The Americans ends with heartbreaker
Spoiler alert: This story contains details from Wednesday’s series finale of FX’s The Americans.
The emotional bombshells of “The Americans” finale didn’t just hit viewers. They got to the show’s creators and stars, too.
“We wept the whole time” watching the episode, executive producer Joel Fields says.
Fields and creator/executive producer Joe Weisberg ticked off finale traumas for Soviet spies Elizabeth and Philip Jennings as they flee the U.S. under FBI pursuit: the decision to leave son Henry, who doesn’t know of their undercover work; their final phone call to Henry; and daughter and espionage protege Paige’s shocking departure from the train and her parents at the Canadian border.
The toll was emotional rather than physical in the final episode of the critically acclaimed spy drama, which tracked real-world geopolitical events in the 1980s, concluding with a 1987 U.S.-Soviet summit. No regular cast members were killed; poor Oleg Burov (Costa Ronin), back in the U.S. on a mission to save his country’s leadership — and, in the process, the superpowers’ nuclear weapons talks — was the only one jailed.
“It didn’t go well for Oleg,” Fields says. “Although there was a high body count this season, we don’t think about the action stuff a lot, about who’s going to die. We think more about the emotional carnage. That’s what the finale was about.”
Elizabeth (Keri Russell) and Philip (Matthew Rhys) — make that Nadezhda and Mischa — arrive safely back in Moscow, but they still pay a horrible price, Russell says.
They “could have died or gone to prison, but to take your kids away is pretty hardcore . ... It’s such an Americans-appropriate heartbreaker,” she says.
Rhys says the rest-stop phone call to Henry (Keidrich Sellati) was the most devastating.
“As a new father, it came very easily to put yourself in that situation and go, ‘I can’t even fathom doing this to my own son,’ ” says the actor, who has a young son with Russell.
Of course, the Jenningses never could have escaped if their longtime friend and neighbour, FBI agent Stan Beeman (Noah Emmerich), didn’t let them escape after apprehending them in a parking garage in a pivotal scene.
The bond between Stan and Philip is genuine, Rhys says, suggesting that relationship played a role in the lawman’s decision to back down.
“Philip genuinely loves Stan. Stan was his best friend,” he says. As for Philip’s motivation, “In that moment, your primal instinct is to protect your family. You do anything that allows you to do that.”
The producers, who had come up with the finale concept by the start of Season 2, won’t say much about the motivation for Stan’s catch-and-release.
“That scene was the culmination of all their years of friendship, everything that had happened over six seasons,” Fields says.