“His life was full of loneliness.”
And those words turned out to be hauntingly true as the series reached its conclusion tonight.
Instead, we saw Philip and Elizabeth’s flight from everything they’ve known, everything they’ve built.
Credit: Patrick Harbron/FX
They lost one child.
Then both of them.
But they were strangers.
But their shared life was now hollowed out, filled with loneliness.
Their goal, their ideals, their pledge, was noble.
And in the end, by betraying The Center and protecting Gorbachev, they fulfilled their promise.
The Americansended with no bloodshed.
No one was killed.
No one was even wounded.
But for Philip and Elizabeth, losing their livesespecially after taking so manymay have been the easier way out.
Instead, they live.
And they live with what they have done, good and bad.
“I can’t even remember his name now.
When they first asked me, he said it would be a hard life.
He didn’t want me to think it would be some big adventure.”
He looked longingly at the city of Moscow, laid out before him.
“I said I wasn’t afraid of that.”
Maybe he is now.
Elizabeth arrives with her bag, and they begin making plans.
First get Paige, then Henry…but Philip raises a surprising objection.
“Henry should stay.”
“Leave him here?”
Unlike Paige, Henry doesn’t know about their double life.
This will upend him and tearing him apart from everything he does know would be an act of selfishness.
“It’s the best thing for him,” Philip says.
“To be alone?
Away from us?”
“That is not the best thing for us.”
She doesn’t realize there is no “us” anymore.
And with that, the Jennings lose their son.
He is not the first son lost.
“It probably means he’ll be tried for espionage,” Arkady says.
“They’ll trade him back to us,” the father says, seeking reassurance.
“He wasn’t there for the KGB.
There won’t be a trade,” Arkady says.
Furthermore… “They’re going to come after me, possibly you.”
“What you sent him for, it didn’t work,” the father says.
“I lose one son in a useless war and now this.”
Unless he reveals the man and woman he was working with.
“In your work, are there people who put their faith in you?”
“You’re asking me to let down people who trust me.”
“I have to let down people who trust me all the time,” Aderholt says.
“I wish I didn’t have to.
But I have bigger things to protect.
For me, my country.
For you, your church.
You’re going to have to choose, my friend, now.”
He knows only their Russian names, but he agrees to describe their true appearance.
Meanwhile, Stan ducks out of garage-watch duty with his FBI partner to do surveillance on Paige’s apartment.
He spots Philip and Elizabeth going in, and then catches them coming out with packed bags.
“So what happens if I call in this plate?”
“What is with you?”
“Stop moving you f piece of s!”
Stan declares, drawing his weapon.
Suddenly it’s hands up, all around.
“Stan …” Elizabeth says, trying to reason with him.
Trying to play on his doubts.
“This is Paige.”
“Just stop, Elizabeth.
It’s all over,” Stan tells her.
But it’s Philip who decides that, yes, it is all over.
“We had a job to do,” he says softly.
“We had a job to do.”
As far as confrontations go, they don’t get more heartbreaking than this.
We taste every drop of Stan’s range, and below that the sting of his lingering bewilderment.
“You were my best friend,” Stan tells Philip.
“You were mine, too,” Philip.
“I never wanted to lie to you, Stan.
What else could I do.
You moved in next to me.
And then we ended up as friends.”
“Friends …” Stan scoffs.
“You made my life a joke.”
“You were my only friend.
In my whole shy life.
For all these years, my life was the joke, not yours,” Philip says.
“And Matthew,” Stan says, bringing up his own son, Paige’s ex.
“Was that part of this?”
They told me when I was 16.
But Matthew had nothing to do with that.
I just liked him."
“Henry …?”
For all he knows for sure, there are still so many questions.
“No, he doesn’t know anything,” Paige says. "
“All this time.
I would have done anything for you, Philip.
For all of you,” Stan says, breaking.
Then the rage flares again: “Gennadi and Sophia, that was you.”
“We don’t know who that is,” Philip says, lying againnow to protect Elizabeth.
“F liar,” Stan says.
Credit some male chauvinism for him blaming Philip without even considering that Elizabeth was the actual assassin.
“He doesn’t even do this work anymore,” Elizabeth says.
“He’s a travel agent.
“I did all this stuff, Stan,” Philip confesses.
“It seemed like the right thing to do for my country.
My country wanted me to.
I kept doing it, telling myself it was important.
Until finally I couldn’t.
And I stopped.”
He tells him they’re planning to leave it all now, to go back to Russia.
They’ll even lose Henry.
It’s a bunch of Russians.
They’re trying to get rid of Gorbachev.
We figured it out,” Philip says.
“It’s our own bosses,” Elizabeth says.
A new feeling flashes over Stan: recognition.
“Do you know Oleg Burov?”
“That message has to get back home,” Philip says.
“I could care less who runs your country,” Stan says.
But Oleg’s words in the last episode are haunting him.
But he can’t do much now.
Except … let them go.
Let them deliver the message.
“You should hate me.
You should probably shoot me.
But we’re getting in that car.
And we’re driving away,” Philip says.
Paige has one more message for Stan.
“You have to take care of Henry.”
“He loves you Stan.
Tell him the truth,” Philip says.
They start to back away.
And then Philip offers one more gift, although it lands like a punch.
And we never really find out the truth.
“I don’t know how to say this.
But I think there is a chance that Renee might be one of us,” Philip says.
Then they are in the car.
Stan is blocking their way.
In a lesser show, this might be where the shooting begins.
Or where the lawman gets crushed beneath the wheels of their getaway car.
But Stan just steps aside.
We see a final shot of Oleg Burov, trapped in his tiny cell.
The expression on the grandfather’s face is benevolent.
Has Stan allowed the message to go through?
It’s starting to seem that way.
But Philip, Elizabeth, and Paige have a long way to go before they find out for sure.
If they are welcomed home, then Gorbachev discovered the truth, and they are safe.
If not, if the summit fails and Gorbachev is deposed, they will be traitors.
“I just want you to be yourself,” Philip tells him.
“Okay, I’ll be myself, Dad,” Henry says.
“You should probably let mom drive home.”
Elizabeth gets on the line.
“What are you doing?”
“Just hanging out.”
“What your father said, I feel the same.
I love you, Henry,” his mother says.
“Look, I gotta go,” Henry says.
There’s a ping pong tournament going down.
“I’ll see you next week.
Bye, Dad,” Henry says.
Back at FBI headquarters, Aderholt shows Stan the drawings of the suspects that Father Andrei described.
It’s clearly Elizabeth and Philip.
“I said it, but I didn’t really …” Stan says, feigning shock.
I should have listened," Aderholt says.
Stan makes a vow: “I’m going to kill them.”
But what he actually does is drive north, to break the news to Henry personally.
And then he comforts the boy.
His boy, now.
The Jennings family stops for one last American mealMcDonald’s, of course.
Stan comes home that night, and he pulls the covers up on Renee.
On the train to Canada, some U.S.
Marshals board to check IDs against the fugitive spies the FBI is trying to locate.
First Philip passes inspection, then Elizabeth.
That’s when Philip and Elizabeth see Paige standing on the platform.
She’s staying behind.
They’ve gotten away, but they’ve also just lost their other child.
We see a flashback: Elizabeth with Gregory, her deceased former boyfriend.
They’re smoking after making love.
Then Gregory is gone.
Elizabeth is studying the art in their room.
On the nightstand is a painting done in Haskgard’s style of her two children.
She awakens on an airplane, bound for the Soviet bloc.
On the other side of the plane sits Philip, not sleeping at all.
We see Paige go to Claudia’s empty apartment.
Philip and Elizabeth are driving through a checkpoint.
The officer has to make a call.
They could be killed on the spot.
But instead, they are waved through.
After driving through morning, they meet Arkady.
There’s no question now.
The message will get through.
They are being welcomed home.
Perhaps, someday, Oleg Burov will be, too.
He and Elizabeth get out and look over the city of Moscow.
“Who knows what would’ve happened here,” Elizabeth says.
“I probably would have worked in a factory.
Managed a factory,” she says.
“Maybe we would have met.
On a bus.”
They are not fully alone.
They have each other.
And their children …
“They’ll remember us,” Philip says.
“They’re not kids anymore,” Elizabeth says.
“We raised them,” he tells her.
“Yes,” she answers.
“Feels strange,” Philip says, looking at the city.
Elizabeth answers in Russian: “We’ll get used to it.”
