One would think that five seasons' worth of gritty realism would numb viewers to the brutalism and death in "The Wire." Turns out, the characters in the show — the kids especially — get far more easily desensitized to violence than the viewers do. Kenard (Thuliso Dingwall), a child soldier from Marlo Stanfield's army of dealers, is perhaps the best example of this. The boy is only 10 yet is so immune to violence that he himself performs it without the slightest hesitation.
Case in point — Kenard shoots at the king Omar Little and he doesn't miss. Kenard and his gang are dousing a cat in lighter fluid when Omar limps past. The rest of the children scatter while Kenard stays put. He follows Omar to a convenience store and delivers the shot that finally kills him.
Not only does this scene show Kenard's transformation into an outright murderer, but it also puts an end to the long story arc of Omar the legend. "The Wire" often challenged our conception of what separates the good from the bad, and no one character exemplified this better than Omar Little. A Robin Hood-esque vigilante, he eschewed both the law of the streets and the law of the land to follow his own moral order. By killing off a figure that Esquire called the greatest character ever from "The Wire" in such a cold, unfeeling fashion, this scene delivered a sucker punch to the gut.
