We’ve reached the end of the line for Russian Doll season two — and what a thrilling, messy, and challenging ride it’s been. While acknowledging the cyclical nature of life and how incremental progress can be, the series has forged a new path for itself, one that sprawls across eras and continents. And yet, these last seven episodes feel even more personal than the eight that preceded them, despite all the new characters and paradoxes and snippets of Marxist critical theory. Season two tells a story that’s both hyperspecific and universal, proving once again the significance of holding two opposing ideas in your head: that you can love your parent and still feel let down by them; that the desire to protect can sometimes cause harm; that you can lose as much as you gain when you start over. All of these theories and traumas are nestled in “Matryoshka,†the season-two closer.
Nadia spends much of the season trying to fix the past and becomes increasingly unmoored in the present. She tries to correct her mother’s mistakes by making different choices for her, and when that fails, she tries righting some of the wrongs committed against previous generations of her family. She focuses on the material: recovering the family’s Krugerrands, which represent their hopes and devastation. For Vera, those gold coins are an exit strategy should another fascist dictator rise to power; they’re also emblematic of Nora’s “betrayal.†It’s less clear what the coins symbolize for Nora because her story is told mostly through her daughter’s perspective, but for Nadia, the Krugerrands are like some cursed treasure from a fairy tale — seductive but ultimately more trouble than they’re worth.
Despite being one of the more adept time travelers in pop culture, Nadia realizes she can’t change her fortune — not with gold, anyway. Instead, she brings baby Nadia to 2022 so that her 40-year-old self can be a mother to her days-old self, collapsing time along the way. It’s a staggering act of desperation and selfishness, as Alan notes. But is it a response to learning she can’t change her family’s past or learning that she may have already squandered her second chance at a family — because what did Ruth represent, if not another chance at a loving home?
Nadia took the lessons of season one to heart and confronted her past, which also meant confronting her mother’s and her grandmother’s. And I don’t doubt that she wanted to prevent some of the tragedy, find a way to preserve some of the happiness. But given her reaction in “Schrödinger’s Ruth,†I wonder if Nadia wasn’t already trying to escape the present before whatever mystical track switch was triggered and sent her to 1982. As Ruth’s caretaker for the last four years, Nadia knew the state of her godmother’s health, even if she didn’t want to accept it. Nadia had already lost one mother, and who knows how long her grandmother was in her life. What if the possibility of losing Ruth — which was suddenly quite real— is what sent her hurtling into the past to save her other mother?
I know it sounds far-fetched, and I certainly don’t think it was the only catalyst. It takes years to work through the kind of trauma Nadia’s experienced, and the epiphany she had four years ago only provided her with another opportunity to process that pain and grief — it didn’t magically resolve it. She probably would have boarded a six train to 1982 even if Ruth were hearty and hale. But Ruth wasn’t, and no matter what Nadia might have learned in 2019, there was nothing she could do to stop that clock from running out. Nadia’s 40th birthday was upon her; she was so far beyond anything Nora had experienced, any lessons her mom might have passed down. Her second chance, Ruth, was slipping through her fingers — of course she was desperate enough to “[break] time.â€
Also trying to make the most of his second chance is Alan: Before 2019, he made decisions and stuck to them. He chose a path and stayed with it, for better or worse. When he “blew up his life†in one of his resets, he felt freedom for the first time. The man charging through Tompkins Square Park with Nadia and Horse in “Ariadne†looked like he wouldn’t end up in a rut again. Over the last four years, Alan’s sort of made good on that: He isn’t stuck in a loveless relationship, nor is he plodding through his day. He’s just incapable of making any decisions for fear of “fuck[ing] it all up again.â€
That revelation comes very late in the season, in a scene that’s much too rushed. The season-two premiere did suggest that Alan was adrift without a routine, but the finale requires some huge leaps from the viewer. “Everybody says I’m just like you,†Alan tells his grandmother, a statement that would be more poignant if we knew more about Alan, let alone Agnes. The young woman who traveled to Germany to study, make impressive schematics, and help her boyfriend defy some arbitrary borders doesn’t seem to have much in common with any iteration of Alan that we’ve seen, other than the Alan who was Agnes for a while. Agnes also calls him her “perfect baby boy,†but while the tenderness is lovely to witness, it doesn’t square with the woman his mother described.
Oh, to have had another episode to explore this further, or even just a few more scenes between Alan and Agnes in the finale. Because even though he made the choice to live, Alan is clearly still wrestling with the other choice he made on March 30, 2019: “I killed myself. I don’t really know how to live with that.†That’s such a wallop of a line, and it likely hits as hard as it does because Charlie Barnett is a meticulous performer — he’ll find the pathos, even if it’s hidden beneath layers of plot and other people’s irony. Just imagine what he could have done with a proper solo episode or a better-integrated story line.
But Alan might actually have had a leg up on Nadia this season. He continued to wrestle with his second chance, which meant he hadn’t blown it yet (although that created a debilitating fear on its own). On the other hand, Nadia felt she’d made some huge mistake and was prepared to tear up the space-time fabric to remedy it. But once again, she was repeating history because Vera was just as obsessed with correcting mistakes. We watched her give up on Nora and pin her hopes on Nadia. Nora wore the Krugerrand necklace, but it was always meant for Nadia. (I guess Nadia was right about the gold.) Vera thought Nadia was her second chance, her do-over, so she plotted with Delia to send Nora back to the asylum and raise the baby on their own.
It’s not clear whose pattern Vera might be repeating here or if she’s the first link in this chain. But Nadia decides to end it, even if it means giving up her second chance. She returns baby Nadia to Nora, still on the six train, who asks her, “If you could choose your mother all over, would you choose me again?†They’re not alone in the car — the two Ruths and two Veras are sitting in pairs. Nadia’s 9-year-old self is also there. Seeing all these generations of her family and her adoptive family, Nadia responds, “I didn’t choose you the first time, but I guess that’s just how the story goes, huh, Mom.†It’s a moment of triumph but also one of acceptance — though Nadia doesn’t want to repeat Nora’s or Vera’s mistakes, she accepts that they’re still a part of her. So are their traumas and hopes and desires for another chance. But now, the latter is an option only for Nadia, so she takes it. She makes it in time for Ruth’s wake and ends the season where she began the series: in front of the mirror in Maxine’s bathroom. She looks intently at the reflection, which, for the first time in a while, is actually her own. The corners of her mouth lift in a slight smile as if to say, “Fuck it, here we go again.†And once again, it’s more than enough.
The various elements of Russian Doll season two don’t line up as neatly as the little figurines that make up a matryoshka, or come together as seamlessly as the threads of season one. But that’s the trade-off for a season that’s even more audacious and hopeful than the first. Like Nadia and Alan, Russian Doll made the most of a second chance.