Boardwalk Empire Season Finale News: Gangster Drama Finally Bids Goodbye and More Stories Could have Been Folded, but Showrunner is Happy it never materialized

By Kara Michelle Oct 28, 2014 09:31 AM EDT

Boardwalk Empire Season Finale News: Gangster Drama Finally Bids Goodbye and More Stories Could have Been Folded, but Showrunner is Happy it never materialized

Boardwalk Empire had finally bid its farewell Sunday night. The HBO series drew 2.3 million viewers which is an 18% increase from the last episode.

The Boardwalk Empire Season 5 finale was up more than the Season 4 finale and is somewhat on the same level for the Season 5 pilot, according to TV Series Finale.

Creator Terence Winter said that Nucky Thompson (Steve Buscemi) had finally paid for his sins with the finale.

Harper shots Nucky three times and died on the boardwalk he once ruled. As Nucky lays on the ground dying, he sees a vision of a younger version of himself swimming in the ocean and catching a coin.

"In life, it's not that simple," says Winter. "Sometimes bad people get away with things and good people suffer. Sometimes crime pays. Sometimes the world is unfair."

"That's why gangsters are fascinating people," he added. "Most of us wouldn't go as far as they do, but who knows? If I were in Atlantic City in the 1920s, I don't know that I wouldn't have done some bootlegging. Everyone else was.

"Watching gangsters in the movies or on television is like riding a roller coaster. You get a sense of what it might feel like to die without actually dying."

Winter confirmed that the ending of the show is what he thought of in the beginning, though there were plot and character expansions as the show progresses.

There were more stories that could have been folded into "Boardwalk," says Winter, but he's happy they weren't.

"I'm from the school of leaving the stage while the audience still wants more," he says. "We've done 56 hours and we didn't want to get in a position where we started repeating ourselves. We had a great five-year run and now it's on to what's next."