This week’s finale is improbably the season’s strongest episode. In my previous recap, I worried that a roundtable setup meant we were bound to spend more time talking about the past, but as it turns out, having unburdened itself of the need to fill time with overlong, belabored psychedelic trips and flashback sequences, Nine Perfect Strangers finally gives us some action. There is a sense of forward movement to the finale’s events that evokes that old, familiar thrill of wanting to know what happens next.
When we pick up in the main salon, David is in the hot seat. Masha enlightens us about the particulars of how he or his nefarious businesses have impacted each guest’s life — his network’s exploitation of Brian’s viral cancellation, his philanthropic funding of the scholarship that gave and abruptly took away Wolfie’s opportunity to study music, Signal Op’s smart bombs that killed Matteo’s family, and its funding of war-zone hospitals, where Sister Agnes worked, which are designed to “launder” the company’s image. Having destroyed, they proposed to heal.
As soon as Masha brings up Signal Op’s smart bombs, Victoria takes her aside. She doesn’t want Imogen to know the true reason her father killed himself, which is that he had designed the precision technology that guided the bombs. Masha maintains there’s value in learning hard truths, but Victoria’s “mother-to-mother” appeal strikes a chord: Tatiana watches them in the background, waiting to finally meet her dad (which, by the way, never happens, though it was a much-talked-about possibility). When Masha tells her she’s in the middle of important work, Tatiana shouts that she hates her.
The only person who doesn’t have a direct connection to David is Tina, who is hurt not to be the center of attention. It’s hard for her to accept that she’s in Zauberwald solely in a plus-one capacity; Wolfie was the reason Masha picked them to attend the retreat. Tina storms off to her room to sulk while Masha asks the group to consider how David should be held accountable for the harm he caused. It’s the kind of question that moves a plot forward: What do these characters want from David?
He tries to defend himself in all the expected, I’m-a-billionaire, I-didn’t-start-the-war, I-also-have-trauma ways, and it doesn’t fly with anyone, least of all Peter, who insightfully points out that by giving him the opportunity to play the victim, Masha is only appeasing his narcissism. No matter how emphatically David tells Peter he loves him, any trust his son might have had in his word has gone out the window. He knows that what David really loves is power. Peter will never get what he wants from his father, and if he had deluded himself into thinking he might before coming to Zauberwald, the retreat has served to disabuse him of the notion.
But what about everyone else? What could Wolfie, for example, want from David? What about Brian? David says he could give Brian his show back in exchange for being untied, only he’s not tied, which he hasn’t realized because he is so fucked-up on psychedelics; still, trying to escape is useless since he can barely stand. Imogen puts two and two together, as Victoria predicted, and quickly gets her catharsis: She punches David square in the nose, perhaps remembering Masha’s vague encouragement. “Sometimes you can’t treat pain gently,” she said. “Sometimes you have to grab it and punch it in the face.”
The commotion makes Agnes cry, which moves David for no discernible reason other than that she’s small and a nun, maybe. When he asks what he can do so she’ll stop crying, Peter suggests he stop making bombs. It’s a small part of the business, anyway, and though he has lost the battle to be a decent father, there’s still time for him to become a marginally better person. David is relieved: He didn’t realize it was that easy. He promises them he’ll get out of the bomb-making business effective immediately, as soon as he can get a hold of his phone, then runs out to look for it. Because there’s a blizzard outside and he’s still tripping balls, Masha follows him.
All the guests seem to agree that having David pull out of bomb-making would be a satisfying reparation for the widespread global trauma he has caused. But incredibly, the only person we don’t hear confront, speak, or even look directly at David is Matteo, whose entire family was killed by said bombs. Granted, in episode six, we learned Matteo has made peace with his past. That may well be, but I’m not sure any human being wouldn’t have at least some kind of reaction when facing the person responsible for the loss of their entire family, especially in a situation especially designed to accuse him of wrongdoing. Okay, maybe he doesn’t say anything — but does it rattle him? Does he feel moved to teach everyone a lesson as he did with Masha? Does he simply pick up his stuff and walk away? Matteo’s absence from the scene only emphasizes how much of a noncharacter he is. Instead, he is a pretext for hiding Victoria’s disease, for creating a hollow cliffhanger between episodes, for connecting the O’Claires to the Sharpes. The offhand inclusion of brutal, total tragedy just to build these pretexts is unsettling.
As Masha runs out after David, all the guests scream at the sight of Martin, sweaty and crazed, following them out with a rifle. Poor Martin has been on a solo journey to confront his own trauma. When he first sees the ghost of his dead mother, Helena, she holds him to her bosom like a baby and tells him she has always loved him just the way he is. But she disappears, so Martin eats another handful of ’shrooms and goes to look for her upstairs, where she has turned into Mean Helena. “You remember my love,” she says. “You’ve forgotten my cruelty.” For about 20 minutes in the middle, between Masha’s Funny Games–ass performance in the main salon and this, “Never Change” is basically a horror piece. Wanting to rid himself of his mother’s cruel voice once and for all, Martin aims a rifle at her. But it’s not she he should be mad at, she says — he should be mad at the people who are stealing Zauberwald from their family. From her room, Tina vaguely hears the shot Martin takes at the mirror. She tries to warn Wolfie that the “vibes are very bad,” but Wolfie doesn’t want to hear it; she wants to know how it’ll all end.
So the troupe heads out into the blizzard: Masha following David, Martin following Masha, Helena following Martin. Tatiana pops up here and there, trailing after her own mother. They all catch up at Zauberwald’s bridge, where Martin trains the rifle on Masha and David. He wants to take back control of Zauberwald, and he may as well make the world better while he’s at it by killing David, too. Helena acts like a devil on his shoulder, emboldening him to fire. Masha manages to talk Martin down, but when he turns away, Helena calls him a little bitch, so he fires — only he hits the railing, startling Masha and sending her down into the snow below.
Masha, of course, has nine lives. People have tried killing her before and never succeeded, and Martin — much to his eventual relief — doesn’t either. But in that moment between life and death, a key in her brain changes. Tatiana comes to her, and she finally admits it’s time to let go. “Just for this moment, just for this life,” she promises as Tatiana merges into the falling snow. When she wakes up later, she tells David she’ll never see Tatiana again, which is okay because that’s how things are meant to be. Did Martin’s outburst finally convince Masha that hallucinating the ghosts of your past isn’t the healthiest way to deal with loss? Can she finally come to terms with her own selfishness and narcissistic delusion?
Those would be questions to take into a potential third season, but for now, she’s content to give Zauberwald back to Martin. In the harsh, cold light of sobriety, he has half a mind to turn himself in to the police, but Masha tells him he would be more useful continuing his family business. Stepping into the motherly role, Masha tells Martin what he has so badly wanted to hear: “I believe in you.” Predictably, David is pulling out of Bavaria too. After this eventful night, he tells Masha that he needs to rethink his offer to invest, given the potential side effects of psychedelic treatment, and that — surprise, surprise — what he said about not making bombs while off his face on psychedelics didn’t count.
Everyone leaves Zauberwald. Imogen and Victoria depart on good terms, and Peter plans to send over a private jet to pick up Imogen soon. Brian leaves Jesse behind but takes a new friend with him: Agnes asks if he would be open to entertaining children in hospitals, refugee camps, and schools, where they need him the most. I brought up earlier that there was something slightly creepy about Brian’s, uh, treatment of the bear, and that sense only increases when the show parallels their farewell with Tina and Wolfie’s breakup. I understand that all three characters made peace with knowing they are better off alone than with someone who brings out the worst in them — in fact, after Wolfie leaves, Tina plays the piano again, which moves Masha to tears — but the juxtaposition kind of implies that Jesse and Brian are breaking up too. I don’t like it at all. Who would ever imply Mr. Rogers had a romantic interest in Daniel?!
The first thing everyone sees when service returns to their phones is that Masha has leaked the camera footage of David promising he’ll stop making bombs. He’s furious, of course, but they all get a good laugh out of it. “Eat shit, Satan,” Brian says, reveling. But because this show simply cannot stop itself from adding another unnecessary layer, one month later, Masha and a still-pissed David meet at a McDonald’s, a “neutral location” of her choice that definitely doesn’t have anything to do with product placement. He confronts her with an NDA and a contract that would bind her psychedelic research to him for the grand sum of $100,000. A former girlboss, Masha knows she’s worth more than that, but when she tells him she won’t sign, he blackmails her with his own damning footage — of all the people who have committed crimes, been violent to themselves or one another, or otherwise nearly lost their minds under her care, including last season’s Carmel. He bought the videos from Martin, who was never that loyal anyway.
Masha signs the deal because she knows her hands are tied, but whatever reason had dawned when she let go of Tatiana already seems to be fading. She looks at David with a twisted twinkle in her eye and reminds him they are family and you’re stuck with family. She signs but promises to make him regret it. Most disturbing of all, she seals the deal with a kiss and smiles when she tells David, “I do.” This last bit only serves to assure us that Masha will continue to get her way. She has gone two seasons now basically unchanged, no matter what happens to her — the return of a lover, the sight of a ghost, the responsibility of family, nearly killing other people or being killed. Nine Perfect Strangers’s main through-line is that things happen to Masha but they hardly matter: Her will always prevails. It’s not for nothing that this episode is titled “Never Change”; we know Masha won’t. With this season, Strangers has ceased to look for new parts of Masha to understand her or her motivations. It has simply accepted that she will always find a way. That certainty dampens any excitement to find out what happens to her next.
If there’s one takeaway from the season finale, it’s that Masha has nine lives and, no matter what happens, she will always get her way.
