When people think of Michael K. Williams, they almost immediately visualize Omar Little. Certainly, the mercurial actor’s role as the openly gay, shotgun-toting Robin Hood of West Baltimore is among the most iconic in television history. Even a certain ex-president agrees that Omar is the GOAT and Williams’s portrayal was masterful.

Yet after binging as many articles and interviews as I could after the sad news of Williams’s untimely death broke over the weekend, it’s also clear that we were robbed of a man whose brand of no-bullshit leftist politics had recently emerged.

The actor behind Omar Little and other memorable characters in HBO dramas was a complex, ever-evolving person who was often open about his own scars, beyond the rugged one that marked his face. As such, the fifty-four-year-old Williams openly admitted that he was something of a late bloomer in terms of his politics.