This show has always been a tragedy and it had a fittingly melancholy, tragic ending. The Jennings lost their home, their children, and the mission that they dedicated their lives too since they were teenagers. They return home to a Russia they haven’t seen for decades, to god only knows what new roles and lives. We viewers know that the August Coup against Gorbachev doesn’t take place until 1991, but all of the hardliner forces against him in the KGB and elsewhere are still in play for the Jennings to deal with now. Since Elizabeth betrayed them, I can’t help but feel that the next few years in Russia for the Jennings are going to be fraught with tension and danger. And then the whole government collapses and things get even worse. How long will the Jennings survive now that they’ve gone home? We’ll never know. The last we see of them, Philip looks lost and speaks to Elizabeth in English. She replies in Russian that they’ll adjust and work it out. But will they? When she gazed out over the nighttime skyline of Moscow, she could imagine an alternate life for herself there, but not one for Philip.
Oleg will likely rot in a US jail for an unknown number of years and may never see his family again. Arkady fears for his own future. Stan had his entire world turned upside down. As he said to Philip, the Jennings turned his entire life into a joke. Renee? We’ll never know if she’s another illegal, and we’ll never know what will happen between her and Stan. Claudia? Who knows. She probably got back to Moscow about the same time as the Jennings, but we’ll never know. Henry has to live with the fact that his parents were Soviet spies and that they and his sister fled the country and abandoned him into the care of their next door neighbor. Appropriately enough for the ignored/neglected Jennings kid, we only got a glimpse of Stan talking to him, so there will be no emotional reckoning or payout for the audience to see how he deals with the devastating news that Stan delivered. Our last real glimpse of Henry is of him impatiently blowing off his parents’ farewell call because he had to get back to a game of ping pong. And Paige finally took her first true independent step and stayed behind all alone to face an unknown future in the US.
It was such a perfect ending for this show. It was always a show about a marriage and a family but also about what happens to people who dedicate their lives to an ideology. We saw in Elizabeth’s dream flashback that when she was with the first true love of her life (Gregory, not Philip), that she never wanted children. But the reality of truly losing her children was so unbearable that it left her speechless with grief and shock. Henry probably will hate them for a while at least. Paige left them while she was still herself roiling with a sense of anger and betrayal. Philip and Elizabeth have to carry that emotional pain with them for the rest of their lives. At the end, all they have left is each other. Will they make it as a couple? I honestly don’t know. When Philip suggested to Elizabeth that he might stay behind in the US a couple of years to monitor the kids, that was a quietly momentous acknowledgement that he was willing to choose the kids over her since there was no real guarantee that he’d ever be able to get back to Russia if they split up now. And who knows? He might have wanted to stay in the US just for himself.
I’m saddened beyond belief that our last glimpse of Oleg is of him hunched on the floor in an FBI holding cell. I’d like think that Stan eventually gets over himself just long enough to help arrange some sort of reduced sentence or spy trade or whatever else sort of deal to get Oleg released, but we’ll never, ever know.
The only thing in the finale episode that truly surprised me was Paige getting off the train and leaving her parents forever. Her whole life has been wracked and ruined by her quest to make sense of her family and win her mother’s love and approval. It took right to the end of the show for her to realize that she never knew them and that she didn’t belong in their world no matter how much she tried to fit in. She has no one and nothing now. We can all speculate forever about what she’ll do next, but we’ll never know. That’s very sad but also very liberating to me as a viewer. All of these characters have internal lives and fates that we’ll never see, but that happens in the real world all the time, too. People come and go from our lives and we often never know what happened to them. Sure, social media now has made it easier to stay superficially in touch with people if we chose to, but it’s not the same.
I’m going to miss the hell out of this show but I love this ambiguous, heartbreaking ending more than I can say.
[I'm also going to miss reading all of the thoughtful commentary by everyone in this community every week. I've gained so much insight into this show from everyone here. So thank you everybody for all of your great posts over the years.]
no subject
Oleg will likely rot in a US jail for an unknown number of years and may never see his family again. Arkady fears for his own future. Stan had his entire world turned upside down. As he said to Philip, the Jennings turned his entire life into a joke. Renee? We’ll never know if she’s another illegal, and we’ll never know what will happen between her and Stan. Claudia? Who knows. She probably got back to Moscow about the same time as the Jennings, but we’ll never know. Henry has to live with the fact that his parents were Soviet spies and that they and his sister fled the country and abandoned him into the care of their next door neighbor. Appropriately enough for the ignored/neglected Jennings kid, we only got a glimpse of Stan talking to him, so there will be no emotional reckoning or payout for the audience to see how he deals with the devastating news that Stan delivered. Our last real glimpse of Henry is of him impatiently blowing off his parents’ farewell call because he had to get back to a game of ping pong. And Paige finally took her first true independent step and stayed behind all alone to face an unknown future in the US.
It was such a perfect ending for this show. It was always a show about a marriage and a family but also about what happens to people who dedicate their lives to an ideology. We saw in Elizabeth’s dream flashback that when she was with the first true love of her life (Gregory, not Philip), that she never wanted children. But the reality of truly losing her children was so unbearable that it left her speechless with grief and shock. Henry probably will hate them for a while at least. Paige left them while she was still herself roiling with a sense of anger and betrayal. Philip and Elizabeth have to carry that emotional pain with them for the rest of their lives. At the end, all they have left is each other. Will they make it as a couple? I honestly don’t know. When Philip suggested to Elizabeth that he might stay behind in the US a couple of years to monitor the kids, that was a quietly momentous acknowledgement that he was willing to choose the kids over her since there was no real guarantee that he’d ever be able to get back to Russia if they split up now. And who knows? He might have wanted to stay in the US just for himself.
I’m saddened beyond belief that our last glimpse of Oleg is of him hunched on the floor in an FBI holding cell. I’d like think that Stan eventually gets over himself just long enough to help arrange some sort of reduced sentence or spy trade or whatever else sort of deal to get Oleg released, but we’ll never, ever know.
The only thing in the finale episode that truly surprised me was Paige getting off the train and leaving her parents forever. Her whole life has been wracked and ruined by her quest to make sense of her family and win her mother’s love and approval. It took right to the end of the show for her to realize that she never knew them and that she didn’t belong in their world no matter how much she tried to fit in. She has no one and nothing now. We can all speculate forever about what she’ll do next, but we’ll never know. That’s very sad but also very liberating to me as a viewer. All of these characters have internal lives and fates that we’ll never see, but that happens in the real world all the time, too. People come and go from our lives and we often never know what happened to them. Sure, social media now has made it easier to stay superficially in touch with people if we chose to, but it’s not the same.
I’m going to miss the hell out of this show but I love this ambiguous, heartbreaking ending more than I can say.
[I'm also going to miss reading all of the thoughtful commentary by everyone in this community every week. I've gained so much insight into this show from everyone here. So thank you everybody for all of your great posts over the years.]