I always felt like one of the big reasons Omar was almost unilaterally more poplar with fans of the Wire than McNulty (who was arguably the “main character” of the show) could be due to the fact that McNulty was sort of a pile of angry tortured male protagonist tropes that show up in every drama while Omar had a sense of humour and a full emotional spectrum and was still an undeniably badass dude on top of all that. You watch enough of this stuff and you kind of hit that point where you realize that the dude who owns his emotions and deals with his shit is probably more intimidating and fearless than the one who bottles it all up and wastes their energy trying to look like an unaffected coolguy.