One of the many pleasures of season one of Homecoming was that its scope never felt too grand. This was a small story of very personal struggles; yes, these men and women were caught up in the machinery of a corporation whose reach felt as though it stretched far beyond what we could see, but the triumphs and tragedies of the series were never about anything other than the lives we were watching unfold. So as this new season progressed, that same sense of intimacy was at work, with our attention focused solely on the travails of four people: Alex and her transformation, Audrey and her ambition, Walter and his search for the truth, and Leonard’s stubborn refusal to play the game. There were others who hinted at the wider world, especially Bunda and her mission to maximize the possibilities of Leonard’s crop, but the stakes once more felt deeply intimate and relatably small.
Then along come Walter and Leonard to lay waste to an entire company and the people outside it who stood to profit. Homecoming made its world a little bigger, all so it could be reset to zero in the end.
I said a couple episodes back that this season of Homecoming was a tragedy, and this finale really drove that point home. Both cathartic and melancholy, it simultaneously delivers a satisfying revenge scenario and immediately undercuts any exhilaration by showing the bleak human cost of that revenge. Walter Cruz exacted his pound of flesh for what was done to him (and to prevent it from being done to others), and the price was the memory of nearly every single person inside the Geist building who was celebrating the new partnership with the Department of Defense. Teaming up with Leonard, Walter disguises himself as a catering employee and uses gallons of the serum to spike the punch used for Bunda’s toast, a literal drinking of the Kool-Aid that wipes out the lives of everyone who participated. Sure, they’re still alive, but the person they were is gone. The screen splitting into two and even three at the moment of Walter’s vengeance, everyone begins to collapse, slowly falling into a stupor as the drug takes hold.
The denouement is quietly devastating, as these people we’ve spent all season with mourn the impending loss of everything they know. In a strange way, Alex becomes the shepherd, the only one who understands what’s coming, because she’s already experienced it. “Is it gonna hurt?” Audrey asks her, and the almost childlike purity of the question lands powerfully. Audrey’s last moments are reflective and anguished, though she also exhibits a woeful sense of inevitability, as though the person who always tried to think through the worst in order to prevent it feels like this punishment is earned, solely because she never even considered it. When Walter tells Alex to go, she stays instead—not because she has feelings for this person she technically doesn’t know, but because, “I know what it’s like to wake up like that. Alone.” It’s harsh.
Even Bunda’s comeuppance carries with it a sense of immense loss. Her daughter is getting married next week; “I was supposed to give her away,” she trails off, the realization of the many innocents outside this situation who will be hurt by it settling in for both her and the viewer. The back and forth between her and Leonard summarizes their incompatible worldviews—she points out that great advances always come with a cost, and he refuses to have any part of it. She’s right, he is stubborn. And while he may be one of the only people to retain his memory, the show drives home that perhaps it’s more of a curse than a blessing. “I fucked things up pretty good,” he flatly says, and unlike almost everyone else, he feels the weight of that guilt, and will carry it with him the rest of his life. His company is gone, his life is a shambles, and all he gets to keep is the knowledge that his single-minded project is responsible for nearly everything that came to pass.
But there’s a sliver of hope amid the sadness, and it lands in the lap of Walter. Getting back into his pickup and preparing to head off and try to make some semblance of a life for himself, he sees that Leonard has left a file in the passenger seat, and it’s not just Walter’s file. It contains information on every single person who was in the Homecoming program. He only gives a slight half-smile before driving off to the strains of a cover of Sinatra’s “My Way,” but the significance is obvious: Walter is going to try and provide some relief to the people out there suffering the same nagging sense of loss that he had. It’s an uplifting thought—maybe the only uplifting one in the finale—and it’s given to the one person who might actually deserve that respite from his troubles.
This was a small-scale story right up to the end, so it’s interesting to see the show go out on such a large and splashy finish. It doesn’t get much more definitive than wiping clean the minds of nearly all the major characters and everyone at the company that drove the plot forward. There wasn’t a lot of subtext or symbolism to this season, outside of the questions raised by its narrative about morality and the choices we make. It’s rare to see a smart and pessimistic portrayal of a relationship between two women of color as the driving force behind a big expensive series, much less one that makes no bones about their unhappiness without ignoring the ways in which their happiness is wrapped up in the same complicated situation. But the series has always been first and foremost about delivering an old-school dramatic thriller, combining Hitchcockian tension with ’70s-style aesthetics to create a pleasurably efficient adventure tale. If there’s a criticism to be had, it’s that this season of Homecoming almost went too far in the direction of playing out every single moment between then and now, leaving nothing to the imagination and making sure all questions were answered, all mysteries resolved. It’s okay to leave some things unknown. But in its final moments, Homecoming offered the flip side of that coin: For all these pitiable people, everything that came before will be un-known.
Stray observations
- Baseless speculation corner results: Wow, I was not good at guessing how things were going to play out, huh? I think maybe one of my predictions came to pass.
- “I fucking love that idea!” “You are my fucking Helen Keller.” “My hero.” Joan Cusack’s Bunda, MVP to the end.
- One of the interesting elements to the story’s memory-loss effects is the idea that there’s a personality below that identity shaped by our memory. Alex: “I know I did something…I can’t say it, but I feel it.”
- Also, I like that the show highlights the ultimately selfish way that placing yourself first can curdle into placing others into lesser positions. “Everyone else, they’re just people,” Audrey explains to Alex, and the way she says “people” tells you everything about what that implies.
- Everyone gets called out this episode. Walter to Leonard: “You’re not old. You just got a shitty attitude.”
- I enjoyed how the score remained committed to over-the-top, old-school swoons of minor-key tension-signifiers.
- Thanks, everyone, for accompanying me on this journey through Homecoming. I don’t know if it’ll be back again, but if it is, I’ll look forward to recovering the memory of it with all of you.
33 Comments
Loved this season, though not quite as much as the first. Janelle Monae was great but hard to like; it lacked the compassion at its core that Julia Roberts gave it last season. Also, very good on the banality of evil: this wasn’t another ominous mega corporation deliberately doing wrong for the bottom line; it was flawed individuals making shitty choices based on their own greed, ambition (or lack of it), or idealism. I really hope they release the soundtrack as well.
While i enjoyed the season overall, didn’t enjoy the finale as much. The one really sympathetic character, Walter, turned into a supervillain with his disproportionate response. Sure there are a few villains who deserved to suffer, but for many employees who weren’t directly involved in homecoming, they deserved to have their identity completely erased because…. they were kind of douchey? they were psyched to party a bit now that Leonard was stepping down? And lets not forget the guys most responsible for Walter’s suffering (Ron and Colin) both get away with their memories intact. Also, after being such a big focus during the other episodes series, Alex seemed largely sidelined during the finale. I don’t know if i’ll return for season 3, since my takeaway from the finale is that all people are crappy, which isn’t usually a message i’m looking for in my entertainment. Compare this to the more uplifting (if still melancholy-tinged) end of S1, where Walter seems to be in a content state, Heidi rightly feels guilty but is moving forward, and Colin gets his comeuppance.
Agreed. I intensely disliked the finale, for all the reasons you give, and for one more: I hated how the effect of the drug took as long as the plot required. The nameless people basically dropped like flies after their first sip, whereas the “important” people took forever. Long enough for them to think and talk about what was going to happen to them! WTF?
The nameless people had been drinking for awhile already, remember? They were drunk and jumping off furniture while Alex and Temple were out of the room. Bunda, Alex and Temple only took their glasses before the toast. Obviously Alex didn’t drink.
yeah i still have a lot of questions about how the drug’s effects work. I feel like if Alex’s memory was erased to the point where she has no idea who anybody is (including herself), wouldn’t she also be forgetting how to drive a car or work a cell phone? I seem to remember a conversation between Colin and HeidiIn S1, where she suggested that the memory deletion was going further than expected and could lead to loss of acquired skills. Of course that might have just been an angle she was using to bring Colin around, as her real concern was that Walter had lost memory of the “titanic rising” incident. I just chalk up the variation in time it took to go into stupor to dramatic license, although it does seem awfully convenient that Audrey and Bunda lasted the longest.
Didn’t Heidi reclaim some of her memory? Also, after what Colin did to her, I wished his comeuppance involved jail time. Manipulating and having sex with someone you know has amnesia and doesn’t know who you really are? WTH.
She seemed to regain all of her memory when she heard the heron (or whatever that bird was) squawking when she (with Colin) returned to the Homecoming site. Also, when she tracked down Walter she seemed to think that if she showed him the road map he had given her, it might trigger his memories in a similar fashion (ultimately she sensed that Walter was reasonably content and decided to leave it well enough alone).So yeah, it is conceivable that the right trigger might result in Audrey, Alex, etc regaining some memories. BUT neither Heidi or Walt seemed to experience anything near the complete memory loss that the S2 characters did, presumably due to receiving a much lower dosage of the drug. Heidi, for instance, remembered everything prior to moving to Tampa.I find it hard to see where they would go with S3 of Homecoming, but if nothing else it would be nice to see Heidi and Walter reunite, now that the cat’s out of the bag as far as Walter understanding what has happened to him.
Very convenient. Also convenient that nobody in that whole office was pregnant or in recovery or just was like “no, I don’t want red punch.” Also a weird discrepancy that Alex herself didn’t actually seem to go unconscious, she pretty much spun out and then was right back up wondering where they hell she was. And she had it injected into her veins. The rest of them seemed to be passed out for a long, long time.Well, the employees who skipped the party or were out sick are sure in for a treat!I still had a ton of fun, though.
This doesn’t apply to Bunda, but I assumed Audrey had built up something of a tolerance from all her wrist-dosing.
I feel like if Alex’s memory was erased to the point where she has no idea who anybody is (including herself), wouldn’t she also be forgetting how to drive a car or work a cell phone?Nope. Episodic memory and procedural memory are separate.
Long enough for me to wonder why no one tried to vomit. You know you drank something harmful, it didn’t burn on the way down/cause immediate pain, and you just sit there waiting for it to take effect? Hell, no.
Same. I like this season, probably better than season 1, but they did not stick the landing.
I have zero problem with Walter’s response. I do agree that there were probably some employees who had no idea what the company did, but how was he supposed to stop the bad guys otherwise?
I don’t know if I felt empathetic to Bunda’s loss. Mostly what I felt was “that way you feel right now? That’s what you wanted thousands of people to feel.”
Well, yeah Bunda certainly did deserve some comeuppance. Although i’m not sure her intentions went as far as wanting to completely erase people’s memories, just PTSD-related ones. But i guess she would’ve gone there eventually, as Walter demonstrated it would be very easy to weaponize this stuff. I do feel bad for her daughter, tho
I know I was like oh maybe she gets it now..noo she didnt
Some questions that keep nagging at me about this finale:-Since Audrey and Bunda knew what was going to happen to them, and had what seemed like at least 15-30 minutes before it took effect, why were they not frantically making notes, Memento-style? If Bunda wants to remember she’s supposed to give her daughter away at her wedding, why is she not making sure her phone or notebook or whatever is filled with pictures and important information? Why do they just casually accept it?-The partnership between Geist and the DoD was a big deal, so surely not everyone who was involved was at that party? It looked like Bunda was the only DoD person there, so surely there is a whole office of folks elsewhere with knowledge of the program who could restart it.-Why did Alex getting her memory wiped completely change her personality, her mannerisms, even her way of speaking? Surely there is something inherent in our way of being and way of thinking that is deeper than just our memories of our past.
I loved this season. Season 1 was good but didn’t grab me. This one hooked me from the first shot.
Me too. I liked how specific it was, I liked how funny it was, and everything seemed to have a function beyond just style and atmosphere.
Thank you Alex for the recaps. I thought the finale was OUTSTANDING. One of the things we have to remember is that Leonard is NOT out of legal liability. He’s still vulnerable to a class action if Walter goes on tour to tell the other soldiers what happened to them in a Season 3, which I would think would be the plot point of a S3, no?I just want Shea back if an S3 happens. That is all.
yeah, definitely found myself missing Shea this season. Heidi too but i didn’t really expect Julia Roberts to come back
Oh he’s absolutely liable. Practically every employee of his company has now lost their memory, it’s not like Walter even needs to tell anyone about it for this to become a massive scandal! It’s not like all those people lived in voids. It’s not like nobody took a personal day that day.
I’m not sure he even cares anymore. By that I mean he would gladly plead guilty and expose the corruption that destroyed his company. HE has nothing left to lose, and besides — we always know Chris Cooper tells the truth on the stand!
Yes, I agree that he’ll probably cooperate and/or turn himself in. And probably throw himself on his sword and refuse to say a word about Walter.
I’m baffled after watching Season 2. I don’t think I have ever seen a series that has ever made a more pointless season. Shows have had bad and disappointing seasons, but this was weirdly pointless. It was basically a 3.5hr epilogue to season 1.
Well, in fairness the first two episodes seemed to suggest we might be moving forward in a new direction, before it became apparent that this was all happening in the immediate aftermath of S1’s finale. But i disliked how this season basically undid the (at least somewhat) uplifting ending of S1 in order to pursue the theme of “people are all crappy, some moreso than others”
My big problem is the structure. Most of the season was spent connecting dots that were extremely easy to connect as soon as you knew Walter was still around and what Alex’s profession was. The drama suffers because we know precisely where everyone’s going to wind up during the whole multi-episode flashback, but there’s also no mystery about how we get back there so it’s lacking the puzzle box aspect of the first season.Over half the season is just narrative wheel-spinning, and the stuff that remains is barely enough for an epilogue. Trim a little fat and you could convey all the important plot beats in two episodes tacked onto the end of the previous season, with the only real drawback being the sudden shift in character perspectives.
After all these decades you’d think people would figure out DON’T DRINK THE KOOL-AID! I thought the first season was much better – couldn’t get past Walter’s landing strip haircut or yet again another lesbian story line that did absolutely nothing to advance the plot, but that’s the new Hollywood. It was OK, memory loss isn’t really a great overall theme with Alzheimers and dementia being the REAL horror – if the company had also created a cure for memory loss, THAT would have been a terrific ending… maybe season 3?
the concept of revenge is the most ethically vile and loathsome thing our species has ever invented. the notion that the act of revenge could somehow be “satisfying” is similarly foul, in that it raises the question: what need in us is being satisfied? anyway i hated this episode and it turned me against the entire series in a big way, to the point where i think everyone involved should kind of lowkey be ashamed of themselves.
…before driving off to the strains of a cover of Sinatra’s “My Way”…Ladies and gentlemen, Nina Simone.
What a great show. I loved both seasons!
Season 3 will involve the ensuing collapse of the company and the headquarters building being sold off to Space Force.
I think everyone’s been missing the fundamental theme of the show, which was amplified in S2 relative to S1. In the typical thriller (or whatever genre this is), bad things happen because there is an evil corporation (or underground organization, or sinister government agency) that has lots of power, hidden motivations, and a Plan. This is a very appealing story structure because people like to think that life is controllable, so if bad things are happening, it’s because someone is causing them to happen for some sinister reason. But in Homecoming, bad things happen because ambitious people are in over their heads and don’t even realize it. This is true at every level as we move up the hierarchy. Heidi is inexperienced and not really aware of the full scope of the Homecoming program. Colin is went off protocol and switched to higher, more covet doses of the drug because the roll-on project was failing and he needed to impress his boss, Ron (apparently Ron didn’t know shit either, but we don’t really get much time with him, which is too bad because Fran Krantz). Colin (and Ron) are then offed by Audrey, who had basically just moved up from receptionist, thanks to her ambition and her desire to please her ruthless girlfriend. And of course Leonard has no fucking idea what’s going on at his own company.This theme is encapsulated in the “primary” plot. Alex thinks she can control Walter and keep Audrey’s new job safe (and thereby get Audrey to agree to Olive), but he sees through her. But she keeps going, even though she should never have gotten in the car with him to go fishing, because she’s just too overconfident and doesn’t realize how deeply over her head she is until she gets her memory wiped.