After three weeks of mistaken identities, lethal insurance fraud scams, Dennis Quaid’s abhorrent rattail, and sacrificial rituals, Full Circle, Steven Soderbergh’s maze of a TV series, has finally concluded. The Max Original series about husband and wife Sam (Claire Danes) and Derek Browne (Timothy Olyphant)’s family being victims of an extortion plot gradually morphed into a tale of revenge, corruption, and the inescapability of the past. While the connection between U.S. Postal Investigation Service agents Melody Harmony (Zazie Beetz) and Manny Broward, a Guyanese racketeering group led by malicious matriarch Savitri Mahabir (CCH Pounder), and the Browne family wasn’t always clear, the season finale finally puts the moving parts together to form the bigger picture we’ve been waiting to see.
Before the thrilling finale, the penultimate episode, “Loyalty,” dropped a bomb that set up the big reveal in the season finale. Earlier in the season, we find out Samantha (Claire Danes) buried evidence of her uncle Gene (William Sadler) accepting bribes from corrupt politicians to fund their family business when he was an NYPD officer at the behest of Manny (Jim Gaffigan) when he also worked in the NYPD. In Episode 5, we discover she is also the cause of Gene’s riff with her father, Jeff McCusker (Dennis Quaid). For the entire season, Gene has been salty about losing his position in the NYPD after his acceptance of illegal bribes was confidentially said to Manny 20 years ago by someone with the initials J.M., believing it to be his rattail brother. His indignation was still simmering when he confronted Jeff and his wife with the redacted witness statement taken by the person who ratted him out. Then, everyone but Gene realizes a key fact overlooked for 20 years: Samantha is Danes’s character’s middle name; her first name is Jolene. She was the J.M. who backstabbed her uncle.
While the Browne family dealt with their duplicity, Mahabir’s criminal organization still had loose ends to tie up and ritualistic revenge to complete. Mahabir’s season premiere to kidnap Samantha and Derek’s son Jared (Ethan Stoddard) and sacrifice his life in Washington Square Park at 1:11 A.M. was thwarted when the consciences of Mahabir’s massage therapist Natalie (Adia) and her brother Louis (Gerald Jones) led them to help Jared escape the Washington Square Park murder attempt by switching his body out with a dummy. Later in the season, they found out Mahabir’s underlings mistakenly kidnapped Nicky (Lucian Zanes), Derek’s love child, who unknowingly lured Jared to the location of his abduction. Well, Mahabir’s righthand henchman Garmen Harry (Phaldut Sharma) has learned of their betrayal after forcing it out of Louis’s friend Xavier (Sheyi Cole) but still offered them a seat on his plane back to Guayana if they could steal an expensive painting from the Browne’s home as payment.
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Everyone’s storyline was concluding, and the final episode, “Essequibo,” felt as much like a collision as it did a finale. And one jaw-dropping scene put all the pieces together.
What secrets were revealed?
When Melody confronts Samantha at the hospital, Nicky is recovering; the soon-to-be-suspended agent lays out all of the connections of the major players. In Guyana, Savitri’s husband, politician Ronwell Mahabir, rewrote zoning laws allowing foreign entities like Samantha’s father to evict people from their land to build the Colony at Esequibo in exchange for bribes. Those were the bribes Samantha helped sign off on that her uncle Gene procured. But, one man wouldn’t leave his land: Jeff’s hospitalized chess partner Clarence Joseph (Ted Sod) from the season premiere. For standing his ground, he was rewarded with his grandson kidnapped and murdered at the order of Ronwell.
The child murdered was roughly the same age as Jared. It was murdered at 1:11 A.M., explaining Mahabir’s obsession with the season premiere sacrifice of Jared to happening at that specific time.
Who dies in the Full Circle season finale?
There likely won’t be a second season of Full Circle, but there definitely won’t be a second season for a few characters, even if the show returns. After chasing Garmen on foot after he flees the police raid of Savitri’s home (first mistake), Manny follows him to his home and enters without any backup (second mistake). When he notices the bathroom door cracked open, he sticks the hand he’s holding his gun in through instead of opening it thoroughly to make most of the bathroom visible and block anyone in his blind spot behind the door (final mistake). At that moment, a hiding Xavier slams the door into his arm, causing him to drop the gun, and then gets a bullet to the head courtesy of Garmen as he comes into the bathroom doorway from down the hall. Now, Manny won’t have to worry about spending that NYPD pension.
Before the cops can catch them, Xavier and Gramen escape through a Prohibition-era hidden tunnel under Garmen’s home. They make it to a swamp area near the water where their private seaplane awaits them to flee the police and head to Guyana. But, for Garmen, there are two last loose ends to fix: Natalie and Louis. Xavier justifiably hesitates to do the deed when Garmen asks him to do so as a completion of his loyalty pledge. When Garmen goes to finish them off, we finally see why Xavier has looked pensive the entire episode as he inhales deeply, turns around, and decimates Garmen with a machete before allowing Louis and Natalie to return home to Guyana in the same seaplane as Garmen’s family.
Keith Nelson is a writer by fate and journalist by passion, who has connected dots to form the bigger picture for Men’s Health, Vibe Magazine, LEVEL MAG, REVOLT TV, Complex, Grammys.com, Red Bull, Okayplayer, and Mic, to name a few.
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