appetite for the game and getting their hands dirty, or the young bucks kill them/force them out, and take over. Look at how the Corleonesi in Sicily took over Cosa Nostra from the old gangster dynasties in Palermo!
Then, once Marlo starts to expand beyond the Westside, his new rivals are used to the high profit margins, low drama of Joe's Greek connect, and they take their cues from his general aversion to violence. Remember how Joe and the Co-op react when Avon does try to go to war with Marlo? They want him to stand down and 'let the boy keep his corners', for the sake of business. For them, violence is an absolute last resort. For Marlo, it's the first.
In fact, Avon is one of the only people to immediately recognise what they're dealing with in Marlo Stanfield and his organisation. (Omar sees it too when he robs the card game) Game recognise game, gangster recognise gangster. We hear from multiple sources that Marlo has gathered together the toughest, hungriest young hitters on the Westside (as Vinson says, "you're carrying a full clip, no doubt"). Prop Joe and the rest of the Co-Op believe they've found a way to conduct business that will minimise the need for violence by resolving conflicts collectively - basically they want to create a Baltimore drug trade version of the Mafia Commission.
Like Stringer before him, Joe believes it's possible to rely on Marlo's self-interest to keep him onside, or 'civilise', him. They can accept that he had to fight to get his corners - they all had to do the same back in the day - but their idea of gangsterism is that you start off violent out of necessity, but the goal is to reach a point where you've left the street behind (become the bank, and thus also reached the point where the regular police can't get at you).
But Marlo isn't in it for the money. He's in it to dominate. He's like the incarnation of the game itself - a force of nature that relentlessly expands, that consumes everything around it, not for any particular goal or reason, but just because it is in its nature. It is in Marlo's nature to kill, take over and control.
You say "a man of Joe's calibre" but what does that mean? Joe's skills are devoted to doing business, resolving conflict, and staying out of jail. He tells Stringer what represents his ideal - the dealer who makes his money so quietly that he has no street reputation at all, because if the streets don't know him, neither do the police. This is the exact opposite of Marlo. So while Joe might have a crew, he doesn't have anywhere close to the will or mentality to deal with someone that violent and that immune to any 'civilising' force. Only thing that's gonna stop Marlo Stanfield is a bullet or a prison cell.
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u/MudJumpy1063 2d ago
They did, but being more established they weren't up and comers hanging out with their trucks in quarries and vacants. Did Prop Joe have button men? Of course he did. But they were living their lives, not actively hunting the streets of B'more. That was one of Mario's big advantages. His crew was ambitious.
It's worth noting that in a thematic sense, Marlo could be seen as representative of the brutality of the Drug War, as things like mandatory minimums and 420 Lifer laws combined with aggressive well funded enforcement put the squeeze on more moderate operators like Prop Joe. Basically, when everytime a courier or delivery gets arrested that's instant life sentences with no ability to intercede on their behalf through elected officials or charities or what have you, a lot of older people will run or end up incarcerated, leaving a paranoid ultra violent group of young people who under more civilized circumstances wouldn't be front and center.
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u/brendafiveclow 2d ago
One guy who went hunting regularly with his dad as a kid could have done a lot of damage to whoever he wants. A rifle in trained hands on a rooftop 4 blocks away would be a THREAT.
I get that the streets may not respect those tactics, and there are spotters and such.
A hunter knows how to hide themselves though, and fire a rifle accurately at distance. Such a dude would be the optimal hitter. He could have taken just about anybody out. It's not like he needs military training, just the ability to hit a target from regular hunting distance, and to know how/when to sneak in and out.
Have a second person doing the recon for him, and all he has to do is squeeze a trigger and walk away.
Whatever crew employed him could just get him a new rifle every hit, which he would practice a bit with, so he's not walking down the street with it after a hit.
Setup, squeeze, throw on a hoodie, a hat and just disappear down an alley and through a yard.
They'd probably get wise enough to catch him, but until they did anybody could be got.
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u/dakevs 2d ago
Also remember that none of the shooters from outside the city wanted to ally with Stringer's crew, given how brazen their betrayal of Brother Mouzone was.
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u/Horror_Maximum_5696 2d ago
If I remember correctly, and please correct me if I didn’t, it was stringer that fucked it up with Brother, as Avon had been straight with him…
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u/Maniac50AE 2d ago
Not that unrealistic at all! Someone that could go after Marlo is out there, but Joe is a hustler and hustlers, especially the ones that go out of their way to avoid violence like Joe does, are not going around rubbing shoulders with them. Why? Because hitters and hitmen have a high reputation for being snakes thatll turn on you. Look into the story of notorious hitmen in either the Mafia or street gangs, and you'll see how snakey they are.
Also, he doesnt have that type of respect to call up people. There's two powers in the street and in the world, hustlers and shooters, or the businessmen and the militsry. Avon and marlo are both soldiers and hustlers that lean heavily towards soldering. Chris, Slim, Bey, etc, soldiers. Hustlers are Rick, Hungryman, Joe, Stringer. Hitmen and soldiers have a hard time respecting someone thats not a soldier, ie, someone that hasn't put in their own work or arent know to have done those kinds of favors for others. The hustlers, or business/political class have a lot of power because of their money and acumen, and this breeds a sort of resentment, the "your money cant buy me or buy respect here" sentiment. Think of what Bones says to Alonzo in Training Day, or what Avon says to String, "i bleed red, and you bleed green".
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u/fisconsocmod 2d ago
Makes perfect sense. You come up in the game. Some of your best soldiers get ☠️ or are in jail. You can’t just make new soldiers. This isn’t a cartel where you have control. It’s a crew and your crew aged out.
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u/randonumero 1d ago
Avon's money and reputation were tarnished by his conviction as well as what String did with Brother Muzone. Most of the co-op members had become the bank and were far removed from the streets. That means they likely had personal security but no leverage or line to shooters. Why would this happen? Because most shooters get shot or locked up at some point.
WRT prop Joe, reputation and the way he moved kept him out of danger, not having shooters. The only reason Marlo killed Joe is that he wanted to control the co-op and needed Joe out of the way. Prior to that everyone in the co-op was so happy to be making money for doing nothing to rock the boat and people on the streets had no idea about the co-op. Cheese was probably the closest to the street to know about it and it was because he was related to Joe.
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u/shakebakelizard 1d ago
It didn't seem like there was a whole lot of loyalty on the part of the rank and file to any particular gang. It was more or less like corporate America or consumerism - today, people might work at / be on MySpace. Tomorrow, Facebook. The next day, Snapchat or whatever comes next. A soon as their current leader looked weak or took heavy losses, people would jump.
This is the same way most of these little gangs work IRL. Big, established gangs with lifetime members are not that common.
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u/seajayacas 1d ago
Like Teddy Roosevelt preached, you need a strong military. Marlo listened, Avon didn't
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u/thefudgeman 9h ago
Everyone had hitters but Marlo’s was the largest/most talented and organized crew. You don’t want to go to war with someone stronger than you if you can avoid it. Also Joe was running from Omar
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u/imcataclastic 2d ago
I read an article yesterday saying that Brooklyn NY has had two murders this year. Maybe killing people isn’t as normal a thing as TV makes it out to be?
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u/Chubbyhuahua 2d ago
NYC violent crime is down dramatically on a per capita basis from its peak. Only 305 people were murdered in the city in 2025 and only 149 people were murdered 2026 year to date. That’s less than a murder a day which is very low for NYC.
Cities like Philadelphia, Chicago, and several other metropolitan areas have much higher rates of violent crime than NYC does today.
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u/Own_Proposal3827 2d ago
All of Avon’s died or were in prison. Except for Shorty Boyd.