“Boardwalk Empire” has killed another one of our darlings. Last season, which saw the disposal of handsome (if inconsistently limp-exhibiting) Michael Pitt, grumpiest old man Dabney Coleman, and heartbreakingly gender-role-oppressed Aleksa Palladino, left the fate of Paz de la Huerta’s mewling zombie flapper Lucy Danziger dangling like the belt straps of her own undone robe. Word now comes that de la Huerta’s contract will not be renewed for season three. In many ways, her character has already served her purpose: First, as Nucky Thompson’s gal pal, before he got all complex by ordering the murder of an abusive husband in order to acquire a pseudo-wife and family; then, as baby-mama to Agent Van Alden, himself homocidally complex. She linked the two, serving as the mirror that shows cop and criminal as the same thing, the living representation of the phrase, “You and I are not so different, after all.” Not bad for character who spent most of her time lolling in bed and murmuring like a Nyquil-fed tween.

But the show loses much more with de la Huerta’s departure. Disappointing as it was to see Pitt and Palladino go, they were ultimately just moving in accordance with destiny, trapped in a diagram of family, loyalty, and independence. Van Alden essentially kept Lucy prisoner, but she escaped his clutches once the baby was born. Who knows what schemes she’ll get up to in her life offscreen? Smearing on lipstick, baring your breasts, and generally strutting around like you own this junk heap we call earth will get you everywhere in the Atlantic City of “Boardwalk Empire,” just as one imagines it does in showbiz. Which points us more precisely to what exactly this program will now be missing — not Lucy Danziger and her hijinks so much as Paz de la Huerta and her essential being. Lucy served not merely as a vessel for Nucky and Van Alden and their explosive potency, but as a vessel for de la Huerta the celebrity’s fascinating power, her allure and repulsiveness.

Paz de la Huerta played her character dangerously close to herself, or at least, who we identify de la Huerta as being. And let’s be honest: Paz de la Huerta is hilarious. The characters played by Pitt, Coleman, Palladino — not so much. The only other actor on the show with as sauve a sense of self-awareness, an equal command of humor? Steve Buscemi. (Michael Kenneth Williams is of course amazing, but the moment Chalky White pretended he could read and retired himself to the woodshed for some whittling, he became tragic in a way the wild, wildly self-involved Lucy/de la Huerta could never quite be.) In a better world, we would at least see a sitcom spinoff. Lucy and her theater pal — remember, her one visitor during the pregnancy? —  banding together for a life of gritty fabulousness and managed expectations. Or one that doesn’t even star de la Huerta: Van Alden and child, truly her mother’s daughter, 15 years on. (That title writes itself: “Daddy Issues.”) But it’s not a better world. It’s de la Huerta’s world, and we just want to live in it.