Watch: Phil Leotardo: The Man Who Went to War With Tony

Phil Leotardo did twenty years in prison without a complaint, came out owed the world, and spent the final season collecting, until he pushed two families into open war. Watch the video above, then read Phil's story. See also: how Phil Leotardo died.

Frank Vincent gives Phil the stillness of a man who did his time in another era and finds the modern mob, the therapy, the apologies, the Vito scandal, beneath contempt. His grievances are real by his code: a brother murdered, a captain humiliated, a family treated as Jersey's junior partner once too often. The war he starts is the series' endgame, and his own end, shot at a gas station and finished by an SUV in front of his grandchildren, is staged as the opposite of a Godfather death: no dignity, no music, just a Raceway forecourt.

Quick answer: Phil's pride and old-school code made compromise impossible. He ordered war on Jersey, lost it, and died with the least dignified death on the show.

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