This is it. The end of the road. It’s been four years since the show departed the station with plenty of skepticism about doing a TV show out of the 1982 French graphic novel Le Transperceneige, by Jacques Lob, Benjamin Legrand, and Jean-Marc Rochette, when Bong Joon Ho already delivered the perfect adaptation back in 2013. But the show found its footing (or railing) and started exploring enough interesting concepts and doing weird things to stand out on its own. Though, in the end, the show traded some truly unforgettable villains for a kind of dull one, the end delivered the promise of a story that echoed the previous versions of the story while doing a unique spin on it.
The series finale, “Last Stop,†is very much a throwback episode, one that feels much closer to season one and the movie adaptation than anything else in this season. We begin with a new revolution onboard Snowpiercer, with the residents of New Eden fighting their way uptrain to stop Nima from destroying the world. It is a thrilling action sequence, the handheld camera constantly sandwiched between people, adding to a sense of claustrophobia in the enclosed spaces of the train — a welcome change after last week’s open-air brawl. It’s great to see not just the usual suspects of Layton and Till fighting, but also Ruth doing her share, even impaling one of the silo soldiers quite brutally. Sadly, they are no match for Nima’s knockout gas, which allows the silo forces to grab Ruth and retreat. This forces the invading army to split up, with Josie taking some soldiers toward the rocket from the sub-train, while Layton and the remaining main characters head to the Big Alice engine to find Melanie.
Unfortunately for everyone, Nima made sure the rebels couldn’t just escape on Big Alice. His people took apart the consoles and throttle, making Big Alice a glorified server under the control of the Snowpiercer engine — at least Wilford isn’t here to see this. Except, perhaps, he would have very much liked to see the moment where the train literally goes off the rails. Turns out the nine months’ worth of forced labor on Snowpiercer to retrofit it was all so the train could literally stand on its own, on tracked treads like a massive tank. Now, this is the kind of sci-fi silliness that made Snowpiercer such a fun ride the past few years, and it is a delight to see the writers had one last surprise up their sleeve, because the only thing more exciting than a massive train traversing a frozen world is a massive train literally traversing the frozen ocean like a snowcat.
Meanwhile, Nima tries one last time to resolve things peacefully and without bloodshed by appealing to Ruth’s leadership, which seems a bit disingenuous coming from a guy who literally just tried to bury the entire town of New Eden for no reason at all just last week. Thankfully, despite his insistence that Melanie has been wrong in the past, Ruth doesn’t buy any of it. He tries to convince her that he is going to make her the leader of humanity and he’ll leave them Big Alice, but it doesn’t matter; Ruth knows if they stop fighting, they die. After soldiers take Ruth away, she is rescued by Sykes and they find the rest of the original Snowpiercer passengers at the work cars. Finally, Ruth unites all the passengers as one train, rallying them to fight against Nima and his ridiculously flawed plan and save their home.
In the sub-train, the rebels find a bunch of knockout-gas canisters and gas masks, which they steal, then rig a sub-train car and fill it with the canisters, which they push through to a group of soldiers ahead of them, knocking them all out. It is now a war on two fronts, a pincer movement of the nontemporal kind, with the New Eden group going uptrain while Ruth and the Snowpiercer group go downtrain, all going to meet at the rocket. At the same time, Alex and Melanie sneak into the car with the rocket and start working on taking away the vials with the compound away from the missile.
Of course, it all sounds too good to be true, as Nima realizes something is wrong, activates the countdown, heads to the rocket car, and finds Melanie and Alex tampering with his dream. Melanie tries a different approach and just utterly obliterates Nima’s ego, confronting him about his past mistakes until he caves in and admits that he thought CW-7 would work but didn’t. However, it is too late to turn back because he forces the two to put the vials back at gunpoint, and there is no stopping the launch. With his last breath, Nima has a change of heart and helps Alex and Melanie get away right before the blast door opens and he freezes to death as the rocket shoots up to the sky.
Thankfully, before the rocket reaches the stratosphere, the bomb freezes, and the rocket crashes into the ocean. It turns out that Alex, the smartest person around, took out a bolt that kept the payload hatch together, making it open up early and freeze before it could explode and spread the compound. Completely dumbfounded, the soldiers surrender the train to Melanie as they all head back to New Eden, but not before Melanie gives us the most nostalgic scene in the season — one last morning announcement through the Snowpiercer PA system. They did it, they saved humanity — kind of. They don’t know how long the New Eden thermal pocket will last. Maybe it’s a day, maybe 50. Without a promise of tomorrow, the people of New Eden will simply live like it’s their last day, with the option of just hopping on Snowpiercer if they need to.
They have a party at town hall in New Eden, as Javi announces he will take Snowpiercer, if only for a while, in order to keep the engine running while they figure out whether to retrofit the train to stay on New Eden or not, and asks Syke to come over with him. Oz plays the piano while Audrey finally makes her return to singing, as they all celebrate together as one train, finally. We zoom out and end not too differently than Bong’s movie, with a shot of flowers booming in the middle of the snow, signaling that life finds a way.
Tailie Thoughts
• So, what happened to the peacekeeping forces? There is one single person from that side at the New Eden party, an engineer who didn’t like Milius, but what about the rest? This feels like a bit of an oversight, a big unanswered question like the orcs post–Return of the King. Did Snowpiercer stop by the silo on the way to New Eden to drop them all off? How can they survive? Did they imprison them?
• While everyone was fighting to save the world, Josie went on her little revenge quest to kill Headwood, but once she sees her talking to the shoes of her dead husband all by herself, Josie pities the evil doctor and decides to spare her life. A good message, but given we have no idea what happens to Headwood or the others, it’s kind of strange to leave such a dangerous criminal just walk away scot-free.