>>15817552please don't hate me for saying this, but I am now imagining The Wire as a LOST-style purgatory for real people.
The Drug Trade has taken on such a powerful life of its own that it has become aware, and is progressively crushing all of the social orders touched by it into unceasing cyclical conflict, with death as the only release from the struggle. Consider D'Angelo. He chose to rise above the conflict to save his own soul, and in response, It killed him through Stringer.